Temporal Paradigm

Temporal Paradigm is one's mental schema with regard to time and it's depth. If one does not believe time exists, that time is ultimately an illusion, or that time is actually an effect caused by casual information encoded between interactions, one should substitute in whatever they consider time to really be.

Previous Paradigms

Many people believe Earth to only be several thousand years old. Such a mindset could make grasping natural processes that take millions or billions of years to unfold much more difficult. The temporal paradigm of deep time, as espoused by James Hutton and popularized by Charles Lyell, completely reshaped our understanding of nature and the mechanics that underpin natural transformations.

It was this insight that the Earth is very old (hundreds of millions if not billions of years) that was enormously influential in Charles Darwin's discovery of evolution by natural selection. Such a theory only makes sense to explain the incredible diversity in nature if it has such vast time scales through which to operate.

In a way similar to how deep time was a revolution in the understanding of how natural processes and forces can create tremendous variety and complexity in nature, an eternal temporal paradigm opens doors far beyond what we can begin to comprehend.

There are many religious and philosophical interpretations of time and of eternity here that can contribute to one's own temporal paradigm.

Temporal Paradigm

Previous Paradigms

See Also