Related papers: Time as an Illusion
Despite the obvious utility of the concept, it has often been argued that time does not exist. I take the opposite perspective: let's imagine that time does exist, and the universe is described by a quantum state obeying ordinary…
Confusion and disagreement around the notion of time is due to the fact that we often fail to recognize that we call 'time' a variety of distinct notions, only partially related to one another. Many apparently obvious properties of time are…
The paper puts forward a conceptual framework in which the phenomenon of time can be presented and discussed in a proper way. We argue that change is ontologically and epistemologically a more basic phenomenon than time. Time is an abstract…
Discussion of some aspects of the concept of time for a general audience: nature of time, A- and B-series, time in physics, the "now", measurement of time, definition of time units, time's arrow, relativity of time, relativity of…
The conceptual definition and understanding of the nature of time, both qualitatively and quantitatively is of the utmost difficulty and importance, and plays a fundamental role in physics. Physical systems seem to evolve in paths of…
This paper presents yet another personal reflection on one the most important concepts in both science and the humanities: time. This elusive notion has been not only bothering philosophers since Plato and Aristotle. It goes throughout…
Space and time are central concepts for understanding our World. They are important ingredients at the core of every scientific theory and subject of intense debate in philosophy. Albert Einstein's Special and General theories of Relativity…
Most of us think we know some basic facts about how time works. The facts we believe we know are based on a few intuitions about time, which are, in turn, based on our conscious waking experiences. As far as I can tell, these intuitions…
According to Aristotle "time is the number of change with respect to the before and after". That's certainly a vague concept, but at the same time it's both simple and satisfying from a philosophical point of view: things do not change…
Rather than an a priori arena in which events take place, space-time is a construction of our mind making possible a particular kind of ordering of events. As quantum entanglement is a property of states independent of classical distances,…
The Block Universe idea, representing spacetime as a fixed whole, suggests the flow of time is an illusion: the entire universe just is, with no special meaning attached to the present time. This view is however based on time-reversible…
In this paper I argue that the fundamental aspect of our notion of time is that it defines an order relation, be it a total order relation between configurations of the world or just a partial order relation between events. This position is…
This paper examines the various arguments that have been put forward suggesting either that time does not exist, or that it exists but its flow is not real. I argue that (i) time both exists and flows; (ii) an Evolving Block Universe…
Time is one of those issues about which many thinkers and scientists have tried to pronounce their finest thoughts, but the discourse about time has remained vague and often inconsistent. In this paper we put forward a conceptual framework…
The essay is devoted to the problem of time in the context of quantum cosmology, which acquires a philosophical level to date. At an example of the minisuperspace model, we show that this problem is illusive in the sense that it does not…
From the Physics point of view, time is now best described through General Relativity, as part of space-time which is a dynamical object encoding gravity. Time possesses also some intrinsic irreversibility due to thermodynamics, quantum…
The idea of a moving present or `now' seems to form part of our most basic beliefs about reality. Such a present, however, is not reflected in any of our theories of the physical world. I show in this article that presentism, the doctrine…
The notions of time in the theories of Newton and Einstein are reviewed so that certain of their assumptions are clarified. These assumptions will be seen as the causes of the incompatibility between the two different ways of understanding…
We briefly review two concepts of time - the usual time associated with "being" and more recent ideas, answering to the description of "becoming". The approximation involved in the former is examined. Finally we argue that it is…
This paper explores the status of some notions which are usually associated to time, like datations, chronology, durations, causality, cosmic time and time functions in the Einsteinian relativistic theories. It shows how, even if some of…