Challenges the conventional view of the nature of time. Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time challenges the conventional view of the nature of time. The dominant twentieth-century view, supported by Einstein and many of the founders of quantum theory, implies that time is ultimately unreal. Several new schools of thought reject the notion that physics is temporally symmetrical, and that time could just as easily run backwards. Combating this conventional view of time, this book offers three new viewpoints and explores their apparent differences. Nobel prize winner Ilya Prigogine argues that irreversibility and asymmetry are more fundamental than reversibility and symmetry. David Bohm notes that while conventional notions about physics and the worldview it suggests have been based upon exclusive attention to the 'explicate order,' quite another view results when primary attention is focused on the 'implicate order.' And the growing school of process philosophy based on Alfred North Whitehead's work holds that irreversible temporal relations characterize the most 'elementary' components of the world, implying the heretical view that time exists for a single electron or atom.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1. Introduction: Time and the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness David Ray Griffin I Historical Backgrounds 2. Evolutionary Epistemology, Durational Metaphysics, and Theoretical Physics: Capek and the Bergsonian Tradition Andrew G. Bjelland 3. Dynamic, Asymmetrical, Internal Relations: Some Questions for Andrew Bjelland Pete A. Y. Gunter 4. Response to Pete Gunter Andrew G. Bjelland 5. Time in the Earlier and Later Whitehead Patrick Hurley 6. Contemporaneity, Knowledge, and God: A Comment on Hurley's Paper Frederick Ferré 7. Time, Events, and Substance: Comments on Hurley and Whitehead Peter Miller 8. Whitehead's Later View on Space-Time: A Response to Patrick Hurley John B. Cobb, Jr. II Bohm, Prigogine, and Process Philosophy 9. Bohm and Whitehead on Wholeness, Freedom, Causality, and Time David Ray Griffin 10. Bohm and Time John B. Cobb, Jr. 11. Bohm and Process Philosophy: A Response to Griffin and Cobb Ian G. Barbour 12. Reply to Comments of John Cobb and David Griffin David Bohm 13. Time, the Implicate Order and Pre-Space DavidBohm 14. A Response to David Bohm's "Time, the Implicate Order and Pre-Space" Robert John Russell 15. Time and Higher-Order Wholeness: A Response to David Bohm Steven M. Rosen 16. An Example of Bohm's"Implicate Order" Crockett L. Grabbe 17. Irreversibility and Space-Time Structure Ilya Prigogine 18. Far-from-Equilibrium Thermodynamics and Process Thought Joseph E. Earley 19. Some Questions for Ilya Prigogine Pete A. Y. Gunter 20. Response to Pete Gunter Ilya Prigogine 21. Comments on Ilya Prigogine's Program David Bohm 22. Einstein Time and Process Time Henry P. Stapp 23. Process Time and Static Time: A Response to Henry Stapp Tim Eastman 24. Physics and Metaphysics: Henry Stapp on Time William B. Jones 25. Comments on Henry Stapp's "Einstein Time and Process Time" David Bohm 26. On "Becoming" as a Fifth Dimension Peter Miller 27. A Short Comment on Henry Stapp's Contribution Ilya Prigogine III Philosophical Overviews 28. The Unreality and Indeterminacy of the Future in the Light of Contemporary Physics Milic Capek 29. On the Ultimate Significance of Time for Truth, Goodness, and the Sacred Frederick Ferré Notes on Contributors Name Index