The Myth of the Passage of Time

Summary

The main purpose of this paper is to point out that the technique, familiar to physicists, of adopting various representations of physical phenomena for various purposes is convenient (and, I believe, necessary) in order to clarify some of the aspects of time that have been regarded as mysterious. Two representations are distinguished: the one that physics always uses and I have called atemporal, and the temporal one implicit in ordinary language and metaphor and most of the philosophical speculation with which I am familiar. The myth mentioned in the title is the idea that this representation somehow is time itself. The representation are explained by the use of pictures, which are to be distinguished from the representations they illustrate, and an attempt is made to clarify some old questions by their use.

Le temps s’en va, le temps s’en va, madame. Las: le temps, non, mais nous nous en allons.

Ronsard

Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external. Newton

The objective world simply is, it does not happen. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the life-line of my body, does a section of the world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continually changes in time. Weyl