Bible
• The reason why we see time as "linear" is because of Christianity. The idea of Genesis (at the start) and Judgement Day (at the end) gives us a narrative — a linear view of time.
Not only was Judgement Day a balm to all this suffering, but it also acted to structure the entire universe. Time was not some illusion, nor was it an infinite cycle. Rather, it was a deliberate narrative, written and overseen by God
Plato
"Does it exist?": Plato proposed that time does not exist eternally, that it is created, so that time itself has a beginning and no end.
"What it is": Plato considers time as a being, an independent being, that cannot be identified as material or immaterial, but that is the condition on which the universe and all things depend to continue their existence.
"How it is": Plato also said that time is invisible and can't be seen, that it moves in a steady, constant way, and that it will stay like this forever.
Newton It means that in Newton's view of space-time, time is absolute, independent of any particular reference system. Clocks stationary in different inertial systems give the same timing results for the same moving process.
The Maya and Inca mythologies heavily featured cyclical and never-ending stories. In Indian philosophy, the “wheel of time” (Kalachakra) sees the ages of the universe come around over and over again. The Greek Stoics (and, later, Friedrich Nietzsche) offered a version of “eternal recurrence” — where this world, and this reality, would come around again, exactly the same way.
Aristotle
Similar to our reading this week
“Time, as Aristotle suggested, is the measure of change; different variables can be chosen to measure that change, and none of these has all the characteristics of time as we experience it. But this does not alter the fact that the world is in a ceaseless process of change.”
deja Vu