A philosophical inquiry workshop on the nature of time

Scroll down for free workshop materials!

This workshop broaches an array of metaphysical questions about the nature time through a sequence of innovative stimuli, discussions and activities (as outlined in the Runsheet, below). Workshop segments include:

• Video clip: A human corpse discovered in South Tyrol is initially thought to be the body of a mountain climber who had recently died – but the body proved to be 5300 years old. From examining traces of pollen in his digestive tract, scientists were able to identify the season of Ötzi’s death, what he ate for his last three meals, and where he travelled in his final days.
• Visual stimulus: On every page of Richard McGuire’s graphic novel Here, we see a range of different moments and events at different points in time in the same geographical space. It is a chronicle of life, with past and future intruding kaleidoscopically on one another. The book’s creator says: “That simultaneousness actually feels close to how we think.”
• Card-sorting activity: Three conceptions of time:
  • Linear time
  • Cyclical time
  • Block Universe Theory

This workshop tackles questions including:

• Does the past continue to exist, or is it truly gone? Can discovery of ancient remains, or ancient objects, bridge the gap between the present and the past?
• Is it true that we’re rarely in the present, and that we’re usually preoccupied by memories, imaginings or plans for the future?
• How can we reconcile the subjective quality of time with its objective quality (according to which one second is formally measured by a certain number of oscillations of the caesium atom)?
• Why does time have a directional quality or asymmetry, whereas space does not?
• What is the present? Is it a moment? Does it have a duration – or is it an instantaneous point between the past and the future with no duration at all? Does the present even exist?
• Is the present is more real than the past and future?
• Is it true that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes”?
• If nothing were to change, would time itself cease to exist?
• Does the future already exist in some predetermined way, and we’re just waiting for it to unfold for us?

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The following workshop materials are shared under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) for all original material. (Materials from other sources are clearly credited in the runsheet.)

• Runsheet: Time (100 mins)
• Slideshow (PDF copy): Time (video clips not included – to view video clips, use hyperlinks indicated on the runsheet)
• Printable headings and cards for card-sorting activity (please print and guillotine)

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This work is available free of charge, so that those who can’t afford it can still access it, and so that nobody has to pay before discovering it’s not what they are really seeking. But if you find it valuable and you’d like to contribute whatever easily affordable amount you feel it is worth, please leave a donation via Paypal below.

In appreciation,
Michelle Sowey
Co-Founder and Managing Director
The Philosophy Club