Inventing Time: Past, Present, and Future in British Metaphysics 1878-1938

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Are the past or future real? Does time have an irreversible direction, from past to future? Does the present really move, such that a wedding in the future becomes present, and then past? Today, these questions are central to the philosophy of time. Yet that was not always the case. Through my previous work on the history of philosophy of time, I have come to believe these questions were invented relatively recently: they were first discussed explicitly and at length in British philosophy between the 1870s and the 1930s. During this period, philosophers developed these new questions about time, and new answers. For example, 'eternalists' argued that the past, present and future are real. 'Growing block' theorists argued that the past and present are real, yet the future is unreal. 'A theorists' argued the present really moves, whilst 'B theorists' denied it. Twenty-first century philosophers of time frequently cite key works from the early twentieth century, showing they connect contemporary theories with this history too. This history of philosophy project tells 'origin stories'. It explores why and how new questions about the past, present and future emerged in British philosophy around the turn of the twentieth century. My preliminary research suggests twelve philosophers were at the centre of these changes: Shadworth Hodgson, Bertrand Russell, Victoria Welby, J. M. E. McTaggart, Arthur Eddington, Susan Stebbing, Samuel Alexander, C. D. Broad, A. N. Whitehead, J. W. Dunne, Hilda Oakeley, and May Sinclair. This project will explore their theories of time, and contextualise them in the period. Their work was affected by developments in science, including new theories of evolution in biology, new theories of time perception in psychology, and new theories about spacetime in physics. This study will be the first of its kind, and it is important for three reasons. First, it will advance the history of philosophy of time. Time was a key issue in British philosophy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: I am not aware of any British metaphysician during this period who does not write something on time. Studying this issue in British philosophy will hugely increase our understanding of their theories of time, and of British metaphysics during this period more generally. Second, it will advance the project of recovering the work of historical women philosophers. Four of the twelve philosophers I will focus on are women: Sinclair, Welby, Oakeley and Stebbing. There is currently very, very little scholarship on these women, and this project will open paths for more in the future. Finally, this project may advance twenty-first century debates. Philosophers of time today are still deeply concerned with some of the historical pieces this project will consider. McTaggart's 1908 paper "The Unreality of Time" has been cited nearly a thousand times since 2010, and Russell's 1915 paper "On the Experience of Time" has been cited nearly a hundred times in the same period. Studying the roots of twenty-first century theories about time will illuminate assumptions, reveal hidden motivations, and recover lost arguments. This work may be of use to contemporary philosophers of time. The scholarly interest in this project is demonstrated by the success of a conference I ran in Durham, on "Time in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Philosophy". It took place in September 2017 and was funded by my British Academy Rising Star grant. Historians and philosophers of time engaged fruitfully, and later turned their papers into a series of blog posts and podcasts. I edited the series and it was hosted on the Centre for the Philosophy of Time's website: http://www.centreforphilosophyoftime.it.