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  • noun philosophy The view that time resembles space and thus past and future events are in some sense coexistent.

Etymologies

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eternal +‎ -ism

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  • A philosophical approach to the ontological nature of time. It builds on the standard method of modeling time as a dimension in physics, to give time a similar ontology to that of space. This would mean that time is just another dimension, that future events are "already there", and that there is no objective flow of time. It is sometimes referred to as the "Block Time" or "Block Universe" theory due to its description of space-time as an unchanging four-dimensional "block", as opposed to the common-sense view of the world as a three-dimensional space modulated by the passage of time. (Wikipedia)

    May 22, 2008