The Flow of Time: Stitching the World Together

Of all the ways time is distinguished from space, perhaps the idea that time flows but space does not is among the most significant and pervasive. Can we explain why a subject embedded in a relativistic spacetime would think time flows? This chapter defends the idea that the “illusion” of time flowing is due to the conception of the self as enduring. To the extent possible, it tries to flesh out this theory with a few points from cognitive metaphor theory and developmental psychology. The resulting picture is an improvement upon the traditional memory-based conception of flow.