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Letter: Two contrasting takes on the nature of time (1)

Published 13 May 2026

From Peter Cundall, Minneapolis, Minnesota, US

I can’t pretend to explain how we experience time, but I’m sure it isn’t what Tim Redman proposes. We don’t observe something happening and say, “Oh, the entropy is increasing, so time must be flowing in a positive direction.” True, the arrow of time can be related to a global increase in entropy, but we can hardly perceive entropy-changes directly through our senses (Letters, 2 May).

Yes, we register time flowing by the change between events, as Redman points out, but the direction of time becomes apparent as the ordered sequence of memories in our brains, rather than in some unbelievable direct human perception of entropy.

Issue no. 3595 published 16 May 2026

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