Time It Was...

This June marks the 100th anniversary of Quantum Theory, as trailed by this week's New Scientist magazine, wherein we find a piece that posits that the 19th Century notion that space and time are separate and distinct from one another - refuted by the current post Einstein-ian four-dimensional world view - might well be in for a bit of a renaissance: that space is subservient to time which indeed precedes it: flying in the face of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity; which has been accepted as axiomatic across the last century. What to make of it? For most people, not much: the abstruse arguments of these rarefied disciplines really don't directly impact on most people's everyday lives; but for some of us, the ramifications of such debate impact deeply on our introspective lines of philosophical thought. In the absence of religious belief, the curious - a human trait, curiosity, much under-employed these days - seek to gain understanding from such debate. Is time as linear as most think it? I have never believed it to be so: we measure time arbitrarily [and 'fixedly']  by our own invented means, but are constantly surprised by the phenomena of 'slow days' and 'time flying' in equal measure [pun intended]. Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute in Canada posits that '"...time is not something that is frozen or needs structure...", but should be understood as a succession of present moments that occur one after another - with no physically meaningful, or knowable, past or future.' Very Zen, in my book; and a view I have held for most of my [temporal, thus far] life...