Loew, Christian (2017) Fundamentality and Time’s Arrow. [Preprint]

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Abstract

The distribution of matter in our universe is strikingly time asymmetric. Most famously, the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that entropy tends to increase toward the future but not toward the past. But what explains this time-asymmetric distribution of matter? In this paper, I explore the idea that time itself has a direction by drawing from recent work on grounding and metaphysical fundamentality. I will argue that positing such a direction of time, in addition to time-asymmetric boundary conditions (such as the so-called “past hypothesis”), enables a better explanation of the thermodynamic asymmetry than is available otherwise.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Loew, Christian
Keywords:	Fundamentality; Grounding; Direction of Time; Thermodynamics; Statistical Mechanics; Tim Maudlin; Past Hypothesis
Subjects:	General Issues > Explanation General Issues > Laws of Nature Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics
Depositing User:	Christian Loew
Date Deposited:	13 Mar 2018 12:25
Last Modified:	13 Mar 2018 12:25
Item ID:	14453
Subjects:	General Issues > Explanation General Issues > Laws of Nature Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics
Date:	December 2017
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/14453

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