Have you ever wondered whether one can travel back in time to kill one's grandfather before he can sire any offspring? If so, this seminar is for you. We will discuss the logic, the philosophy and the physics of time travel and of time machines. We will do this primarily for our intellectual entertainment, but also in order to gain an introduction to some basic notions in philosophy of science and metaphysics of science.

Course materials such as handouts will be made available as they will be used in class.

• Syllabus (mandatory reading)
• Lecture Notes: Spacetime

For each meeting, the assigned texts must be read in advance, apart from the first meeting for which you don't need to read anything. All texts will be made available through e-reserves:

• Robert A Heinlein, "By his bootstraps", in K. Amis and R. Conquest (eds.), Spectrum: A Science Fiction Anthology (London: Science Fiction Book Club, 1963).
• Robert A Heinlein, "All you zombies", in his The Best of Robert Heinlein (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1973).
• Paul Horwich, "Time travel", in his Asymmetries in Time (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987). Read only Section 1-5 (pp. 111-119).
• David Lewis, "The paradoxes of time travel", American Philosophical Quarterly 13 (1976): 145-152.
• Barry Dainton, "Time travel", in his Time and Space (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen`s University Press, 2001. Read only Sections 8.5 and 8.6 (pp. 120-125).
• Paul Horwich, "Backward causation", in his Asymmetries in Time (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987). Read only Section 1-4 (pp. 91-101).
• Paul Davies, "How to Build a Time Machine", Scientific American, September 2002, pp. 50-55.

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