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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Advance Access originally published online on June 4, 2009
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2009 60(3):557-584; doi:10.1093/bjps/axp015
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Time Reversal in Classical Electromagnetism

Frank Arntzenius

University College Oxford, UK frank.arntzenius{at}philosophy.ox.ac.uk

Hilary Greaves

Merton College Oxford, UK hilary.greaves{at}merton.ox.ac.uk


  Abstract

Richard Feynman has claimed that anti-particles are nothing but particles ‘propagating backwards in time’; that time reversing a particle state always turns it into the corresponding anti-particle state. According to standard quantum field theory textbooks this is not so: time reversal does not turn particles into anti-particles. Feynman's view is interesting because, in particular, it suggests a non-standard, and possibly illuminating, interpretation of the CPT theorem. This paper explores a classical analog of Feynman's view, in the context of the recent debate between David Albert and David Malament over time reversal in classical electromagnetism.

  1. Introduction
  2. Time Reversal and the Direction of Time
  3. Classical Electromagnetism: The Story So Far
    3.1 The standard textbook view
    3.2 Albert's proposal
    3.3 Malament's proposal
    3.4 Albert revisited

  4. The ‘Feynman’ Proposal
  5. Structuralism: A Third Way?
    5.1 Structures: the debate recast
    5.2 Relational structures
    5.3 Malament and Feynman structures as conventional representors of a relational reality

  6. Conclusions and Open Questions


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