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7:13

(In »Intensities and phenomena in a relationalist universe«)

The renaissance of time within physics opens up possibilities of, for example, shape dynamics – a theory that solves many of the old problems of quantum gravity – where time in fact plays the role of the decisive constant. By counting on what are called observable objectives, the shape dynamicists consider themselves able to calculate global time, liberated from the local restrictions of space. It should be added here that even if Einstein proves that time runs at different speeds at various places in the Universe – that time is relative in relation to local conditions – it continues, at least within practical physics rather than within theoretical mathematics, always in one and the same direction: from then via now towards the next now in the future. Einstein’s conception that time can go backwards as well as forwards quite simply does not fit with what we can observe in actual reality; this idea increasingly appears to be a Platonist fantasy without relevance outside mathematism’s tautological trap. Global time is in fact more than just a dimension on top of the three spatial dimensions in space–time; it is above all compatible with relationalism.