Abstract
The concept of time has been discussed since the earliest records of philosophy, when science had not yet become a separate subject. It is rooted in the subjective experience of the ‘passing’ present or moment of awareness, which appears to ‘flow’ through time and thereby to dynamically separate the past from the future. This has led to the formal representation of time by the real numbers, and to the picture of a present as a point that ‘moves’ in the direction defined by their sign.
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General Literature
Barbour, J.B. (1989): Absolute or Relative Motion? (Cambridge University Press) — [16]
Barbour, J.B. (1999): The End of Time (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) — [13,16,165,170]
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Mittelstaedt, P. (1976): Der Zeitbegriff in der Physik (BI Wissenschaftsverlag) — [16]
Reichenbach, H. (1956): The Direction of Time (University of California Press) — [16,18]
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© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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(2007). The Physical Concept of Time. In: The Physical Basis of the Direction of Time. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68001-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68001-7_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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