Contemporary physics has learned to describe the universe with unprecedented precision. Yet when it tries to say what time is, it stumbles again and again. Perhaps the problem lies not only in the models, but in the language through which we think them and in the implicit order by which we articulate them.
For decades, the history of the universe—and with it, the history of time—has been told as an ordered and relatively clean sequence. First a primitive, simple, almost transparent cosmos. Then one increasingly structured, chemically enriched, and “mature.” It is an effective, pedagogical narrative, useful for teaching. But that effectiveness comes at a cost: it flattens the process.
Contemporary physics relies on three major theoretical frameworks to describe the universe. General relativity explains the structure of space-time and gravity at large scales. Quantum mechanics describes the behavior of matter and energy at microscopic scales. Thermodynamics, for its part, introduces irreversibility, energy flow, and the growth of entropy.
In traditional teaching, these frameworks are often presented as separate domains that overlap without a clear conceptual order. Sometimes relativity appears as the “general framework” of the universe; at other times quantum mechanics is treated as the ultimate foundation; thermodynamics is frequently relegated to a secondary, almost technical theory associated with heat, engines, or statistics.
This implicit ordering is rarely made explicit, but it operates nonetheless. And it has consequences for how we think about time.
Within that narrative, relativity provides a geometric space-time in which everything occurs; quantum mechanics introduces local strangeness, probabilities, and discontinuities; thermodynamics appears as a macroscopic consequence, a kind of secondary effect of collective behavior. Time, in this scheme, becomes trapped between an almost eternal geometry and a probability that does not decide.
Yet this way of ordering the theories does not fully reflect what physics itself has gradually revealed.
When examined closely, quantum mechanics does not describe decided states, but open possibilities. Superpositions, probability amplitudes, coexisting futures. Conceptually, quantum theory does not say “this is,” but “this could be.” It is the domain of the “would-be.” Nothing is fixed yet.
Thermodynamics introduces something qualitatively different. Every interaction that leaves a trace implies an irreversible decision. The production of entropy is not merely a physical quantity; it is a form of memory. Where quantum mechanics keeps multiple trajectories open, thermodynamics selects one and discards the others. It turns possibility into history.
Relativity, for its part, neither opens possibilities nor makes decisions. It sustains. It describes the dynamic geometry of space-time in which what has already been decided persists, relates, and constrains what comes next. It is the framework of being-in-process: not the essence of the universe, but its dynamic equilibrium.
From this perspective, the order changes. Not by ontological hierarchy, but by functional role within the process.
First, openness: quantum mechanics as the field of possibilities.
Then, decision: thermodynamics as the operator of irreversibility.
Finally, support: relativity as the dynamic geometry of being-in-process.
This ordering does not seek to replace existing models or to resolve the unification of physics. It proposes something different: a conceptual rereading of process.
This is where language becomes decisive.
English, the dominant language of contemporary science, does not distinguish between being as identity and being as state. Everything collapses into “to be.” This absence does not prevent physics, but it pushes thought toward formulations that privilege identity, even when the object of study is becoming.
Spanish, by contrast, forces a distinction between ser and estar. And it contains a particularly revealing form: estar siendo. It does not fix, does not close, does not essentialize. It names a process in progress.
This distinction does not create a new physics. But it allows us to think more clearly about something physics already shows: that nothing in the universe “is” in a static sense. Everything is being. Matter, space, time, and even ourselves are dynamic equilibria: stable enough to persist, unstable enough to change.
From this perspective, time ceases to be a thing. It is neither a substance nor an abstract arrow. Time emerges from the process itself: from the opening of possibilities, from irreversible decisions, and from the support that holds them in relation.
Here a key idea emerges, one that is often lost when we look only at models: models work on average. From a distance. Just as the Moon, seen from Earth, appears smooth and perfect. Only when one gets closer do craters, fractures, and roughness appear.
The universe is not homogeneous at all scales. It never was. Expansion was not perfectly even, the formation of structures was not simultaneous, the “maturity” of the cosmos did not occur uniformly. There are delays, irregularities, unexpected persistences. Lumps.
This does not invalidate the models. It returns them to their proper place: tools for thinking processes, not closed narratives.
Perhaps the problem is not that physics fails to understand time. Perhaps the problem is that we keep trying to speak of it as if it were something that is, when what it actually does is to be-in-process.
And to think that, sometimes, one has to change the order.
And sometimes, one also has to change language.
Note
This article is based on a reflection originally developed by the author within the framework of philosophy of physics and the semiotics of science, and engages with contributions from quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and contemporary relativity.
—
