Laws of Physics and Ideas of Time

Abstract

In this paper I shall try to discuss time in nonmetaphorical language, and explore the contribution that physics can make to such a discussion. I take metaphorical language to be language that is not forced upon us. As Professor Lawrence shows in his paper in this volume, the metaphors of time serve us like a fly’s many-faceted eye, bringing not the clarity of focussed sight but the largest possible area of awareness. Where there is no choice of language, where we know only one way to say something, then from some higher point of view it may still be a metaphor but we experience the situation differently, and I am inclined not to use the term.