These nine essays, commissioned on the initiative of the Philosophy section of the British Academy, address fundamental questions about time in philosophy, physics, linguistics, and psychology. Are there facts about the future? Could we affect the past? In physics, general relativity and quantum theory give contradictory treatments of time. So in the current search for a theory of quantum gravity, which should give way: general relativity or quantum theory? In linguistics and psychology, how does our language represent time, and how do our minds keep track of it?

Review from previous edition The book consists of nine excellent but separate essays on various aspects of time ... It serves as an admirable introduction to recent work on what the editor rightly calls 'a controversial topic in present-day fundamental physics'. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics Jeremy Butterfield is to be congratulated for soliciting and editing provocative contributions from distinguished scholars with such varied backgrounds and perspectives. British Journal for the Philosopphy of Science ... original and outstanding in quality ... a significant contnribution to the philosophy of time. Of the recent anthologies in philosophy of time, this one is by far my favorite. Philosophy of Science