Time is a paradoxical mystery. For example, the present moment is both infinitely short and infinitely long, at the same time! To resolve this mystery, Bernardo Kastrup argues that time and space are not objective scaffoldings of the external world, but rather an internal cognitive interface that we use to interact with a purely mental, atemporal reality. That is, we create time and space within ourselves to better organise the information we collect about the world.
Star Trek got us used to thinking of humanity’s final frontier as a faraway region of space. Yet, the true final frontier of human knowledge may be much closer to home: it may be time, not space. And we don’t need to go anywhere to find it, for we already inhabit it. Time is so close to us that we cavalierly take it for granted and don’t even notice the yawning mystery it represents.
SUGGESTED READING We know how time will end, but not how it started By Paul Davies
Although we’ve known since Einstein that time and space are facets of one underlying reality, as far as facets go time is a unique one. It has distinctive peculiarities that render it perhaps the most discombobulating empirical datum we’ve ever had to confront. For time is the very embodiment of devastating contradictions.
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