Karlsruhe 2011 – scientific programme

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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 15: Alternative Ansätze

GR 15.4: Talk

Friday, April 1, 2011, 10:10–10:30, 20.40: 101

Entropy, bio-evolution and the psychological arrow of time — •Heinrich Päs — TU Dortmund

Physics seems to be almost time symmetric. Apart from small CP violating effects in weak interactions microscopic processes can run backwards just as they can run forward in time. The only difference in macroscopic environments between future and past thus seems to be entropy. If entropy increase is the only measure of time, though, the psychological arrow of time is a most puzzling fact: why do we remember the past, but do not "premember" the future. In this talk we propose a darwinist approach to this problem: in order deal with a situation in the present, individuals premembering the future have to process larger amounts of information due to entropy increase. Species which were developing the necessary physique are thus disfavored in evolution. Thus even if no other source of time asymmetry than macroscopic entropy would be relevant for the psychological arrow of time, the selection processes of biological evolution alone would imply its existence, and thus could be of relevance for the understanding of the phenomenon.