"... time does not really flow .... it's apparent flow is a product of our 'surreptitiously putting into the river a witness of its course'. That is, the tendency to believe time flows is a result of forgetting to put ourselves and our connections to the world into the picture...Time may exist only by breaking the world into subsystems and looking at what ties them together. In this picture, physical time emerges by virtue of our thinking ourselves as separate from everything else."

(Of course, the author of this article - "Is Time An Illusion?" - in the current issue of Scientific American is named ... Craig Callender!)

Ditto for the concept of space. "I knew that wormhole was around here somewhere, I just forgot where it was!"

Can you link the article, or do I need a paper copy?

http://www.scientificame...?id=is-time-an-illusion

Unfortunately, this is only a portion of the article and they want you to pay for the rest of it. PM me if you're really interested in this.

Julian Barbour has written a great essay on the topic of time: http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/360

There is also a somewhat campy video summary of his ideas at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKsNraFxPwk

Barbour seems a unique character in that he doesn't hold an academic appointment anywhere, but he is the real deal, as theoretical physicists go, and his ideas trace back through Dirac's work in the 50's, the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, and Machian principles. His ideas are also as weird as any spice journeys I have ever had

The issue seems to be available over torrent!