Real Time

In 1880s Britain, philosophers developed what would become a half-century obsession with time. In that era, time was widely held to be “unreal”; by the 1920s, it was widely held to be real. This sea change was gradual but sweeping. Early time realists focused on defending the reality of time. From around 1900, they began asking fresh questions about the nature of time, all loosely concerned with its dynamicity---its 'moving on'. Are the past and future real? Is time fundamentally an 'A-series' or 'B-series': about past, present, and future, or earlier and later? Does time have an intrinsic direction? These questions are still widely debated today. In Real Time, Emily Thomas investigates the reinvention of time realism and follows the emergence of these new, in-house realist debates. Thomas argues these questions are not perennial but rather deeply rooted within this historical context. The story unfolds through anti-realist figures such as F. H. Bradley and J. M. E. McTaggart, and realists such as Samuel Alexander, Hilda Oakeley, G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, C. D. Broad, Alfred North Whitehead, and Arthur Eddington.These figures returned to time repeatedly across their careers, grappling with it in a variety of ways. Many placed time at the heart of their philosophies. Through their writings and previously unpublished correspondence, Thomas shows how time became one of the defining philosophical problems of the modern era-a problem that reshaped the very foundations of metaphysics.

Emily Thomas is Professor of Philosophy at Durham University. She has published widely on the history of metaphysics (especially space and time) and on historical women philosophers. Thomas' research has been supported by the NWO, the AHRC, and the British Academy. In 2020, she won a Leverhulme Prize for research excellence.