Real Time

A Reinvention in British Metaphysics 1883-1928
In 1880s Britain, philosophers developed what would become a half-century obsession with time. Back then, time was widely held to be unreal. By the 1920s, it was widely held to be real. This sea change was gradual but sweeping. Early time realists focused on defending the reality of time. From around 1900, they began asking fresh questions about the nature of time, all loosely concerned with its dynamicity-its ‘moving on’. Are the past and future real? Is time fundamentally an ‘A-series’ or ‘B-series’: about past, present, and future, or earlier and later? Does time have an intrinsic direction? These questions are still widely debated today. Real Time investigates the reinvention of time realism and follows the emergence of these new, in-house realist debates. Thomas argues these questions are not perennial but rather deeply rooted within this historical context. The story unfolds through anti-r