Uploaded September 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Hilary Lawson, Tim Maudlin, Wahida Khandker and Ivette Fuentes discuss the mystery of time.
How can we solve the mystery of time?
With a free trial, you can watch the full debate NOW at iai.tv/video/times-great-mystery?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=description
From the starting gun to the final whistle, time is central to our lives. We shape our days with diaries and timetables, even if the trains do not always take note. Yet the nature of time itself is elusive and unknown. A new year begins, and we get older, but however closely we look we cannot observe time, only its passing. Time is equally puzzling to science. Central to its laws from Newton to Einstein, science is unable to describe time itself. Strangely, in the so-called "block universe" of contemporary physics, the direction of time disappears, yet time remains without our being able to say what it is.
Should we account for the mystery of time by seeing it as the structure of the universe and not itself an object in the universe? Is time, as Kant argued, the way we have to think if we are able to experience anything at all? Or is the mystery of time a glimpse into the essential unknown and unknowable character of the human condition?
#science #philosophy #time
Tim Maudlin is a celebrated philosopher of science, renowned for his work on the foundations of physics and metaphysics. He is also an author and professor at New York University.
Wahida Khandker is a philosopher and co-chair of the Society for European Philosophy. Her work is at the cutting-edge of the philosophy of process and the philosophy of biology.
Hilary Lawson is a philosopher and renowned critic of philosophical realism. His main work, Closure: A Story of Everything, has been described as ‘the first non-realist metaphysics’.
Ivette Fuentes is a physicist at the University of Southampton and Emmy Fellow at the University of Oxford. Her work and previous collaboration with Roger Penrose considers fundamental quantum mechanics, quantum optics and their interplay with general relativity.
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Hilary Lawson, Tim Maudlin, Wahida Khandker and Ivette Fuentes discuss the mystery of time.
How can we solve the mystery of time?
With a free trial, you can watch the full debate NOW at iai.tv/video/times-great-mystery?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=description
From the starting gun to the final whistle, time is central to our lives. We shape our days with diaries and timetables, even if the trains do not always take note. Yet the nature of time itself is elusive and unknown. A new year begins, and we get older, but however closely we look we cannot observe time, only its passing. Time is equally puzzling to science. Central to its laws from Newton to Einstein, science is unable to describe time itself. Strangely, in the so-called "block universe" of contemporary physics, the direction of time disappears, yet time remains without our being able to say what it is.
Should we account for the mystery of time by seeing it as the structure of the universe and not itself an object in the universe? Is time, as Kant argued, the way we have to think if we are able to experience anything at all? Or is the mystery of time a glimpse into the essential unknown and unknowable character of the human condition?
#science #philosophy #time
Tim Maudlin is a celebrated philosopher of science, renowned for his work on the foundations of physics and metaphysics. He is also an author and professor at New York University.
Wahida Khandker is a philosopher and co-chair of the Society for European Philosophy. Her work is at the cutting-edge of the philosophy of process and the philosophy of biology.
Hilary Lawson is a philosopher and renowned critic of philosophical realism. His main work, Closure: A Story of Everything, has been described as ‘the first non-realist metaphysics’.
Ivette Fuentes is a physicist at the University of Southampton and Emmy Fellow at the University of Oxford. Her work and previous collaboration with Roger Penrose considers fundamental quantum mechanics, quantum optics and their interplay with general relativity.
The Institute of Art and Ideas features videos and articles from cutting edge thinkers discussing the ideas that are shaping the world, from metaphysics to string theory, technology to democracy, aesthetics to genetics. Subscribe today! iai.tv/subscribe?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=https://iai.tv/video/times-great-mystery
For debates and talks: iai.tv
For articles: iai.tv/articles
For courses: iai.tv/iai-academy/courses
