In the physics of relativity theory, time is conceived as quantitative, being measured by the path taken by light through space, whether it be straight (special relativity) or curved (general relativity with gravitational curvature). Any physical event is then specified by four-dimensional space-time co-ordinates (x,y,z,ct) with the fourth spatialized time co-ordinate measuring the time taken for light (i.e. electromagnetic radiation) to travel from the event to an observer's signal receiver. Hence, for example, we on Earth are approximately 8 light-minutes from the Sun and 1 light-second from the Moon. This entails in particular that everything we perceive sensuously on Earth with our eyes is bathed in and made visible by light that is at least eight minutes old. It was emitted from fusion reactions in the Sun itself and made its way to Earth.
This is the way Einstein tailored his relativity theory to suit the needs of cosmological theory, whose empirical input consists of electromagnetic data received on Earth by any sort of receiver, including optical, radio or other kind of telescope. Cosmologists readily accept that they are, as they say, 'looking back in time' along the path of light taken by a cosmological event to the receiver. Hence registered (clock-) time is relative to the observer-receiver.
For our mind, however, there is no (linear) time delay in thinking of the Sun as there is in receiving physical light from the Sun. We only ever see the Sun by eyesight with a delay of eight minutes, whereas we can think of the Sun instantaneously at any time, even at night when the Sun is sensuously invisible, and without employing any apparatus. Similarly, anything physical we perceive visually on Earth by daylight is perceived only in the present moment with the aid of eight-minute-old light from the Sun illuminating what is perceived.
By contrast, my mind and your mind can think of and understand not only its sensuously perceptible environment, but also anything at all, both physical and non-physical, passed through to it from any of the temporal dimensions of past, present and future. The mind can move and switch freely from one imagined situation to another, skipping from one temporal dimension to another. Even the present, sensuously perceived situation is only understood by being interpreted by the mind with the help of the power of imagination. The openness of the three temporal dimensions for such mental skipping and interleaving of situations, both physically material and non-material, is entirely different from the measured, linear time not only of relativity physics, but of all physical science. Throughout modern science one is content with measuring time along the so-called time-line to pin-point events of all kinds, including non-physical ones such as the handing down of a verdict by a court.
As I said, relativistic physics is dependent upon light to see anything at all, to register the data of anything physically material. The science of physics in general investigates the movement of anything physical that can be moved, with physical beings themselves being characterized as having extension and being composed of matter, matter itself having measurable mass. This is the way it has been with physics since its inception with the ancient Greeks, although the mathematization of physics only sets in with a vengeance much later, in the 17th century, thus turning extension (μέγεθος _megethos_) and mass (ὄγκος _onkos_) into quantitative mathematical variables.
The detection of physical events of extended, massive things by light, however, has the quirk that, according to both relativity theory and quantum theory, the light signal upon which such detection depends is composed of a stream of massless photons. Even more quirky is that in principle, according to Einstein's famous equation of mass-energy equivalence, E=m.c^2, physical mass can be converted entirely into the pure motion of massless light. The speed of light c is only attainable when all mass dissolves into pure motion. Light is therefore on the cusp of dissolution into the non-material altogether.
Modern science, however, is highly sceptical about there being anything at all non-material, and this prejudice is reinforced by modern physics, which claims to be the foundational science for all natural and social science. It has an intense focus (in particle physics) on the investigation of matter down to its smallest building blocks in quantum entities which are conceived as the fundamental particles from which all entities at all are 'made'. Quantum entities (including the Higgs boson) are then supposed to 'explain' the 'creation' of the entire universe, along linear time, of course, linking cause and effect. The beginning of all is then located at the beginning of the time-line called the Big Bang (or some other imagined mathematized theoretical construct).
Is that which truly exists, the famous ὄντως ὄν (_ontos on_) of Plato and the Platonists, in the end nothing ideal, but thoroughly material? Is it only matter that truly exists? Only material causes count throughout modern science because they enable material manipulation and hence the mastery of all kinds of movement and change of at least materially based entities. This mastery starts with being able to predict movement, to precalculate it. Taken literally and etymologically, the ὄντος ὄν can be translated as the 'beingly being' or the 'essentially essencing', with both 'being' and 'essencing' being understood participially as a kind of ongoing, continuous movement. Such essencing has to be entirely incomprehensible and foreign to modern science.
Again, is it the case as it seems to be under the hegemony of modern science and its lead science, physics that it is only matter that truly exists? Every phenomenon modern science attempts to grasp is led back to putative material causes, even the movement of the mind itself (in neuroscience). But what is matter? Matter is already an interpretation, i.e. an accomplishment of the mind. In today's modern physics, matter is a certain interpretation within our own historical epoch that differs from its interpretation in another historical age. In this sense, matter itself is an idea! This idea is an historical, hermeneutic cast of what matter is conceived to be in our age. One could object that this is circular thinking, and indeed it is. What matter itself 'truly is' can only be thought within an hermeneutic circle that is inextricably linked with the interpretations other primitive phenomena, notably, movement and time itself.
I have already pointed out that the physical movement of material beings is a special kind of movement amenable to being conceived along linear time, which itself is a specific, historical interpretation of time initiated by the Greeks, and Aristotle in particular. Such physical movement has been at the heart of Western science since its beginnings. Today, physical, material beings can be modelled by mathematized, or at least quantified, physical theories with an eye to mastering, i.e. predicting, their movement and change.
As indicated above however, the movement of the non-physical mind is not subject to such physical restrictions. The mind moves freely through an entirely different kind of time that is no longer one-dimensional, but three-, or even four-dimensional (the fourth dimension allowing the passing-through of unified three-dimensional time to the psyche with its mental power of understanding; cf. On Human Temporality esp. Sections 1.2 and 2.2). The purest, freest kind of movement, that of the mind, is non-material*, although nothing prevents the mind from thinking of things material, without being affected by them. The mind can indeed follow physical movements along linear time as a special case, as it does in modern physics. But to interpret the movement of the mind itself, an alternative historical hermeneutic of time is required. Moreover, mental movement and physical movement do not exhaust the kinds of movement readily accessible and observable in familiar phenomena. Both social, sociating movement and economic movement, for instance, demand their own investigations of what these kinds of movement are.
* The embodied mind of us mortal humans does require the material brain as its organ, its tool, and mental movement can be impeded by dysfunctional bodily organs, but thinking itself is a non-material kind of movement.
Further reading: On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.
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