The Vindication of Lorentz

In Newton’s view absolute time, God’s time, is the seat of temporal becoming and objective tense. The A-theorist may concur with Newton on this point, seeing SR as nothing more than a theory about relative time, that is, our physical measures of time. But how, then, does A-theoretic time connect with physical time? Given our rejection of the relativity interpretation of SR, it follows from the reality of tense that a Lorentzian theory of relativity is correct after all. The A-theorist may plausibly contend that that reference frame whose associated time coincides with and thus constitutes the measure of metaphysical time is thereby privileged and that the familiar relativistic phenomena are the result of motion relative to this frame.