I just finished reading JW Dunne's book An Experiment With Time, which is about the human cognition of time.
I was recommended the book this summer, when I had the privilege of speaking to Gaspar Noé (the director of Irreversible, among other stuff) at a film festival. Noé apparently found it really good, so naturally I had to check it out.
Basically, the theory of the book is that linear time is an illusion. Human consciousness can only experience time as a linear passage from point A to point B, because that's the flawed way our human brains are made to perceive reality. All moments in time are taking place at once, and thus there isn't really a "future" or "past", just in our heads. Dunne's point, basically, is that the universe is deterministic (no such thing as "free will" or "choice") and that every change in existence has already happened/is happening/will happen.
I agree with much of the book, although not all of it. I found some of Dunne's ideas, especially his thing for dreams and deja vus, a bit weird and unconvincing - the book has an odd experiment where he tells the readers to scribble down notes after waking up from a dream, and then make connections between the dream notes and real-life events that happen afterwards. I dunno what to make of this. There's no serious proof that dreams are not just another product of your brain, or that they're somehow disconnected from waking consciousness. Maybe it's got to do with Dunne writing the book in 1927, and neurology has come a long way since, maybe it's just his own beliefs. Still, even with this kooky semi-spiritual stuff, it's a pretty interesting book.
So, gentlemen and Meyna, anyone else read this book? Do you agree with this idea on time or not? What are your own pet theories?