Yet another time about time - Part I

TL;DR

This paper offers a personal reflection on the multifaceted concept of time across disciplines, exploring its nature, parameters, and phenomenological characteristics in philosophy and physics.

Contribution

It provides an interdisciplinary philosophical and scientific reflection on the complex nature and parameters of time, emphasizing its significance in various fields.

Findings

Time has diverse theoretical and phenomenological interpretations.

Parameters of time include duration, resolution, modes, and tenses.

Time remains a central, elusive concept across disciplines.

Abstract

This paper presents yet another personal reflection on one the most important concepts in both science and the humanities: time. This elusive notion has been not only bothering philosophers since Plato and Aristotle. It goes throughout human history embracing all analytical and creative (anthropocentric) disciplines. Time has been a central theme in physical and life sciences, philosophy, psychology, music, art and many more. This theme is known with a vast body of knowledge across different theories and categories. What has been explored concerns its nature (rational, irrational, arational), appearances/qualia, degrees, dimensions and scales of conceptualization (internal, external, fractal, discrete, continuous, mechanical, quantum, local, global, etc.). Of particular interest have been parameters of time such as duration ranges, resolutions, modes (present, now, past, future), varieties of tenses (e.g. present perfect, present progressive, etc.) and some intuitive, but also fancy phenomenological characteristics such as arrow, stream, texture, width, depth, density, even scent. Perhaps the most distinct characteristic of this fundamental concept is the absolute time constituting the flow of consciousness according to Husserl, the reflection of pure (human) nature without having the distinction between exo and endo. This essay is a personal reflection upon the meaning of time in modern physics and phenomenological philosophy.