Metaphysics has often held that laws of nature, if legitimate, must be time-independent. Yet mounting evidence from the foundations of science suggests that this constraint may be obsolete. This book provides arguments against this atemporality conjecture, which it locates both in metaphysics and in the philosophy of science, drawing on developments in a range of fields, from the foundations of physics to the philosophy of finance. It then seeks to excavate an alternative philosophical lineage which reconciles time-dependent laws with determinism, converging in the thought of Immanuel Kant.
1. Introduction.- 2. Determinacy and Functional Relations.- 3. The Temporality of Determinacy I: Philosophy of Non-Physical Sciences.- 4. The Temporality of Determinacy II: Philosophy of Physical Sciences.- 5. The Temporality of Determinacy III: Kant and Contemporary Philosophy.- 6. Conclusion.
Conor Husbands is a UK based philosophical scholar with a broad variety of metaphysical research interests. His recent engagements with the philosophy of time include Klossowski's Semotic of Intensity: Time, Language and the Vicious Circle (2020) and Esposito's temporality of finance: Endogeneity and revisability in derivative transactions (2021). He holds an MPhysPhil in Physics & Philosophy from the University of Oxford.
