Does Time Really Exist?

 by David Anderson, Ph.D.

(an excerpt from the video documentary "Time Travel: Journey's into Time")

Does Time Really Exist?

Is there any evidence that it is really there... or is it much like the ether that was once thought to fill the universe? 

We certainly feel ourselves being pushed and dragged along by the river of time... Therefore, time must exist… right? 

Perhaps. But consider that time is something that we perceive through our senses, which are not perfect. 

Is it possible that how we think about time is related to how our brain processes information? 

One can divide any period of time into a past and future, from millennia to micro-seconds. The present is nothing more than a fleeting moment through which the future passes to become the past. 

If this is true... we are left with quite a perplexing problem... the past and future do not exist and the present has no duration... so how can time be measured? 

St. Augustine suggested that maybe time is measured in the mind. It is not an event itself that is measured, but instead, the impression that it leaves on the mind. 

The mind expects the future... which becomes the present... which the mind attends... and then becomes the past... which the mind remembers. 

The future and past do not exist, but in the mind there is an expectation of the future and a remembrance of the past. The present then would have no duration and still the mind's attention is always there. 

So it is not the future that is long. but a long expectation of the future. Likewise, it is not the past that was long... but a long remembrance of the past. 

So, is time an illusion of the human mind?... If it is... then maybe... it just might be possible to jump out of the river of time.... Run up or down along the river's banks.... And then re-enter into past or the future.

...Perhaps... just as easily as we move through the 3 dimensions of space.

We will see later that this type of time travel may be very difficult... but it is certainly possible within the laws of our mathematics and physics.

However, many people in this period of history viewed time as that real, ever-flowing river that was constant and unchangeable. 

This view, which we know today is inaccurate, was still the key to the birth of the great industrial age of machines all around the world... and at the heart of this view was Sir Isaac Newton.