h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

AJ, this is all very well and quite interesting, but what makes you think that change moves you "forward", or indeed, actually "moves" you at all?

This relates to the old "does change equal time?" question. Funnily enough this was what Marcel Proust went on about, and although he was a) French and b) an anagram of "sprout", I was fairly interested in his works because I thought he anticipated chaos theory too. I put this in an essay actually but my tutor didn't entertain my radical view. Although it's well-documented that literature has often anticipated scientific discovery by many years.

Well firstly I should stress that this is a hypothesis that is there to be knocked. Western culture dictates we see our lives in terms of a time line, starting at point a and ending up at b. So if you apply the ideas of Einstein within their proper cultural background it is difficult not to see it as a forward motion. Now I would be the first to admit that progress is a outdate western notion, but on a personal level we develop throughout our lives. In Eastern Philosophy, time is a wheel but you still have an ultimate destination which you move towards.

Now on Literature and Science you are indeed right (though if Iain Banks is right we could be in trouble) but this can be extended to Literature and History - in fact some of the best thoughts on the philosophy of history can be found in War & Peace (if you have a spare couple of years to look for them.)