ON BECOMING, COSMIC TIME AND ROTATING UNIVERSES

In the literature on the compatibility between the time of our experience and the time of physics, the special theory of relativity has enjoyed central stage. By bringing into the discussion the general theory of relativity, I suggest a new analysis of the misunderstood notion of becoming, developed from hints in Gödel's published and unpublished arguments for the ideality of time. I claim that recent endorsements of such arguments, based on Gödel's own rotating solution to Einstein's field equation, fail: once understood in the right way, becoming can be shown to be both mind-independent and compatible with spacetime physics. Being a needed tertium quid between views of time traditionally regarded as in conflict, such a new approach to becoming should also help to dissolve a crucial aspect of the century-old debate between the so-called A and B theories of time