The human being has always struggled to bring a boundless world down to the limited human perception, to find answers to existential questions and to systematically obliterate the obscurities of life. The nature of time represents one of the great enigmas which unceasingly sparks heated debates.
An illusion? A reality? A figment of our imagination? A truth? The fourth dimension? Well, the aim of this article is to offer a very brief presentation of a few of the available answers given by Philosophy and Science.
Philosophy
Aristotle vs Plato
It would have been impossible to start without mentioning one of the famous dichotomies of great importance in the understanding of time. Two completely different perspectives later known under the names of “Reductionism” and “Substantivalism”.
Aristotle defined time simply as the relationship between events. For him, time is not independent of the events which occur in time. Therefore, time exists only as a sequence of events, for Aristotle didn’t believe in any sort of pre-existence of time. This is called “Reductionism”
Plato, on the other hand, had a very different perspective. He saw time as a homogeneous medium within which events follow one after the other. In other words, Plato talks about absolute time, time completely independent of the events happening. This theory is known under the name of Substantivalism.
The opposition between the two makes possible the opposition between absolute time ( Plato, Newton, as well) and relative time ( Aristotle)
Kant
In “The Critique of Pure Reason”, Kant described time as “pure intuition”. What was he referring to? Well, first we need to take a look at the distinction between two types of knowledge, as promoted by the philosopher, namely a priori knowledge and posteriori knowledge. Now, a priori knowledge alludes to knowledge independent of any kind of experience, of any kind of sensation. Trivially put, everything that you know without knowing the source; pure intuition, part of your inner world.
Posteriori knowledge is the one based on experience, on empiric intuition, part of the outer world.
Thus, time is not an object of experience, a property of the outer/objective world, but rather something that is part of your mind, a cognitive property which allows you to perceive the world, to structure experience, and to make sense of the events which happened.
Fatalism
We can’t discuss the nature of time without thinking about Fatalism. Fatalism is a philosophical doctrine which states that everything that is about to happen is unavoidable and that there is a series of propositions about the world that could correctly predict the future. But if the sequence of events is determined, what happens to the human being? Is there such a thing as free will? Do our decisions matter if everything is already cut out for us, determined and the outcome implacable?
Is the present all we have?
Another well-known opposition is the one between Presentism and Eternalism.
Eternalism suggests that the past, the present and the future are equally real. They exist and they are simultaneous, thus all entities of the past, present and future coexist, even though they don’t seem so apparently.
Presentism opposes this doctrine and states only the existence of the present. Therefore, only present entities exist and the past and the future are unreal to a certain extend.
Science
The fourth dimension?
The idea of time as being the fourth dimension appeared with Einstein and his theory of Relativity, but it remains a strongly debated topic.
Conclusion
There are many theories that are either scientific or philosophical, but everything that was written here is a very short presentation of only a few of them. Of course, all the ideas mentioned have multiple ramifications, but before we say goodbye, we would like to mention one last perspective on time:
“Time was invented by clock companies to sell more clocks”
KARL MARX
