Time Asymmetry, Time Reversal, and Irreversibility

Abstract

Of all the important ideas those o£ being and of time seem to have been muddled throughout their history. And of the two, the second seems always to have won the confusion derby. Much of the time muddles come from conceiving of time as something that flows, i. e. from identifying flux and time rather than construing time as the step of becoming. That reification of time, so typical of ordinary knowledge, comes down from archaic thought — and this not only in the Orient and in the Mediterranean. Thus the Mayas, who created a dynamical world view, believed that the gods carried both the sun and time on their backs, and they designated time, the sun and the day, with the same word, namely kinh (León-Portilla [8]). The conceptions of time as thing and as process are of course found in a number of locutions in the Indo-European languages, suggesting that time flows, flees and even fleeces us; that it can be lost and found, stolen and gained; that it is ever in a hurry to pass from past to future; that it can cause birth and death. And, at least in Spanish, time can also be killed and must even be given time (Hay que dar tiempo al tiempo).