Read part 1: Joseph Diekemper sets out the hypothesis that the present is nothing but a border between the past and the future.

Philosophers and physicists often think about time in very different ways. In fact, among themselves so do physicists; it is not easy to find two who agree in all details or even in their overall concepts. In this note, I will mention some of the ways in which my views differ from those of Joseph Diekemper and also from mainstream physics.

Diekemper's starting point is that time, "if it exists at all, must be such that it passes". His reason for this claim is "the pervasiveness of our experience of the passage of time". Now many arguments in philosophy and science arise because key words are used without sufficiently precise definitions. I think we need to define “passage” and “time”, or rather their meaning in the combination "experience of the passage of time". In talking about experience, we need not, indeed, distinguish the senses: any and all will do. I will couch my arguments mainly in visual terms.