McTaggart and the Neo-Positive Entropists

Abstract

John King-Farlow's ‘The Positive McTaggart on Time’ (Philosophy, 49, 1974, pp. 169–178) brings out extremely important likenesses between ‘abstract’ metaphysicians and ‘concrete’ philosophers of science. These striking similarities illustrate a perennial human quest for Something More Basic than Time, a quest which characterizes not only mystics who rejoice in contradictions but hard-headed philosophers who submit to the rigours of logic. King-Farlow is largely concerned with the McTaggart of 1908 and his motivation for writing ‘The Unreality of Time’. I should like to explore further the surprising bond between the Search for Something Deeper in the later McTaggart of The Nature of Existence and the writings on Time of Hans Reichenbach and Adolf Grünbaum. Reflection on this similarity should enable us better to evaluate the view that our vulgar, if practically useful, assertions about Time's Arrow must be reinterpreted by the wise in terms of chastened logical constructions out of statements about Something Deeper—logical constructions which are alleged, if chaste enough, to be eliminable.