Arrow of Time: Towards a New Epistemology of Science :: Scientific Philosophy Philosophical Papers

Arrow of Time: Towards a New Epistemology of Science ABSTRACT: Humanity has tried to comprehend two fundamental events since time immemorial: the birth of the universe and the emergence of life. Recently, it is claimed that these events can be understood comprehensively by means of a metaphor: the 'arrow of time.' The purpose of the present paper is twofold: (1) to build an epistemological structure that underlies the principle of time's arrow; and (2) to pursue the unity of science in a novel fashion. (A) WHAT IS AN ARROW OF TIME? The events which we see in the universe are classified into two categories: the reversible and the irreversible. The arrow of time is relevant to the latter than the former. It is alongwith the reversible-irreversible syndrome that a major light can be thrown on the notion of time's arrow. Concept of Reversibility The reversible events are those which occur regularly and repeatedly, the cycles of seasons, harvesting , pendulum swinging in a frictionless medium , the motion of earth and the moon , are some of the examples. Reversibility is an idealized concept . A process is said to be reversible if and only if the system which undergoes that process together with all parts of its environment which are affected, can be restored reproducibly to their original states. In short, in the reversible process all relevant parts of the universe must be capable of being put back to how they were! Time is not so considered to be an important ingredient in this system. The entire Newtonian Science is of this sort. Newton's laws , Maxwell's equations, Einstein's general relativity and even quantum mechanics- all remain effectively unaltered if we reverse the direction of time ( Replace the ' t ' which represents time by '-t' ). Even in life and the social sciences, time is not considered to be important com ponent in these system of knowledge. The notion of time's arrow is very important in the context of irreversible processes. Irreversibility defined Irreversibility is the negation of reversibility. It is a realistic notion. Moreover, it is the one-way time evolution of the system, giving rise to the non-repetitive , non-cyclic processes or events. The examples are , mixing a milk in the coffee, transfer of heat from a hotter body to a cooler one, chemical changes, the state of turbulence and chaos, rhythms, non-equilibrium systems, metabolism etc. Irreversibility is an open system in the sense that it interacts with its surrounding area and evolves simultaneously.