Talk:Eternalism (philosophy of time)

Regarding this statement:

For example, relativity has shown that the concept of simultaneity is not universal, with different frames of reference having different perceptions of which events are in the future and which are in the past; there is no way to definitively identify a particlar point in univeral time as "the present".

As a layman, I'm having trouble getting this, and the entry on relativity isn't helping any. I can see how frame of reference can influence how I perceive the passage of time and how far in the past something happened, but I don't see how it affects my perception of which events are in the past. The article goes on to mention that people aren't able to observe future events, so there seems to be a contradiction here.

I've read nothing on the topic besides this article, and some introductions to relativity many years ago, and watching Cosmos.. so.. grain of salt :) --mjb

Simultenaity makes my head hurt too, when I pay attention to the details. :) Basically, it is my understanding that if there are two events "A" and "B" that occur some distance apart, there are some frames of reference in which an observer will see that event A happened before event B and some frames of reference in which an observer will see that event B happened before event A. The observer isn't observing anything in his own future, just observing two distant events that happened in his past and determining which one happened first. Since no frame of reference is more important than any other frame of reference, this isn't just an optical illusion.

I can't say why this works the way it does, offhand, I'd have to read up on it some more before I'd feel confident about writing anything over at special relativity. It does need to be explained more clearly, though, so if nobody with more physics knowlege than I gets to it before me I'll see if I can write something that I can understand. :) Bryan