Hans Reichenbach - Time Quotes

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... absolute time would exist in a causal structure for which the concept indeterminate as to time order lends to a unique simultaneity, i. e., for which there is no finite interval of time between the departure and return of a first-signal...

Hans Reichenbach
We define: any two events which are indeterminate as to their time order may be called simultaneous.... Simultaneity means the exclusion of causal connection.... Yet we must not commit the mistake of attempting to derive from it the conclusion that this definition coordinates to any given event at a given different place. This would be the case only for a special form of causal structure, a form that does not conform to physical reality.

Hans Reichenbach
Light signals alone provide the metrical structure of the four-dimensional space-time continuum. The construction may be called light axioms.

Hans Reichenbach
This fact... proves that space measurements are reducible to time measurements. Time is therefore logically prior to space.

Hans Reichenbach
For the Lorentz transformation spatial measurements are also changed, because they are obtained relative to a moving system. In our example only time was transformed, while the distances between points at rest remained the same; the spatial coordinates, therefore, retain their identity.

Hans Reichenbach
It appears that the solution of the problem of time and space is reserved to philosophers who, like Leibniz, are mathematicians, or to mathematicians who, like Einstein, are philosophers.

Hans Reichenbach
There is no other way to solve the problem of time than the way through physics. More than any other science, physics has been concerned with the nature of time. If time is objective the physicist must have discovered that fact.

Hans Reichenbach