What is the nature of time? This new study engages with the philosophy of Henri Bergson on time
and proposes a new way of thinking about the effects of future events on the past. According to
Bergson time is an integral feature of real things just as much as their material or size.
When a flower grows it takes a period of real time for it to flourish which cannot be
quickened or slowed down nor can it be eliminated from the process of growth. Bergson named
this real time ¿duration¿ and argued that everything and everyone exist as duration and that
internal processes flow into one another with no clear boundaries that separate one phase of
duration from another. According to Bergson¿s philosophy the past does not disappear but
smoothly flows into the present forming an indivisible dynamic unity. But what if the causal
flow of temporal reality is not unidirectional? What if not only past events influence future
ones but future ones in their turn have retrospective effect on past occurrences? The author
of this book analyses these key questions asserts that the changeability of the past follows
from Bergson¿s theory of time and proposes a theory of embodied time that involves the
retrospective enrichment of reality.
