Apr 15, 2026 05:34 PM
(This post was last modified: Apr 15, 2026 05:45 PM by C C.)
Shattering Einstein’s block universe rescues the flow of time
https://iai.tv/articles/shattering-einst..._auid=2020
INTRO: Einstein’s theory of relativity appears to drain time of its most familiar feature: its flow. If spacetime is a four-dimensional block, as many physicists argue, then there is no privileged present moment. But over the last two decades, a small group of philosophers has been assembling a radical alternative picture, which aims to save time’s flow. In this article, Italian philosopher and logician Samuele Iaquinto introduces Fragmentalism, a view on which spacetime is not a single, coherent whole, but rather a patchwork of incompatible perspectives, or fragments, which disagree about which events are past, present and future. These fragments are not mere appearances of an underlying timeless block. They are fundamental. Time, on this view, can flow, but it must do so in a plurality of ways, each relative to a perspective.
EXCERPTS: [...] the dynamic theory of time, according to which temporal passage—the continual change in what is present—is an objective, mind-independent feature of the universe. There are several ways of spelling out this idea. One is presentism, which holds that only present entities exist. On this view, the flow of time is a continual process in which present objects come into being and cease to exist. Neither past nor future entities exist.
[...] But how does the idea of an absolute present fare in the context of modern physics? Not very well, it would seem. ... here the problem for the dynamic theory of time comes into sharp focus. If different, equally legitimate perspectives disagree about which events are occurring now, how can there be a single, objective present? If physics itself refuses to single out a privileged temporal standpoint, how can the dynamic theorist continue to insist that reality is fundamentally organized around one?
[...] Fragmentalism—a novel and highly debated philosophical view—offers a genuinely different way of thinking about time, perspective, and physical reality. [...] Philosophers have traditionally assumed that if the present is absolute, it must be unique: there can be only one privileged temporal perspective, locating the present at a single region of reality. But what if this assumption is mistaken? What if the present is absolute without being univocal—absolute, yet multiply realized across distinct frames of reference?
[...] The key idea is that facts do not stand in isolation. Mutually compatible facts naturally cluster together. These clusters form the so-called fragments of reality. Each fragment can be understood as a temporal perspective: a maximally coherent way of carving up reality into present, past, and future. Each fragment delivers a coherent account of which events are present and which are not, even though different fragments disagree with one another. For example, no fragment includes both the fact that A and B are simultaneous and the fact that A and B are not. Reality taken as a whole, however, is not exhausted by any single fragment. Instead, it comprises a plurality of fragments whose contents are mutually incompatible.
[...] no fact can constitute reality unless it obtains relative to at least one fragment, and all fragments are internally coherent. This squares neatly with our experience. We do encounter transitions that would be incoherent if taken together—such as having been standing a few minutes ago and now being seated—but never simultaneously. No one ever experiences me as both sitting and standing at once. In other words, experience never escapes a specific perspective: the internally coherent fragment in which we in fact find ourselves...
[...] we argue that fragmentalism enjoys a crucial advantage over other dynamic theories. Unlike its rivals, fragmentalism does not merely take temporal passage as a primitive feature of the universe; it provides an explanation for it. By admitting only a single present, located at a single region of reality at once, classical dynamic theories can do little more than postulate an intrinsic dynamism in the nature of the present itself. After all, given their picture, what could they appeal to other than the only moment that is, in fact, present? [It's the only thing that exists.]
Fragmentalism departs from this picture by allowing the present to be multiply realized across reality. A few minutes ago, I was drinking a coffee. Now I am writing these words. In a few minutes, I will be walking outside. If fragmentalism is correct, then reality as a whole contains all the facts involved in this description as absolutely present, each within its own fragment. This multiplicity of presents is precisely what enables a distinctive account of the flow of time, in terms of temporal “pushes” and “pulls.”
Consider the transition from my drinking a coffee to my writing these words. There exists a fragment, which is in the past from my point of view, in which it is absolutely present that I am drinking a coffee and absolutely future that I am writing. Precisely because such a fragment exists, reality is pushed away from it, towards a fragment in which writing these words is absolutely present and drinking the coffee is absolutely past. Likewise, the existence of a fragment in which it is absolutely present that I am walking outside and absolutely past that I am writing—which is in the future from my point of view—exerts a pull towards that fragment. While research on this topic continues, fragmentalism opens the door to a radically different understanding of time: unfolding across a reality fragmented into multiple, equally absolute presents... (MORE - missing details)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Why are we so obsessed with a "flow of time" being mind-independent? Even if such were the case, we'd still only have access to the version falling out of the brain, as people with conditions like akinestopsia exemplify, who: "see motion like frames of a cinema reel to an inability to discriminate any motion".
If we can give up on the direct realism of the phenomenal meanings of color, taste, smell, and sound existing "out there" (the primary/secondary properties), then what's this die-hard passion in clinging to time, treated as if it were a migrating substance?
We wouldn't even know there was a difference between the state of the world at five o'clock and the state of the world at five-thirty without the brain storing a memory of the former and comparing it to the latter (i.e., cognition dependent). And the common temporal solipsism of projecting one's own milliseconds-measured conscious intervals of "change" upon an objective world that would otherwise (in the context of dynamic theory) be changing at the pace of subatomic events (femtoseconds to Planck time units) seems to be spectacular reflexive egotism.
https://iai.tv/articles/shattering-einst..._auid=2020
INTRO: Einstein’s theory of relativity appears to drain time of its most familiar feature: its flow. If spacetime is a four-dimensional block, as many physicists argue, then there is no privileged present moment. But over the last two decades, a small group of philosophers has been assembling a radical alternative picture, which aims to save time’s flow. In this article, Italian philosopher and logician Samuele Iaquinto introduces Fragmentalism, a view on which spacetime is not a single, coherent whole, but rather a patchwork of incompatible perspectives, or fragments, which disagree about which events are past, present and future. These fragments are not mere appearances of an underlying timeless block. They are fundamental. Time, on this view, can flow, but it must do so in a plurality of ways, each relative to a perspective.
EXCERPTS: [...] the dynamic theory of time, according to which temporal passage—the continual change in what is present—is an objective, mind-independent feature of the universe. There are several ways of spelling out this idea. One is presentism, which holds that only present entities exist. On this view, the flow of time is a continual process in which present objects come into being and cease to exist. Neither past nor future entities exist.
[...] But how does the idea of an absolute present fare in the context of modern physics? Not very well, it would seem. ... here the problem for the dynamic theory of time comes into sharp focus. If different, equally legitimate perspectives disagree about which events are occurring now, how can there be a single, objective present? If physics itself refuses to single out a privileged temporal standpoint, how can the dynamic theorist continue to insist that reality is fundamentally organized around one?
[...] Fragmentalism—a novel and highly debated philosophical view—offers a genuinely different way of thinking about time, perspective, and physical reality. [...] Philosophers have traditionally assumed that if the present is absolute, it must be unique: there can be only one privileged temporal perspective, locating the present at a single region of reality. But what if this assumption is mistaken? What if the present is absolute without being univocal—absolute, yet multiply realized across distinct frames of reference?
[...] The key idea is that facts do not stand in isolation. Mutually compatible facts naturally cluster together. These clusters form the so-called fragments of reality. Each fragment can be understood as a temporal perspective: a maximally coherent way of carving up reality into present, past, and future. Each fragment delivers a coherent account of which events are present and which are not, even though different fragments disagree with one another. For example, no fragment includes both the fact that A and B are simultaneous and the fact that A and B are not. Reality taken as a whole, however, is not exhausted by any single fragment. Instead, it comprises a plurality of fragments whose contents are mutually incompatible.
[...] no fact can constitute reality unless it obtains relative to at least one fragment, and all fragments are internally coherent. This squares neatly with our experience. We do encounter transitions that would be incoherent if taken together—such as having been standing a few minutes ago and now being seated—but never simultaneously. No one ever experiences me as both sitting and standing at once. In other words, experience never escapes a specific perspective: the internally coherent fragment in which we in fact find ourselves...
[...] we argue that fragmentalism enjoys a crucial advantage over other dynamic theories. Unlike its rivals, fragmentalism does not merely take temporal passage as a primitive feature of the universe; it provides an explanation for it. By admitting only a single present, located at a single region of reality at once, classical dynamic theories can do little more than postulate an intrinsic dynamism in the nature of the present itself. After all, given their picture, what could they appeal to other than the only moment that is, in fact, present? [It's the only thing that exists.]
Fragmentalism departs from this picture by allowing the present to be multiply realized across reality. A few minutes ago, I was drinking a coffee. Now I am writing these words. In a few minutes, I will be walking outside. If fragmentalism is correct, then reality as a whole contains all the facts involved in this description as absolutely present, each within its own fragment. This multiplicity of presents is precisely what enables a distinctive account of the flow of time, in terms of temporal “pushes” and “pulls.”
Consider the transition from my drinking a coffee to my writing these words. There exists a fragment, which is in the past from my point of view, in which it is absolutely present that I am drinking a coffee and absolutely future that I am writing. Precisely because such a fragment exists, reality is pushed away from it, towards a fragment in which writing these words is absolutely present and drinking the coffee is absolutely past. Likewise, the existence of a fragment in which it is absolutely present that I am walking outside and absolutely past that I am writing—which is in the future from my point of view—exerts a pull towards that fragment. While research on this topic continues, fragmentalism opens the door to a radically different understanding of time: unfolding across a reality fragmented into multiple, equally absolute presents... (MORE - missing details)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Why are we so obsessed with a "flow of time" being mind-independent? Even if such were the case, we'd still only have access to the version falling out of the brain, as people with conditions like akinestopsia exemplify, who: "see motion like frames of a cinema reel to an inability to discriminate any motion".
If we can give up on the direct realism of the phenomenal meanings of color, taste, smell, and sound existing "out there" (the primary/secondary properties), then what's this die-hard passion in clinging to time, treated as if it were a migrating substance?
We wouldn't even know there was a difference between the state of the world at five o'clock and the state of the world at five-thirty without the brain storing a memory of the former and comparing it to the latter (i.e., cognition dependent). And the common temporal solipsism of projecting one's own milliseconds-measured conscious intervals of "change" upon an objective world that would otherwise (in the context of dynamic theory) be changing at the pace of subatomic events (femtoseconds to Planck time units) seems to be spectacular reflexive egotism.
