“Only the consciousness that passes on in one portion of this world experiences the detached piece which comes to meet it and passes behind it as history, that is, as a process that is going forward in time and takes place in space.”

—  Hermann Weyl

Source: Space—Time—Matter (1952), Ch. 3 "Relativity of Space and Time"<!-- p. 217 -->
Context: The scene of action of reality is not a three-dimensional Euclidean space but rather a four-dimensional world, in which space and time are linked together indissolubly. However deep the chasm may be that separates the intuitive nature of space from that of time in our experience, nothing of this qualitative difference enters into the objective world which physics endeavors to crystallize out of direct experience. It is a four-dimensional continuum, which is neither "time" nor "space". Only the consciousness that passes on in one portion of this world experiences the detached piece which comes to meet it and passes behind it as history, that is, as a process that is going forward in time and takes place in space.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 30, 2024. History

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Hermann Weyl 28
German mathematician 1885–1955

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