Abstract

We propose a distinction between two different concepts of time that play a role in physics: geometric time and creative time. The former is the time of deterministic physics and merely parametrizes a given evolution. The latter is instead characterized by real change, i.e. novel information that gets created when a non-necessary event becomes determined in a fundamentally indeterministic physics. This allows us to give a naturalistic characterization of the present as the moment that separates the potential future from the determined past. We discuss how these two concepts find natural applications in classical and intuitionistic mathematics, respectively, and in classical and multivalued tensed logic, as well as how they relate to the well-known A- and B-theories in the philosophy of time.