Topic > The Flow of Time - 1071

The mystery that is time comes from the common sense idea that the present moment, known as “now” is not fixed, but rather is always moving forward into the “future” . This concept is known as the flow of time. As humans, we describe the present as a single moment that allows time to seem to “flow,” essentially sweeping moments from the past into the future. However, at the same time, humans also want time to be a sequence of moments, where all movement and change consists of differences between versions of an entity at different times. This means that a particular moment cannot become present or cease to be present. The present is not objectively a single moment. Humans think we need these two definitions of time. When we describe events we say things like “when” which implies that time is not flowing, but then when we say “why” it implies that time is flowing. Time can be thought of as a line, “so that moments of the future sweep past the present moment to become moments past. But if time is a line, then what point on the line is the present? Is there a gift? To say that each point on the line can be thought of as a distinct moment is to say that we can think of our life as a bunch of stacked snapshots of each of those moments. If we were a triangle on the line, by constantly moving some of those snapshots we would see the arrow move and point in different directions because, as we all know, life doesn't always move in the same direction. If our arrow were pointing in one direction at the moment, in an instant the snapshot of that arrow would be in the past. But the indication that time is a constantly moving line indicates that time flows, and time does not. If time doesn't flow, we need to change... in the center of the paper... there are events closer to you in time and events further away. But in the block universe theory, time doesn't flow in front of you. It does not and cannot do so because there is no physical thing that can be defined as time. George Ellis, a cosmologist at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, believes that the block universe theory contradicts reality. Ellis says that "It doesn't represent the passage of time, and that's one of the fundamental characteristics of everyday life. So it's a bad model of reality." Furthermore, he stated that by accepting the theory of block universes, the attempt to understand anything about anything becomes meaningless. According to Ellis, the entire scientific process depends on the advancement of time. We form, test, and accept or reject a hypothesis in a process that moves over time. In human life we ​​need time to move forward as a society.