How logic alone may prove that time doesn’t exist

 Matyas Moravec: Modern physics suggests time may be an illusion. Einstein’s theory of relativity, for example, suggests the universe is a static, four-dimensional block that contains all of space and time simultaneously – with no special “now”.

What’s the future to one observer, is the past to another. That means time doesn’t flow from past to future, as we experience it.

This clashes with how time is conceptualised in other areas of physics, such as quantum mechanics, however. So is time an illusion or not? One approach to find out would be to try to prove that time is unreal using logic alone.

In 1908, J.M.E. McTaggart, an English philosopher, published a paper arguing that we might be able to work out the unreality of time just using logical thinking alone.

Imagine that someone has given you a box of cards, each one representing an event. One card describes the year 2024, another one the death of Queen Victoria, and another the solar eclipse in 2026. The cards have been mixed up. You have been told to arrange these cards in a way that represents time. How would you go about doing it?...<<<Read More>>>...