Time

6 Pages 1525 Words

What if one had the ability to “freeze” time? This ability may not exist directly, but many philosophers believe that time is, though not quite frozen, stationary. Other philosophers believe the opposite is true - that time is cyclical, revolving, moving. Time is the subject of an amazing philosophical debate of its nature, its role in the history of thought and action, its bearing on human emotions, and how it affects religious views.
A question that every philosopher of time faces is whether or not time flows or is stationary. The two possible answers, that time flows as a rate of change with respect to something else, or that people advance through a stationary time, are constantly in debate. If time actually does flow, it would have to flow with respect to something else. Flow as a rate of change is such a type of motion that it would cause a sort of hypertime to be created This hypertime would also have to flow, therefore having a hyper-hypertime, which would have a hyper-hyper-hypertime, and so on; the flow of time would include a flow of something else that would include the flow of something else, and so on. The idea that time flows is extremely confusing, if not impractical. The idea that time is stationary and that humans advance through it makes much more sense. Stationary time would mean that the passage of time is an illusion. This idea indicates that human consciousness advances up a timelike
direction - that because of human consciousness and perception, time has relevance in people’s lives where it would not if humans did not impose it upon themselves.
The idea that time is stationary and that humans pass through it is indeed the popular view. Philosophers who maintain this belief are of two types: process philosophers and philosophers of the manifold. Process philosophers maintain that the flow of time (or human advance through it) can be understood only by “nonrational intuition” (“time”). They beli...