⏳ Time

A Foundational Page of Similarity Theory
By Simon Raphael

This concept is defined briefly and more simply in the Foundational Definitions of Similarity Theory.

Similarity Theory proposes that consciousness, time and dimension describe interconnected aspects of reality's relational architecture. This page presents the theory's current account of time: not as an independently existing substance or universal current, but as the relational measure of change among configurations of consciousness.

See the Introduction to Similarity Theory for the wider structure of the theory.

🌀 Philosophical Reflection

🔹 What Time Is — Foundational Definition

In Similarity Theory, time is not an independent substance existing somewhere in the universe. There is no separate material called time, no universal river carrying reality forward, and no empty temporal container into which events are placed.

What fundamentally exists is consciousness. Consciousness exists in relation and undergoes change. Whenever a relational configuration changes, a new Frame of Time is generated.

Time is the relational measure through which difference and change between configurations can be compared.

Seconds, minutes, hours and years are units used to quantify temporal intervals. They are not time itself, just as metres are units for measuring length rather than physical objects called “length”.

This distinction is fundamental to Similarity Theory:

Consciousness exists. Change occurs. Change generates Frames of Time. Time measures and relates the change between configurations.

Time therefore does not cause change.

Change makes time measurable.

🔹 Time and Consciousness

Human beings usually experience time as a sequence: something happened, something is happening, and something may happen next. Our embodied existence strongly shapes this experience. Memory connects us with earlier states, biological processes change irreversibly, our bodies age, and our actions appear to lead from one situation into another.

Similarity Theory does not deny this ordinary experience of time. It proposes that this is one particular way in which consciousness relates to change.

Consciousness itself is more fundamental than human temporal experience. A consciousness may relate to Frames of Time that another consciousness describes as past-relative, present-relative or future-relative. These descriptions depend upon the relational position from which the Frames are encountered.

This means that past, present and future are relational labels rather than three absolutely separated regions of existence.

The present is therefore not a cosmic line sweeping uniformly through reality. It is the current relational position of a consciousness within its own changing configuration.

🔹 Time Does Not Require Progression

An earlier formulation of Similarity Theory described time in terms of progression, meaning meaningful development such as increasing awareness, greater complexity or expanding relational capacity.

The current model makes a more fundamental distinction.

Time does not require advancement.

A consciousness may learn or forget. It may grow or deteriorate. It may become more organised or less organised. It may move, think, remember, perceive, interact, sleep, awaken or undergo an extremely subtle physical or relational alteration.

Each is change.

And every change generates a new Frame of Time.

There is therefore no minimum degree of importance, development or progress required for temporal change within Similarity Theory.

A transformation need not be beneficial to be real.

A change need not be noticed to have occurred.

A movement need not lead anywhere significant to generate another Frame.

Development is one possible form of change. It is not the definition of time.

🔹 Emptiness and the Beginning of Time

Similarity Theory begins its account of our universe with emptiness, but emptiness does not mean absolute nothingness.

Emptiness is itself a Frame of Time: a consciousness-configuration existing before the articulated structures familiar to our universe emerged.

This has an important consequence for the theory of time.

Self-awareness did not create the first Frame of Time.

Emptiness already existed as a Frame. If emptiness changed before becoming self-aware, those changes also generated Frames of Time.

Self-recognition was therefore one important transformation within an already existing conscious reality.

The conceptual structure is:

Frame of Time (emptiness) → change → further Frames of Time → increasing relation and differentiation → self-recognition → a new reflexive Frame of Time

The precise sequence of primordial Frames cannot be known. Similarity Theory does not claim access to a literal historical chronology of the earliest states of reality.

Its claim is structural: if a consciousness-configuration changes, another Frame of Time is generated.

Time therefore does not begin with clocks.

It does not begin with matter.

And it does not begin with self-awareness.

Where there is change between relational configurations, temporal relation becomes possible.

📽️ Frames of Time

Reality in Similarity Theory is structured through Frames of Time.

A Frame of Time is not merely a photograph of reality or a container holding consciousness.

A Frame of Time is consciousness itself in a particular relational configuration.

Whenever consciousness changes, a new Frame is generated. The previous Frame does not disappear merely because another Frame has arisen. It persists as part of reality's architecture.

A film provides a useful but limited analogy. Individual film frames help us imagine distinguishable configurations whose differences can produce apparent continuity when related in sequence.

But the analogy breaks down at an important point.

A conventional film reel is already complete before it is projected.

Reality, according to Similarity Theory, is not.

Not every possible Frame already exists somewhere on a completed cosmic reel. New Frames can genuinely be generated through change.

Reality therefore contains persistent structure without being exhaustively pre-written.

🔦 Persistence, Dormancy and Reanimation

Once generated, a Frame of Time remains real.

It may not presently participate in an active relationship with another consciousness, but this does not mean that it has ceased to exist.

It may be described as dormant in relation.

Dormancy should not be confused with non-existence.

An existing Frame may later enter into relation again through encounter, recognition or interaction. When this occurs, the existing Frame can become reanimated.

Reanimation does not erase the original Frame or replace its history.

Nor does it mean that reality simply repeats itself.

The renewed encounter is itself a change. Because every change generates a new Frame of Time, reanimation simultaneously creates a new relational continuation.

The pattern can therefore be expressed as:

existing Frame of Time → renewed relation → reanimation of the existing Frame + generation of a new Frame of Time

The existing Frame persists.

The relationship with it is new.

And from that new relationship, another path can emerge.

📖 Analogy: Returning to an Old Book

Imagine reading a book when you are twenty years old and then returning to the same book forty years later.

The printed book may be unchanged.

Yet the second encounter is not identical to the first.

The reader now carries decades of additional relationships, experiences, memories and transformations. The book enters into relation with a different configuration of that same continuing person.

The earlier encounter has not been erased.

The book has not become a different historical book.

Yet the renewed relationship creates something that did not previously exist.

This illustrates an important principle of Similarity Theory.

Returning does not require repetition.

An existing structure can be encountered again while the encounter itself generates novelty.

🪞 Frames, History and the Self

Every change in a consciousness generates another relational configuration.

For a human being, this means that thinking, perceiving, remembering, moving, learning, forgetting and interacting all participate in an immense history of Frames of Time.

These Frames are not merely memories stored in the present brain.

Within Similarity Theory, previously generated Frames remain ontologically real.

This does not mean that every Frame contains a completely independent duplicate person in the conventional science-fiction sense. Rather, each Frame retains the relational configuration of consciousness associated with that change.

Identity persists through these changes because identity is fundamentally relational.

The infant, child, adult and elderly person need not contain identical matter, identical memories or identical abilities in order to belong to one continuing self.

Their identity lies in the relational history connecting one configuration with another.

Time therefore contributes to our description of this history, but time itself is not the history.

The history is preserved through the relationships among persistent Frames.

Time is the measure by which their changes and differences can be related.

🌿 Frames Within Frames

Frames of Time occur at many scales.

A human being generates Frames through bodily movement, thought, perception and internal change. At the same moment, changes occur within organs, cells, molecules and smaller systems.

The person is also participating within larger relational structures: a room, a family, a community, an ecosystem, the Earth, the Solar System and still larger configurations.

Each scale can undergo change.

There is therefore no single privileged clock governing consciousness at every level.

These Frames are nested, overlapping and relational.

When a person moves a hand, the configuration of the hand changes. The person changes. The immediate environment may change. Larger systems may also be affected, however slightly.

Reality is not a single row of universal snapshots.

It is an immense relational architecture of changing consciousnesses operating at different scales.

🌀 Possibility Is Not Existence

Similarity Theory distinguishes sharply between what is possible and what already exists.

A possible Frame does not become real simply because it can be imagined or because physical conditions permit it.

Some Frames exist because they have already been generated.

Other relational configurations remain possible without yet existing.

This means reality is not an exhaustive catalogue containing every possible event in advance.

Consciousness does not merely select between permanently pre-existing options.

It can generate genuinely new relational configurations through change.

The distinction can be expressed simply:

possibility ≠ actuality

A path may be possible without yet being real.

When consciousness generates that path through change, a new Frame enters reality's architecture.

🌌 Past, Present and Future

Past, present and future should not be understood in Similarity Theory as globally fixed compartments of the universe.

They are descriptions of relationship.

A Frame may be past-relative to one consciousness because that consciousness has already developed beyond it. Another relational path may approach a corresponding configuration from a different direction.

Likewise, a Frame that is future-relative to one present position may already exist through another relational history or traversal.

But the existence of such a Frame does not force consciousness to reproduce the same path towards it.

Existing Frames provide real structure.

They do not impose one compulsory universal sequence.

The same principle applies in the other temporal direction. A previously generated Frame remains real, but a consciousness entering into relation with that Frame need not reproduce the continuation that followed during another traversal.

A different change can generate a different continuation.

For this reason, neither the future nor the past is absolutely fixed within Similarity Theory.

A generated history remains real.

But reality remains generative.

🌳 Analogy: The Tree and Its Branches

Imagine a tree.

Its existing branches are real. Their presence influences where later growth can occur.

A new branch does not emerge from nowhere. It develops in relation to existing structure.

Yet the existence of the earlier branches does not imply that every future twig, leaf and branch was already physically present inside the tree.

Nor does an existing branch dictate that only one continuation is possible.

Similarity Theory treats reality in a comparable way.

Existing Frames provide structure and history.

Change allows divergence.

New relations generate new continuations.

The tree retains what has grown while remaining capable of further growth.

🌌 Predetermination, Constraint and Freedom

Reality is neither completely unconstrained nor locked into one predetermined sequence.

Existing structures matter.

Physical laws matter.

Embodied limitations matter.

Relational history matters.

Previous Frames influence what can occur next.

But constraint is not identical to predetermination.

Consciousness remains capable of generating different relational continuations within the structures with which it is related.

Freedom within Similarity Theory therefore does not mean action without conditions.

It means that existing conditions do not necessarily exhaust the possible ways in which consciousness can respond, relate and change.

Reality possesses structure without requiring a single compulsory future.

And because Frames may be encountered in relationships that humans describe as past-relative as well as future-relative, this generative freedom should not be understood merely as uncertainty about an unwritten future.

It is a more fundamental feature of relational reality.

🛤️ Why Similarity Theory Is Not a Block Universe

Some philosophical interpretations of relativity picture spacetime as a four-dimensional structure in which past, present and future events are all equally located within one complete geometry.

Similarity Theory should not simply be identified with that picture.

ST allows already-generated Frames to persist, including Frames that may be future-relative from another consciousness's present position.

But persistence does not imply exhaustive completion.

Existing Frames are real without requiring every possible Frame to exist already.

Consciousness can still generate new configurations.

A future-relative Frame can exist without being the only possible future.

A past-relative Frame can persist without making every later continuation from it immutable.

Similarity Theory therefore combines persistence with generativity.

Reality has architecture.

But the architecture remains capable of extension.

🌊 Time, Direction and the Human Experience

Human time usually appears strongly directional.

We remember much of what we call the past but not what we call the future. Bodies develop and age. Broken objects do not ordinarily reconstruct themselves. Heat disperses. Biological processes proceed through largely irreversible stages.

These features contribute to what humans experience as the arrow of time.

Similarity Theory accepts the reality of these physical patterns within embodied existence but distinguishes them from time itself.

Direction is a property of particular relational processes.

Time is the framework by which their change is compared.

This means a consciousness could, in principle within ST, relate to Frames in an order different from ordinary human biological experience without causing time itself to reverse like a river changing direction.

What changes is the relationship among Frames.

🧭 Time, Models and Perspective

Our understanding of time depends partly upon the conceptual tools used to describe it.

Physics models temporal relationships mathematically with extraordinary precision. These models describe how clocks behave under motion and gravity, how events are causally ordered, and how physical systems change.

Similarity Theory does not reject those descriptions.

It asks a different question.

What is time ontologically if clocks themselves are merely changing physical systems?

ST proposes that clocks do not detect a substance flowing through them. They compare regular changes against other changes.

An atomic clock counts transitions.

A pendulum counts oscillations.

A calendar relates astronomical cycles.

A biological organism relates change through growth, metabolism, memory and ageing.

The instruments differ, but the underlying act is relational comparison.

This distinction allows three ideas to remain separate:

time as physically modelled,

time as consciously experienced, and time as the relational measurement of change itself.

🛰️ A Physical Example: Time Dilation

Modern physics demonstrates that elapsed time is not universally identical for all observers and trajectories.

In special relativity, relative motion produces kinematic time dilation: observers in relative inertial motion can assign different elapsed times to corresponding processes.

In general relativity, gravity affects elapsed proper time: clocks situated at different gravitational potentials can accumulate different amounts of time.

These are measurable physical effects.

Similarity Theory does not claim that relativity proves its metaphysics.

Rather, relativity provides an important reminder that temporal measurement is relational and depends upon physical conditions rather than belonging to one universal cosmic clock.

Physics describes these effects mathematically within spacetime.

Similarity Theory asks how such measured change belongs within a broader ontology of consciousness and relational structure.

📌 Time as Structured Change

Time is often spoken about as though it flows.

Within Similarity Theory, what actually changes are consciousness-configurations.

Hours, days and years are useful human measurement conventions. They allow different processes to be compared against regular standards.

But a tree does not require knowledge of hours in order to change from seed to sapling.

A cell does not consult a clock before dividing.

An atom does not need to conceptualise duration before participating in a physical process.

Change precedes measurement in this sense.

Wherever change occurs, temporal relationship can be described.

This is why Similarity Theory understands time as structured relational change, not as a substance flowing behind events.

🔄 Repetition Is Never Simply Nothing

An earlier version of the Time page suggested that revisiting the same state does not advance consciousness.

The current framework requires a more precise account.

If consciousness enters into relation with an existing Frame, the Frame can become reanimated.

But the renewed relationship itself is new.

The consciousness approaching the Frame carries its own relational history. The encounter occurs from another configuration. Even where the older Frame remains unchanged in its original identity, the renewed relation generates another Frame of Time.

What appears to be repetition can therefore contain novelty at the relational level.

This is an important consequence of ST:

return and creation are not opposites.

Consciousness can return to what already exists and, through that very encounter, generate something that did not exist before.

🔥 Time as a Doorway

Time is often imagined as an invisible current carrying existence forward.

Similarity Theory reverses that image.

There is no need to posit a separate substance called time.

What exists is consciousness in changing relationships.

Frames preserve configurations.

Change generates further Frames.

Time provides a way of relating their differences.

In this sense, time becomes a conceptual doorway: it allows consciousness to describe transformation without mistaking the measurement of transformation for a separate thing that causes it.

Time does not push the universe onward.

The universe changes.

And because it changes, temporal relationships arise.

✨ Speculative Extension: Time Beyond Embodied Human Consciousness

The foundational account above does not require disembodied consciousness, reincarnation or survival beyond biological death.

Similarity Theory nevertheless permits those possibilities within its more speculative layer.

If individual consciousness can persist beyond its present biological organisation, then its relationship with Frames of Time need not be identical to the relationship available through a human nervous system.

Human memory, perception and temporal ordering may partly reflect the limitations and functions of embodiment.

A consciousness no longer operating through the same biological form might therefore relate to its relational history differently.

Within the speculative ST model, pure consciousness may possess access to a broader history than embodied human memory permits and may relate to Frames associated with previous embodiments or other relational states.

These ideas are metaphysical extensions of Similarity Theory.

They are not established conclusions of neuroscience or physics.

🔬 Scientific and Philosophical Context

Similarity Theory is a metaphysical framework. The scientific and philosophical ideas below do not establish that Frames of Time exist, that consciousness is ontologically fundamental, or that past- and future-relative Frames can be reanimated.

They are included because they provide useful comparisons with particular aspects of the problem of time.

Relativity — Einstein

Einstein's theories of relativity transformed the scientific treatment of time.

Special relativity shows that measurements of elapsed time depend upon relative motion and the spacetime path between events. General relativity shows that gravity also affects elapsed proper time.

These results reject the classical idea of one universal Newtonian clock whose rate applies identically everywhere.

Similarity Theory shares the rejection of an independently flowing universal time but proposes a different metaphysical explanation centred on consciousness, change and relational Frames.

Relativity does not establish that explanation.

Many-Worlds — Everett

The Everett or Many-Worlds family of interpretations of quantum mechanics provides one scientific-philosophical context in which branching structures are discussed.

Similarity Theory also permits branching.

The resemblance should not be mistaken for identity.

Everettian branching concerns the interpretation of quantum states and decoherence. Similarity Theory's branching concerns consciousness generating different relational Frames and does not require every metaphysically imaginable possibility to be realised.

ST therefore does not derive its Frames of Time from the Many-Worlds Interpretation.

The comparison is structural rather than evidential.

Timeless Configurations — Barbour

Julian Barbour has argued for approaches in which fundamental reality can be described through configurations rather than through an independently flowing time.

This provides an interesting philosophical comparison with Similarity Theory because both question the intuitive picture of time as a universal moving substance.

The differences are substantial.

Similarity Theory does not propose a permanently complete collection of configurations through which consciousness simply moves.

New Frames can genuinely be generated.

Persistence does not imply exhaustive pre-existence.

Quantum Gravity and Discreteness — Rovelli and Loop Quantum Gravity

Loop quantum gravity investigates quantum descriptions of geometry in which quantities such as area and volume have discrete spectra.

This has encouraged broader discussion about whether apparently continuous spacetime may emerge from a deeper quantum structure.

It should not be simplified into the claim that physics has demonstrated indivisible “atoms of time” at the Planck scale.

Similarity Theory's Frames of Time are also not Planck-scale physical quanta.

A Frame of Time is an ontological consciousness-configuration generated whenever change occurs, at any scale.

The superficial language of discreteness should therefore not obscure the substantial difference between the frameworks.

🔗 Cross-Links

Consciousness | Frames of Time | Emptiness | Hierarchical Consciousness | Dimensions | Self | Not Panpsychism

📚 References

• Barbour, J. (1999). The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics. Oxford University Press.

• Einstein, A. (1905). On the electrodynamics of moving bodies. Annalen der Physik, 17, 891–921.

• Einstein, A. (1915). The field equations of gravitation. Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 844–847.

• Everett, H. (1957). “Relative state” formulation of quantum mechanics. Reviews of Modern Physics, 29(3), 454–462.

• Rovelli, C. (2004). Quantum Gravity. Cambridge University Press.

• Rovelli, C. (2018). The Order of Time. Riverhead Books.

• Raphael, S. (2025–2026). Similarity Theory.

🔎 Similarity Theory Summary

Similarity Theory is a consciousness-first framework in which reality develops through change, relation, and similarity.

Consciousness is primary. Change generates new Frames of Time, while earlier Frames remain determinate. Continuity may develop through successive Frames and may also branch into more than one genuine continuation.

Dimensions describe differing capacities and modes of conscious experience, while similarity provides a means of recognising relations, patterns, and continuity across existence.

In short, consciousness is the foundation, relation is the structure, change generates development, and similarity reveals the connections between them.

Despite its name, Similarity Theory is therefore not merely a theory about resemblance. Similarity is the investigative principle; consciousness and relational existence are the subject of the framework.