Punin, Peter (2016) Group-theoretic Atemporality in Physics and its Boundaries (Another look at reversibility, irreversibility, and their philosophical implications). [Preprint]
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Abstract
French philosopher H. Bergson criticizes general philosophy insofar as it neglects or
even ignores the temporality of time. Concerning general philosophy, Bergson's remarks
are probably outdated, whereas contemporary philosophy of science does continue to encounter
analogous problems.
For essentially group-theoretic reasons, physics, despite the presence of a temporal dimension in
physical spaces, describes atemporal systems. These group-theoretic reasons being at the origin
of physical atemporality also ensure the extraordinary epistemic power of physics based
on the possibility of distortion-free partial approaches, symmetry in prediction and retro-diction,
experimentation to be repeated under identical conditions, idealization, renormalization, and so on.
But the investigation field of physics allowing such group-theoretically founded approaches
represents a highly improbable exception. So any tentative to transpose physics beyond the
boundaries of its group-theoretically delimited investigation field unavoidably leads to the problem
raised by Bergson: a time reduced to something without temporality. This point undermines certain
contemporary speculations advanced in the name of physics, such as “chaosogenesis” and, above all,
linkages between multiverse approaches based on eternal inflation and the so-called “weak anthropic
principle.”
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