TIME TRAVEL is the concept of moving between different moments in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space, either sending objects (or in some cases just information) backwards in time to a moment before the present, or sending objects forward from the present to the future without the need to experience the intervening period (at least not at the normal rate).
Some interpretations of time travel also suggest that an attempt to travel backwards in time might take one to a parallel universe whose history would begin to diverge from the traveler’s original history after the moment the traveler arrived in the past. (Wikipedia)
The history of philosophy is riddled with a wide range of schools of thought regarding time. There are those who believe time is a string of instants (in this belief system it is a series of moments in the present) and those who believe time is a constant progression without any actual moments ( i.e., the present doesn't exist at all, as a river in which you never bath twice.) Regardless of the position one takes, the common thread is that time is unavoidable and marks both a race to the end and the stories that populate it. When my father died I understood time is non-linear. It strikes me how, through memories and experiences, my father now exists simultaneously at the age of 58 or 26, 7 or 19. He seems to exist within any range from birth to the present, a chronology that continues after he is gone. In his autobiography, the mysterious folk icon Johnny Cash states that though his brother died at 12 (Johnny was 10), he dreamed of him throughout his life. And in each one of those dreams, relative to Johnny’s age, the late Jack Cash was always two years older than his brother. Death allows the dead to exist in all times at once, at least through the memory of those living.
Time travel has been a long-standing theme in literature and storytelling. Our history is filled with curiosity on this topic and authors have often used it as a metaphor to explore physiological or psychological impulses such as regret or anticipation.
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