We have been told that time moves forward. But what if that was never true? From Nietzsche’s haunting thought experiment to the timeless equations of modern physics, I explore how the linear arrow of time may be less of a law of the universe, and more of a story we have told ourselves—one with very real consequences for how we live, spend, and destroy.
By Tassneem Selman, Staff Writer
Photo: The Persistence of Memory, painted by Salvador Dalí
The Dictatorship of the Clock
We have mistaken a metric of measurement for a law of reality.
Everywhere, implicitly or explicitly, the same command repeats itself: always move forward. Clocks slice existence into digestible units, calendars discipline our lives into deadlines, and entire economies are built on the assumption that time is a scarce resource, finite and always slipping through our fingers. This progression is what we call natural—inevitable, even. Yet, what if I posit that this inevitable progression is not so certain? What if our perception of time was actually fragile?
In the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche proposed a thought experiment so unsettling it still lingers: what if every moment of your life were destined to repeat identically, forever? No progression, only recurrence. His idea was not based on physics; however, it exposed that our belief in forward-moving time may not be as self-evident as we all like to believe. Nietzsche’s intuition finds unexpected support with contemporary philosophers. As Craig Callender notes, the tenseless or “block universe” theory of time in which past, present, and future all coexist as equally real is “probably preferred by most (but definitely not all) philosophers and scientists.”
Modern physics intensifies this doubt. Some interpretations of General Relativity reject the idea that time cleanly “flows.” In fact, in those interpretations, the past, present, and future coexist within a single spacetime structure—a “block” where what we perceive as change reflects our shifting perspective, not a process unfolding within reality itself. Even more radically, the Wheeler-DeWitt equation describes the universe at its most fundamental level without any reference to time whatsoever. And beyond physics, entire linguistic systems organize reality differently, where time is not something that passes, but something that surrounds, returns, and coexists.
What we like to call the linear flow of time begins to look less like a feature of the universe and more like a human framework we have imposed upon it. And if that framework is contingent, then so is everything built on top of it. What we accept as natural may, in fact, be a man-made construction. The perceived legitimacy of the “Linear Arrow” of time is the foundational myth of modern civilization, serving as a tool for economic expansion and social control; however, both the “Block Universe” of general relativity and the circular temporalities of Indigenous linguistics suggest that our insistence on a fleeting present is a localized illusion that delegitimizes more sustainable, holistic ways of existing.
The Physics of the Partition: Arrow v. Block
The authority and concept of linear time were not born from common culture alone. It’s reinforced and widely accepted by physics itself. In classical thermodynamics, time appears to move in one direction due to entropy: the gradual progression from order to disorder. This principle, formalized through the second law of thermodynamics and famously described by Arthur Eddington as “time’s arrow,” gives linearity the weight of scientific inevitability. Heat can’t flow backwards. A broken glass doesn’t reassemble itself. From this perspective, it seems like time must move forward because the universe itself does. Yet, even within Western philosophy, this “arrow” is a point of contention. In his 1951 essay “The Myth of Passage,” philosopher D.C. Williams argued that the block theory of time is the “logical account of events par excellence.” This suggests that the sensation of time flowing forward isn’t a feature of reality, but instead a confusion of human perception.
At the level of fundamental physics, the equations that govern reality are largely indifferent to direction. The laws of motion work the same regardless of whether time moves forward or backwards. Even more destabilizing is the framework of general relativity, where time is not a flowing river but a dimension woven together with space and gravity into a flexible net of sorts. In the so-called “block universe” interpretation, the past, present, and future are equally real: they coexist within spacetime rather than unfold sequentially. The sensation of movement through time, therefore, relies more on perception and is not necessarily a property of the universe itself. Scottish philosopher J.E. McTaggart pushed this even further. In The Unreality of Time (1908), he argued that the tensed theory of time (linear time) is logically incoherent, leading him to the conclusion that time, as we experience it, is in fact unreal.
This tension over time heightens during attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and gravity. A candidate equation for the entire universe, the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, contains no variable for time at all, leading to a fascinating implication: at the most fundamental level, the universe may not be something that becomes as time passes—it may simply exist as a fixed, complete structure.
The arrow, then, begins to look less like a law and more like a partition. Perhaps the arrow of time is a way to organize experience rather than being a feature of reality itself.
The Linguistic Border: Grammar as Law
If physics destabilizes the certainty of linear time, then everyday language and syntax reinforces it. In English and other Indo-European languages, time is directly built into grammar. Every sentence spoken exists within a temporal framework: past, present, or future. Verbs are conjugated to mark what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen, reinforcing the assumption that time is something that moves forward in discrete, irreversible stages. To speak is to situate oneself along a line.
The linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf argued that language, in addition to expressing thought, also organizes it. In his analysis of the Hopi, Indigenous Americans based primarily in northeastern Arizona, Whorf claimed that their language treated time as a continuous process. Instead of dividing lived experience into a past, present, or future, Hopi expressions emphasized cycles, duration, and manifestation. According to Whorf, the Hopi concept of time is something that persists and recurs.
Our grammar requires time to be segmented, quantified, and ordered in a set and immutable way, training its speakers to perceive reality in that same orderly fashion. The linear arrow of time is not just measured by clocks or justified by physics, but is rehearsed every time we speak. Linearity, then, becomes habitual and unquestioned. In this way, language becomes time’s legislator, reinforcing a version of reality that privileges linear progression as natural and inevitable.
The Socio-Economic Consequence: Debt and Stewardship
Linear time operates as a constructed framework with real, material consequences that shapes systems of value, obligation, and control. After all, isn’t time equal to money? Modern economic systems are built upon the simple assumption that time progresses forward, irreversibly, and that value must be extracted ahead of it. Nowhere is this more evident than in the logic of debt.
Debt is a claim on the future. It transforms time into an obligation, binding individuals and institutions into a forward trajectory that must be met, repaid, and exceeded. In particular, interest depends on the idea that the future’s value will be larger than the present value. Within this system, time becomes something that we owe.
This forward pressure reshapes behaviour. Resources are managed for future acceleration. Environments are depleted in the present to satisfy promises made about the future. Economic success is synonymous with expansion, while stagnation means failure. The linear arrow of time, once a scientific abstraction, becomes an economic imperative.
In stark contrast, systems that don’t operate on linear time often produce fundamentally different relationships to resources and responsibility. In many Indigenous frameworks, time is understood to be cyclical, where the past is not gone, and the future is not an abstract frontier, but a continuation of existing relationships. Stewardship becomes the organizing principle, not resource extraction. Renewal, balance, and return are the outcomes of decisions made holistically in accordance with a perception of time that surrounds, forever.
A linear model of time incentivises accumulation deferral, while a cyclical model prioritises sustainability and continuity. What we like to call “progress” is actually the economic expression of a particular temporal belief.
Conclusion: Reclaiming the Now
The “now” we experience—thin, vanishing, always collapsing into what has just been—may not be a property of time itself, but a condition imposed by how we understand it. Within a linear framework, the present can never hold; it exists only as a point of transition, or a thin veil, between what is gone forever and what has yet to arrive. Our time isn’t meant to be inhabited, only passed through continuously. And yet, this instability says less about time and more about us.
Even as physics gestures toward a potential reality in which moments coexist, and philosophy, from Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence to modern spacetime theory, undermines the certainty of forward progression, our lived experience remains bound to sequence. We remember, we anticipate, and we narrate ourselves along a line we cannot escape. The linear arrow persists not because it is proven without doubt, but because it is simply inescapable.
But while the present cannot be made stable or permanent, it can be viewed differently. Not as something constantly slipping through our fingers, but as part of a reality that is already complete. Time may still feel like it moves, but that feeling is no longer mistaken for truth.
