Time and Meaning
Fall 2007
The class will explore the nature of time and its meaning for human beings. Eternity, change and decay, recurrence, and time travel are our organizing topics; within each, we will use physics, philosophy, history, and literature to better understand how time works and how it molds our understanding of ourselves and the significance of our lives. No prior understanding of physics or philosophy is assumed. Some specific topics: temporally scrambled narrative in modern fiction, the nature of entropy, conceptions of historical time, the end of the universe, the physics and science fiction of time travel.
See the exercises for the class.
See the info sheet for the class (PDF).
See the reading schedule for the class (PDF).