Why time is an illusion?
Sarah Scott
Updated on May 12, 2026
According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, time is an illusion: our naive perception of its flow doesn't correspond to physical reality. Indeed, as Rovelli argues in The Order of Time, much more is illusory, including Isaac Newton's picture of a universally ticking clock.
Why is time considered an illusion?
It is a "mistaken argument," he said, to use relativity to assert that time is an illusion, "because no observer has knowledge of a distant event, or the simultaneity of different events, until they are unambiguously in that observer's past.Why time is not an illusion?
They call the flow of time an illusion. But if the flow of time does not appear in their theory, that doesn't mean that the flow should be dismissed; it means that their theory is incomplete. The legitimate goal of physics is to account for reality, not to deny it.Did Einstein believe time is an illusion?
Albert Einstein once wrote: People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Time, in other words, he said, is an illusion.Why did Einstein say time is an illusion?
As For Einstein...As we saw from Einstein's quote, he believed that time is an illusion, that both the future and the past are unchangeable, and will play out exactly the way they were meant to.