John Earman (born 1942) is an American philosopher of physics.
He is an emeritus professor in the History and Philosophy of Science department at the University of Pittsburgh.
Earman received his PhD at Princeton University in 1968[1] with a dissertation on temporal asymmetry (titled Some Aspects of Temporal Asymmetry) and it was directed by Carl Gustav Hempel and Paul Benacerraf.
[4] Earman has notably contributed to debate about the "hole argument".
The hole argument was invented for different purposes by Albert Einstein late in 1913 as part of his quest for the general theory of relativity (GTR).
This is a technical mathematical argument but can be paraphrased as follows: Define a function
to proper elements of the first, such that the two models are identical prior to the time
is a time function created by a foliation of spacetime, but differ after
These considerations show that, since substantialism allows the construction of holes, that the universe must, on that view, be indeterministic.