THE GREATEST ILLUSION

E.+Schoenborn

E. Schoenborn

E. Schoenborn

Emily Schoenborn, Sports Writer

Time is everything. It is the silent stage everything is set on. It has direction, a flow like a river, a designated present, and a future. How could it even be an illusion? Time controls the flow of reality, or does reality control the perception of it? Well, How Prince of Cambridge University claims that there are three basic properties of time that all come from our mental states and not the physical world: there is a special present moment, there is flow or passage, and a direction. However, these claims do not come from the physical world and cannot be fully proven by any known element within space.

To understand time is to touch the fabric of reality, but how can you touch a non-physical element?  If you think of space and time in a four dimensional way as Einstein himself believed, then you have to believe that nothing ever really changes. This means that there is no true past, present, or future, only time itself. After all, the only reason you think the past has happened is because you have memories, so does the past exist or is it your perception of what has happened? Relativity and quantum mechanics form two sides to the argument with relativity casting it as a background and quantum claiming it to be a malleable subject. So the question still stands, is time an illusion of the mind?