Time and Timelessness

Preface

Alice sighed wearily. ‘I think you might do something better with the time,’ she said, ‘than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers.’‘If you knew Time as well as I do,’ said the Hatter, ‘you wouldn’t talk about wasting it. It’s him.’‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Alice.‘Of course you don’t!’ the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. ‘I dare say you never even spoke to Time!’

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland¹

Time is an extremely obscure concept. It is also an indispensable element of our experience: it is the stage upon which our lives unfold and end; death is identified as ‘the end of time’. And although many philosophers, scientists and thinkers have attempted to define it, nobody has succeeded ...