What is time? Rather than something that ‘flows,’ a philosopher suggests time is a psychological projection
by Adrian Bardon, Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University
“Time flies,” “time waits for no one,” “as time goes on”: The way we speak about time tends to strongly imply that the passage of time is some sort of real process that happens out there in the world. We inhabit the present moment and move through time, even as events come and go, fading into the past.
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#time
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But go ahead and try to actually verbalize just what is meant by the flow or passage of time. A flow of what? Rivers flow because water is in motion. What does it mean to say that time flows?
Events are more like happenings than things, yet we talk as though they have ever-changing locations in the future, present or past. But if some events are future, and moving toward you, and some past, moving away, then where are they? The future and past don’t seem to have any physical location.
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