Quote of the Week

July’s quotes are all from a name most people have heard of. Albert Einstein was the most prominent physicist of the twentieth century. his contributions to science dramatically changed how humans interact with our world. He was a deep thinker, engaging his brain cells not only matters of science, but on metaphysics as well.

"Time and space are not conditions in which we live, but modes by which we think.”

“Time does not exist – we invented it. Time is what the clock says. The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

We’re getting deeper into the weeds here. I put these two quotes together because they both deal with time. (I’m going to ignore space for the moment.)

I’ve come across the idea that time doesn’t exist in other reading, that humans created time as a way to track a series of moments. We perceive time as a linear progression––past, present, future; one moment leading to the next. Einstein suggests that our perception of time is all in our mind, that time is not a linear sequence, it is a continuous whole of interconnected dimensions where everything exists simultaneously.

What interests me about this is the concept of cause and effect. If events are not confined to past, present, and future, then our actions and decisions can influence far beyond what we currently understand. They can impact all the dimensions of time. I’m not sure where to go with that idea, but it fascinates me. Can we change the past–what we think of as the past?