Time and the Law: International Perspectives on an Old Problem

Abstract

I begin by confessing a general fascination with the concept of time. I puzzle endlessly over the relationship between time and matter, and the insistence of scientists that before the Big Bang time did not exist. I grapple with the relationship between time and speed, and the fact that if we could travel at the speed of light time would not move. I seek to grasp Stephen Hawking's recent conversion to the view that, in the physical world, time may yet run in reverse. I am intrigued that our concepts of time came to Australia only with the First Fleet, for aboriginal time was cyclical rather than linear. Events could recur, dead people could live again. I find exhilarating the idea that we see at this moment, through our telescopes, stars that no longer exist. I love the objective reality of the equator and the total artificiality of the meridian, and the intention that this felicitous fiction is the place for us to see in the “real beginning” of the next century.