Why it’s time we abandoned the notion we live in the present, have a past and are heading for the future

Time is one of the most complex and paradoxical of subjects that one can discuss.

Some scientists say there’s no such thing as time, only change, clock time being a human construct or artifice, what we call ‘time’ being an illusion — just a method for measuring perpetual change, or the rate of change.

But aren’t time and change the same thing? Can there be one without the other? Do we need a concept of time as well as of change? Well, the word ‘time’ comes from the Old English tīma which has Proto-Germanic origins cognate with ‘tide’, strongly suggesting synonymity with change.

Ronald Green’s position, in his new book Time to Tell: A look at how we tick (Iff Books, UK £16.99 / US $27.95, November 2018), is that there is no time in a universal sense, only personal, subjective time, and that that’s dependent upon where you are — that, following Einstein, time is relative. Clocks do not tick time at different (subjective) rates; they do so only in relation to each other.