Time Travel and its Paradoxes (an interactive introduction)

Timothy Chambers
April 2006

(A) Motivation

(1) Quiz: In which source might we find the following declaration: “In short, general
relativity suggests that if we construct a sufficiently large rotating cylinder, we
create a time machine”?

a. Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine

b. Journal of Psychic Research
c. Physical Review-D

Answer (c):

Source: Frank J. Tipler, “Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation”
Phys Rev. D 9, 2203–2206 (1974) (Online at: http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v9/i8/p2203_1)
(2) So time machines would appear to be consistent with the “Field Equations for
Einstein’s Relativity.” But what follows?

(a) Optimist’s Argument (b) Pessimist’s Argument

[1] If Einstein’s equations are
(sufficiently) true and
complete, then time travel
is possible
[2] Einstein’s equations are
(sufficiently) true and
complete.
Thus, time travel is possible
[1] If Einstein’s equations are
(sufficiently) true and
complete, then time travel
is possible
*[2] But time travel is impossible*
Thus, Einstein’s equations are
false/too “permissive”

(3) (Q) On what grounds do pessimists argue, a priori, that time travel is impossible?
(A) Answer: several
(1) Time travel entails historical skepticism (which is absurd)
(2) Time travel entails a false picture of time
(3) Time travel entails paradoxes of “personal identity”
(4) Time travel entails paradoxes of “causation/agency”

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 (B) A First Bundle of Time-Travel Paradoxes

(1) Should time travel’s believers be skeptical about our knowledge of the past?

[1] If time travel is possible, then it’s possible that there were
people—time travelers—alive during the Triassic Age1

[2] If it’s possible that there were people alive during the
Triassic Age, then we don’t know that “the first people
arose 2 million years ago”
[C1] So, if Time Travel is possible, then we don’t know that
the first people arose only 2 million years ago.

[3] But of course we know that the first people arose only 2 million
years ago!
[C2] So, Time travel isn’t possible

(2) How could time travel make sense—there’s “Nowhen to go!”2

[1] If my friend, the Time Traveler, is now walking in the Triassic

Age, then the Triassic Age now exists

[2] But the Triassic Age is in the past

[3] Past times no longer exist

So, it’s impossible that my friend…is now walking in the Triassic Age

(3) Time Travel entails contradictions of “personal identity”3

[1] If time travel is possible, then it’s possible that I go back to 1979,
and visit New York City

[2] But Tim lived in Wisconsin in 1979

[C1] So, if time travel is possible, then it’s possible for Tim to be in
two places at once

[4] But it’s impossible for a person to be in two places at once

[C2] Thus, time travel is impossible

1
Here, I allude to H.G. Wells’ famous line: “[My friend, the time traveler] may even now—if I may use the
phrase—be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of
the Triassic Age.” From: “Epilogue,” The Time Machine (1898 ed.) Online at: http://www.bartleby.com
/1000/
2
A recent airing of the paradox appears in William Grey, “Troubles With Time Travel” Philosophy 74 
(1999): 55–70
3
This paradox is famously aired and explained in David Lewis’s classic, “The Paradoxes of Time Travel”
American Philosophical Quarterly 13 (1976): 145-152.

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 (C) The Grandfather Paradox

(1) The Basic Worry: “Consider Tom. He detests his grandfather, whose success in
munitions trade built the family fortune that paid for Tom’s time machine. Tom
would like nothing so much as to kill Grandfather, but alas he is too late.
Grandfather died in his bed in 1957, while Tom was a young boy. But when Tom
has built his time machine and traveled to 1920, suddenly he realizes that he is
not too late after all. He buys a rifle…and there he lurks, one winter day in 1921,
rifle loaded, hate in his heart as Grandfather walks closer, closer….”4

(2) The Worry, Step-by-Step:

[1] If time travel is possible, then Tom can put himself in the vicinity of
his Grandfather in 1921.
[2] If Tom can put himself in the vicinity of his Grandfather in 1921, then
Tom can bring it about that his Grandfather dies a childless man.
[3] If Tom brings it about that his Grandfather dies a childless man, then
Tom wouldn’t exist;
[4] But Tom can bring it about that his Grandfather dies a childless man
only if he does exist.
So, since time travel’s possibility implies a contradiction—i.e., that
Tom both exists and doesn’t exist—then time travel is impossible.

(3) Responses to the paradox:

(a) Premise [1] is false—while time travel is a physical

possibility, it’s not an engineering
possibility. (Or: something will always
crop up from preventing Tim from building
his time machine.)

(b) Premise [2] is false—no matter how propitious Tom’s

situation is, something will crop up
to prevent his killing Grandfather

(c) Premise [3] are false—the Multiverse Model5

(D) For Further Reading…

(1) Paul J. Nahin, Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science
Fiction, 2nd Edn (American Institute of Physics Press: NY, 1999). Worth the
price just for the Bibliography. An engineer, Nahin offers many helpful “tech
notes” to explain the mathematics/physics to the uninitiated. His philosophical
method is rather blunt, though.

4
From Lewis, op cit., page 149.
5
For more, see David Deutsch and Murray Lockwood, “The Quantum Physics of Time Travel,” Scientific
American (March 1994).