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| J.M.E. McTaggart, who in 1908 coined the terms "A and B-theories of time." |
Human
beings seem to have an innate tendency to think that what we do not like or cannot
explain does not exist. Thus in Hinduism and Buddhism, reality itself is
considered an illusion (maya),
something that must be discarded to achieve liberation. According to this
philosophy, since it is an inseparable part of physical reality, time should
also be considered as an illusion. In the Hindu Brahman and the Buddhist
Nirvana, time does not exist.
In Western philosophy
and science, the idea of time has traditionally been quite different. Until
the eighteenth century, nobody put in question the reality of reality. As
an inseparable part of reality, time was absolute. In Newtonian
mechanics, time plays that role. According to his theory of gravitation, the
course of time is independent of the motion of the observer. Hence one can
deduce the principle of relativity of classical
mechanics: when several bodies are subjected to uniform rectilinear
motion (at constant speed) it is impossible to distinguish which one is at rest
and which is moving.
