Abstract
In this chapter I explain my aims in the book, and outline the argument. Time is not itself a process that can flow at a certain rate, since this would require a further time against which to measure this rate. I am defending the reality of becoming in the sense that events and processes come into being out of others in their local past.
Yet becoming exists; it is a fact.
—Bergson, Creative Evolution (1944, 343).
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Notes
- 1.
This aspect of Plato’s philosophy was of course due to his being influenced by Christianity , if we are to believe some of my time-disoriented former students!
- 2.
In an interview in New Scientist (18 November, 2006), Tegmark endorsed Hawking’s prediction: “In 50 years, you may be able to buy T-shirts on which are printed equations describing the unified laws of our universes”. This cult of equations is also well-illustrated by Neil Turok’s “master equation” (Turok 2012, 167–176, illustrated in the centrefold) , and his interpretation of Raphael’s famous painting as depicting Pythagoras “absorbed in writing equations in a big book” (52)—almost two millennia before Islamic scholars had invented the very idea of equations!
References
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Arthur, R.T.W. (2019). Introduction. In: The Reality of Time Flow. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15948-1_1
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