The concept of time and space in light of the reflective activity of human brain

1. The origins of time. Time as a universal means of accounting for priority relations.

As you know, there are many different concepts of time: substantial, relational, dynamic, and static ^{[1, p. 9–13]}. At the same time, some consider it an objective reality (and the idea of the objectivity of time has acquired an essentially paradigmatic character for many time researchers ^{[2, p.169; 3, p. 101]}), while others consider it a product of human consciousness. But there is only one truth! And it does not depend on taste, nor on the opinion of time researchers. This means that the concept of time, which has emerged in the depths of time, can hide only one thing as the objective content of this concept, which has given rise to a certain stable image in humankind. Thus the need for a designation known to us as the concept of time. Therefore, the first task of the time researcher is to identify the image based on which the concept of time was developed and understand what was reflected in it.

It is no secret that none of the existing concepts of the nature of time provide a satisfactory answer to what determines all its properties. In such a situation, it is quite natural to ask whether there is any sense in talking about the nature of something without knowing "what?" But on the other hand, to reveal the nature of something, you need to know where to look for its roots – whether in objective reality or the subject's head. It turns into a kind of vicious circle, devoid of any objective guidelines. The doubts that arise about the correctness of the path that was laid by many generations of time researchers (but ends with the same questions that stood at its beginning ^{[4, p.15–19; 5, p. 801; 6, p. 83]}), pushed the author to search for a more fruitful path. It forced him to start not from the already developed concepts of time, nor from those sources that should be listed in the reference list, but from accurate primary sources in the form of generally recognized facts and laws of the material world. "What?" is hidden behind the concept of time. Let us not forget that relying on such primary sources allowed Nicolaus Copernicus to come to the revolutionary conclusion of Copernican heliocentricism.

Let us try to pave the way to such a concept of time, reflecting not so much on someone's opinion about the concept of time's objective content, but its very objective content. Three postulates verified by practice, one way or another related to a temporary phenomenon, will serve as reliable reference points for us. As the first of these, let us take the fundamental principle of dialectical materialism, which requires us to recognize that there is nothing at the core of the world but moving matter. At the same time, by "matter," the author understands everything is capable of interaction, mutual influence, and mutual change. The materiality of the world explains its variability. This postulate forces us to dismiss any version of time as an independent entity from the very threshold and warns us against choosing dead-end directions. The role of the second postulate is Aristotle's statement that time is not movement, although it does not exist without it ^{[7, pp. 147–153]}. This postulate lets us not lose sight of the indissoluble connection of time with movement. For a clearer idea of what the phenomenon in question is in our study (what its distinctive feature is, where, how, when, and in what it manifests itself), we take as the third postulate suggested to the author by the practice of using temporal concepts, tacitly applied by people on a subconscious level, the unmistakable "sign of time." Time is what allows people to answer the question " when?" and what they see in the readings of the clock. Thanks to this postulate, we will also take into account the inextricable connection of time with the phenomenon that gives rise to this "time" question in a person (often supplemented by the question "how long?").

Armed with these postulates, we will begin our movement towards understanding the essence of time by raising the question of whether it is enough for a person to meet with a temporary phenomenon only in a general movement, in the variability of the world in which a person lives and of which he is an integral part.

In a philosophical sense, movement is any change, any change in the states of material processes or events. The inevitable result of this change is a particular order of their succession, an objective sequence, the sequence of their appearance one after the other.

But in its essence, the order of events and their states are nothing more than a certain relationship between successive events or states. This means that the inevitable result of the variability of the material world is the presence in it of a special type of relationship – the relationship of the order of appearance. The need to consider these relations (which are extremely neglected by philosophers) gives rise to such a specific question in people: "when?". To answer it, we needed concepts like "earlier," "later," and "each other," which allow us to reflect on the relationship between events in the order of their occurrence. As a result of comparing different processes with each other to identify which of them will end earlier (starting with the others), the concept of duration was also demanded as necessary to indicate the distance between the initial and final states of this process in the order of appearance of states that formed it. We will return to a more detailed consideration of the content of this concept later.

But time is not the order of what is happening in the world, nor is it the duration of the processes taking place in the world. If only because the question of what the current order or duration is (as opposed to the question of the current time) is only puzzling. As nothing else follows from movement, it turns out that only movement, only the variability of the material world, is necessary for a person to regard time as a specific background of events, allowing him to answer the question "when?" with "not enough." But where, then, if not in the movement itself, is the cause of this phenomenon inseparable from the movement?

Here, our third postulate will help us, implicitly fixing the hidden interest in a temporary phenomenon on the part of a person who is forced in the course of their activity to regularly look for an answer to the question "when?". Thanks to the hint of this postulate, the indissoluble connection of the temporal phenomenon is also revealed with the subject, with their cognitive and transformative activity.

A temporary phenomenon as something that allows you to answer the question "when?" in the same way is inseparable from the use of what is generated by the movement of the order of appearance as a background, as a universal means for accounting for the relations of priority between various events, states, or actions. Having started such use of the order of appearance suitable for this role, a person discovered the "era of time" associated with the emergence of a qualitatively new opportunity for them in the development of the world!

This means that the reason for time lies not in movement but in a person's purely practical interest in a certain uniform way of answering the irrevocable question "when?" in a single system accounting for priority relations for all. It was a practical necessity that prompted the development of concepts like "morning," "day," "evening," "night," "yesterday," "today," "tomorrow," as well as "winter," "spring," "summer," "autumn," and the like, specially designed to answer this question. Moreover, with their help, a person could answer when an event occurred without looking at other events (i.e., without indicating between which events it occurred, but in such a form, for example, as "yesterday morning"). As a result, on the one hand, people unconsciously developed a unified, universal form of an answer to the question, aimed at taking into account the relations of priority. On the other hand, it brought an invisible intermediary into their activities when considering these relations. It is not surprising that the role of such an intermediary turned out to be a continuously publicly repeating sequence of the appearance of the diurnals states and annual rotations of the earth, to which both biological and social cycles and rhythms are tied. These are manifested, in one case, in the change of the Sun's location above the horizon and the change of illumination. In the other case, it is seen in the change of seasons, average temperatures, and the ratio of day and night.

It does not require much effort to see that all the above concepts hide certain stages of the manifestation of the formed cyclic durations, respectively, by the daily and annual rotations of the earth, certain places, or areas in the order of appearance created by these rotations. For the numerical expression of the places in these human-chosen queues, clocks and calendars were needed. By showing what time it is and what day or year it is today, they show their implicit focus on tracking the process of formation of these special human-made queues.

Thanks to the same concepts, in a peculiar way, man has placed the cradle of humanity itself (or rather, the relations of priority formed by it) in the perpetual service of humanity as the most important means of mastering the world. Only then did humans "suddenly" discover this tool in their work as something that allows people to answer the not at all simple question of "when?" and designated it with the word "time."

As people use the services of their chosen order of appearance "under the guise of" hours and calendars, the essence of the matter does not change. Relying on clocks and calendars in their activities set up to count the daily and annual duration, people thus imperceptibly assign time to the order of occurrence of the daily and annual states of the earth. To determine the time of an event means to reflect it, indicate its place in the order of occurrence according to the degree of its distance from its conditional beginning. The fact that man has come to regard certain orders of appearance as a means of accounting for all other orders of appearance is time's "Act of Creation."

From what has been said, time is a socially conditioned and, therefore, historical phenomenon, inseparable from natural, objective factors and the subject that knows and transforms the world. It sounds paradoxical, but there was a time when there was no time, which is reflected in the saying: a man older than time. In addition, it is also found that the inseparability of time from motion does not necessarily mean that motion is inseparable from time. The attribute of moving matter is not time at all, but the relations of the order of appearance and their quantitative facet-duration.

But let us immediately draw attention to the non-identity of time and, as a certain means, of the order of appearance used as this means. It should be kept in mind that the verbal image allows one to answer the question "when?", which led to the appearance of the concept of time. This could not have arisen as a result of the discovery of any order of appearance as this characteristic contained in it has no material expression in the order of appearance itself. This characteristic is a person who brings it to your perception in the course of their practical work. They have assigned a means for answering the question "when?". The bearer's role of a specific function (similar in this respect to royal advisors, all their behavior demonstrates who the king is). Because a person perceives various manifestations of the earth's daily rotation (such as morning, afternoon, or evening) as a manifestation of what allows him to answer the question "when?", there is an effect of the presence of time in its activity. However, when looking at the height of the Sun or the readings of the clock, a person sees time only with his mind, aimed at the appropriate use of the specified order.

Thus, the essence of time is a universal means of accounting for the relations of priority, the role of which a person has chosen a special order of appearance and manifests its presence in human activity only in the relation of a person to this order corresponding to his presence.

2. The essence of second-order time. Or what do time, a spoon, and a fork have in common?

But it is also important that such a ghostly existence of time is no different from the numerous carriers of other functions with which a person deals and whose "intelligibility," inaccessibility to the senses, also do not lie on the surface. So, for example, is it possible, with the help of the senses alone, to detect an object lying on a table based on "what is eaten" to allow us to consider this object a spoon? After all, signals are not a kind of impulse, but some impulses are in the work of controls that respond to impulses as something that allows one to receive information about the influencing factors. Taking into account this function of impulses, a person considers them signals. Yes, and the concept of "doctor" also hides the carrier of a certain function. Therefore, people also see doctors and all other "functionaries" only with their minds, which knowingly "finish" the image of a person (drawn by the senses) from the side of its public role or function.

It is only in the inanimate part of nature that the reaction to influences is determined only by the laws of material interactions. Living beings choose their response to something with the help of their control organ, the brain. This determines their attitude to external factors based, first of all, on their significance for the organism controlled by them, reflected in the cells of their memory and taking into account not only the own properties of these factors but also their connections, dependencies, and opportunities provided. The ability to manage is the ability to react to carriers of specific properties as carriers and of a certain significance. All management activities are based on the choice of one or another relationship to the elements of objective reality.

The human brain has this ability, this reflective activity ability to the greatest extent. Thanks to this ability, people began to treat spoken sounds as certain signs, resulting from which we had speech and then writing. It also makes people treat events as causes and effects; objects with regard to their purposes; and people regarding their social functions, goals, and value system. But because a person treats spoken sounds as signs, sounds do not turn into signs and do not become signs. These signs are present only in a person's subjective reality as the sounds they utter turn out to be in their perception. Friends with enemies also exist only in someone's perception of their environment.

However, what objects turn out to be is reflected only in the human perception of them and the corresponding images (such as: "what is eaten" or "the one who eats"). The designations and concepts are then developed on this basis. As a result, a whole class of concepts emerged, behind which are hidden images of carriers not of properties but meanings. Although tied to the elements of objective reality, images, first of all, from their objective place in human activity, correspond to their objective significance for a person. In other words, in a person's subjective reality, from which they start their communication with objective reality, such participants in human activity "exist" only to a person, only in their perception of the objectively existing elements.

They are present there not as products of the human brain but as something that is of what significance to the carriers? It corresponds to a person's attitude towards certain objects or phenomena dictated by the reflective activity of the human brain or the attitude of the brain itself. For example, in its relation to the incoming impulses from the senses that allow you to get information about external factors, in its management activities, signals are manifested. In a person's corresponding attitude to the sounds they utter, words and speech in human activity are manifested. It remains only to be clearly aware that the attitude is "like that"...it is a form of the presence in human activity of all that something or someone is for a person in his activity. This is a form of the presence of carriers of some subjective significance in it. This is a form of accounting by the human brain of someone's significance, of any possibility. As he is interested in considering various possibilities, he is also interested in the presence of corresponding phantoms in his activities, in the presence of someone whose form of existence is an attitude that expresses someone's significance.

Thus, the human brain is the initiator and regulator of the presence in a person's subjective reality that some objective factors are only in their subjective perception. Since their "subjective presence" manifests itself only in the relation of a person to certain objectively existing participants in human activity that correspond to their presence, they can rightfully be classified as ideal phenomena in the workings of the human brain. This provides the perception of objective factors, taking into account their subjective significance. As such expediency is inherent in the workings of the governing body of any self-governing system, it seems that this is how ideal phenomena appear in the material world, at a certain level of the organization of matter. Therefore, they manifest their presence: this or that "interesting" relation of one material to another is an objective form of the ideal manifestation.

At the same time, the concepts intended to indicate who or what someone or something is (or is considered and appears) in human perception, in relation to who or what a person considers someone or something, is their own statuses. However, this does not prevent us from using their statuses to name these "status" objects and focus primarily on their role in human activity. Yet, speaking about the specifics of the objective content of the concepts of status, we emphasize that these concepts are only phantoms of the human brain, which are unavoidable in its managerial activities but are not suitable for describing the picture of the world in itself. Nothing in the world is something in itself. It is possible to be something only for the subject who knows and transforms the world ^{[8, p. 6–31]}.

It turns out that to see a spoon on the table and an airplane in the sky doesn't so much allow for the vigilance of the eye but the vigilance of the mind. But it also allows us to see that by using the word "spoon" to describe what one eats, people have not designated the real objects they use while eating, but something ghostly, inaccessible to the senses. To achieve such vigilance of the mind, it is necessary to clearly understand that all designations are carried out only based on subjective images (including verbal ones) that express the distinctive feature of the designated phenomenon, without which it is impossible to identify it. Secondly, the fact that not every characteristic of real objects, which, when designated, is a distinctive feature of what is designated, can be expressed by the actual objects themselves. In our case, the distinguishing feature of the designated phenomenon is expressed in the words (verbally) "what is eaten." But no real objects have such a distinctive feature (a particular property of their own). They do not express it in any way. Then it turns out that the spoon is something intelligible!

Thus, it follows that there are no natural referents for concepts that hide the carriers of certain functions or meanings. No, despite the indissoluble connection of these concepts with real objects and phenomena, these concepts act as their statuses. This is the general qualitative specificity of their objective content. The concept of time is no exception here! Time, being inseparable from the real order of appearance, still has no more reality than the apparent reality of a spoon, sign, or signal (the illusory, immaterial existence of which many do not even suspect)! The essence of time as a means of accounting for the relations of priority consists in the fact that time is a kind of participatory human activity that appears only due to the human brain's reflective activity and manifests its presence only in the corresponding relation of a person to certain objective factors. In this case, we are talking about a specific relation to a special order of appearance for a person, allowing one to realize the objective possibility of their use as a necessary means. The entire existence of time is limited by our subjective reality. Therefore, it is useless to look for time in nature, although its objective basis is found there – what is taken as time in human activity. That a certain physical phenomenon was accepted as such a basis still does not allow us to speak of a certain physicality of time.

At the same time, we'd like to emphasize two points. First, our conclusion about the unreality of time, which recognizes its presence in human activity, is not incompatible with the denial of time as a phenomenon in general by the English philosopher J. M. E. McTaggart ^[9]. Secondly, our brain provides us not with time, but with the attitude to certain queues of appearance as to time, as to a specific means. Only with these queues, and not with time at all (!), can "the person who uses it answer the question 'when?'" (including with the help of the clock). Simultaneously, time manifests its presence only in the form of this relationship, turning out to be just a nominal participant in human activity. In the same way that signals present themselves in the operation of any control body, not physically, as impulses, the control body reacts to the incoming impulses. People do not really eat with spoons, but with what they only treat as spoons.

Thus, the question of whether time exists should be answered, although in the affirmative, but necessarily pointing to the immateriality of the existence of one whose presence is manifested only in a person's corresponding relation to a certain materially expressed factor. However, in the face of the difficult realization of the human brain's hidden role in the "organization" of a temporary phenomenon, the invisible presence in all areas of human activity of something allows one to answer the question "when?" This led to the scientific picture of the world where this something called 'time' was assigned a place as one of the foundations of the universe. People began to worship a phenomenon that did not go beyond their subjective reality, as an inexorable and incomprehensible all-consuming eternity.

3. The nature of the properties attributed to time. Definitions of temporary concepts based on their revealed objective content.

In answering the question "when?", people reflect on objective reality from the perspective of its manifestation in the relations of the order of appearance. They do so with the help of a special order of appearance unique to them, which to them acts as time. Therefore, it is not surprising that the general laws of formation and the manifestation of priority relations are refracted in the properties attributed to time. Those relations of the material world, which are comparable in their fundamental nature only to its spatial relations, are derived from their qualitative heterogeneity. Just as everything has its own dimensions, spatial relations are connected by their relations with other bodies, so every process, having its own relations of appearance, is connected by such relations with all other processes and events. The specificity of these relations is such that as a result of the variability of the material world, there is one comprehensive commonality to all that has happened, the order of appearance, in which everything that happened in relation to each other, i.e., coexisted and occupied one common place (because it appeared not earlier and not later than each other). This is the most important regularity of the formation and manifestation of relations born to the variability of the material world. It is the very possibility of the appearance of such a phenomenon as time in human activity by which it is predetermined.

The manifestations of the relations of priority are very diverse. Therefore, the temporal concepts that reflect them are too. What is their objective content, predestined by using the particular order of appearance for a person as a means of accounting for the relations of priority?

DURATION represents the distance in the "queue of appearance" between the successive states of any material process. This is an integral part of the manifestation of priority relations formed by the change of states of material processes. In answering the question "how long?" people estimate the degree of such remoteness.

So, by measuring the duration of a process, people measure the degree of distance between its initial and final state in the order of states formed by this process. In this case, the relative duration of different processes depends only on which of them will end earlier or later than the other (starting together). Since it is in the process' duration that its ability to form relations in the manifestation of the order of appearance, it is the duration that is the quantitative facet of these relations.

If there is a process, then there must be a relationship in the order of occurrence and their quantitative facet duration. There is no other source of duration in nature. Therefore, a certain amount of duration is possible only as the value of a certain process's duration, a value determined by the process itself – the beginning and end of its course, the beginning and end of forming relations of the order of appearance process. This fully corresponds to the natural inseparability of qualitative and quantitative certainty in the manifestation of any material property.

TIME is a universal means of considering the multi-faceted relations of priority in their manifestation and the order of occurrence of the states of the daily and annual rotations of the earth in human activity. At the same time, these queues are only in the subject's perception, who treats them as something that allows one to answer the question "when?" and thus unconsciously realizes the objective possibility of their use.

In human activity, all the places in the order of appearance chosen by people for the role of the means necessary for them are MOMENTS of TIME. It is customary to link events to them in order to answer the question of when they occurred or should occur. Their distance from the conditional beginning of the corresponding order of appearance is reflected in the readings of clocks and calendars. But they also differ in their characteristics in relation to the special place in the general order of appearance (divided into past, present, and future).

At the same time, nothing in nature can prevent a person from using the designated and numbered places of these background queues to indicate the "priority" of events taking place "on the other side of the world." This possibility allows us to say that moments of time do not have any spatial localization and is implemented in practice by physicists and astronomers, who do so without any theoretical justification for this possibility.

The MOMENT OF THE PRESENT, or the current moment, called "now," is a special, "current" place in human activity in the chosen order of appearance, determined by the current state of the corresponding rotation of the earth and numerically expressed by the current readings of clocks and calendars. Everything that exists and happens is connected with it.

People don't notice that the question "what time is it now?" is equivalent to asking what the degree of remoteness of the current location of the daily order of appearance (and with it everything that currently exists) from the conditional beginning of this cyclic sequence is. However, when answering it with the help of a clock synchronized with the conditional beginning of the earth's daily rotation and tuned to count certain fractions of the duration manifested by this process, they thereby answer it, taking into account that the current moment, encompassing all things, is the current place of this chosen sequence of appearance, numerically expressed by the degree of its distance from its conditional beginning.

People often associate moments of the present and their invisible flow with their personal current states or experiences. Their changes do not detract from the significance of the numerical form of expression of these moments, perceived as "now." Moreover, this generally accepted meaning makes people unwittingly attach their subjective sense of the present moment to the corresponding clock reading, which characterizes these moments on a generally accepted basis – from the degree of their distance from the conditional beginning of the day.

At the same time, any current moment is ours only in the sense that it is also our current place in the general order of occurrence formed by successive events and states of processes. Everything we see when we look around us is what, in addition to our own state, determines the current moment of the world's existence, its subsequent "moment between the past and the future." However, this is only visible and accessible to the human eye. Therefore, a very insignificant part of the material content of such a place in the infinite order of appearance is determined by everything in the world that is in the stage of existence and possessing a material form of expression. You can get out of the present only by losing materiality, only by going into oblivion. The world is always in the present as if balancing on the border between the past and the future because it determines the transient moments of its present by its own transient coexisting states. Where the existence is there and the present, there is also the present as a special place in the objectively arising order of appearance, which is subjectively expressed by the current date and the clock reading.

And since everything far away from us also exists with us, then, objectively, any of our "now" as the location of everything that exists in the general order of existence turns out to be spatially unlimited. Isn't there something going on at every moment of our existence, in some remote corner of the world? The only problem is that to see the material content of our "now" in another part of the world, you would need to move to it immediately. Only then would we see what appeared in it no earlier or later than our current state. Something that coexists with us at a distance occupies the same place with us in the general order of appearance. At the same time, it is not surprising that coexistence is inherently inseparable from existence in one common present, in one spatially boundless "now." For example, no matter how far an interplanetary station is from the earth, it will undoubtedly be in the same present as everything on earth. It cannot be otherwise for the reason that by its current distance from the earth, which is common (and therefore objectively the same) for the participants of this joint movement, it determines the current moment of existence that is equally common and identical for them. That is, the widespread intuitive belief that only instantaneous movement would allow us to see what is happening in remote corners of the world with each of our "now," there are quite objective reasons, even if not fully realized.

However, even though there is always a world in the present, all changes in the world do not occur in the moment of the present. This is hindered by the inseparability of any movement from the shift in coexisting moments carried out by the movement itself. Thus, mutually moving bodies pass from one present moment to another, not by moving in each of them, but by "moving" each of them, transforming each current moment from one to another by successively transforming the state of their movement from one to another. In addition, as all duration arises only in the course of a change of states and every change of states means a shift of moments of the present, it turns out that in the moments of the present, there is no place not only for movement but also for duration as a result of movement. The moments of existence, defined and expressed by the current states of material processes, are indelible. It is not moments that last, but processes that occupy and determine by their course a series of moments that turn into each other. The indolence of any moment of the present, represented by the appearance of some states of some material processes, does not in the least prevent the processes clothed in these states from continuing and manifesting duration by their course determining the change of moments of the present, and thus both the passage of time and the corresponding duration. Therefore, the existence of moving matter in successive present moments, due to the indestructibility of matter, is eternal. This means that the present is also eternal as a place in the order of appearance of the states of motion and matter, determined by the successive current states of its motion. The present is inherent not in the present moments but in finding a changeable world in the changing present moments as an integral part of the existence of this changeable world. None of the problems of the length of the present ^{[10, p. 57–160]}, which is faced by the supporters of presentism, with this understanding of the nature of the present does not arise.

Well, the fact that the present moments are defined set existing events and states of material processes, i.e., they are filled with material content. They, therefore, are present in the arena of being as characteristics of everything that exists (from the perspective of its place in the order of existence). The moments of the past and the future are non-existent "priority" characteristics (already or still). Apparently, this is the ontological difference between the present, the past, and the future, which philosophers seek. For Abert Einstein and other "convinced physicists" ^{[10, p.69–70]}, the difference between the past, present, and future is just an illusion. However, it is very stubborn then for philosophers; it is a stubborn fact for the most part.

The PASSAGE OF TIME in human activity is the transformation of a current place in the order of appearance of the states of the double rotation of the earth, determined by the current states of its rotation and numerically expressed by the current readings of clocks and calendars, into the next current place of this order. Transformation, dictated by the transformation of the current states of the earth's rotation from one to another and accompanied by an increase in the duration manifested by these (and all accompanying) processes, expresses the degree of the universal present's movement in the general order of occurrence of events and states.

As for the direction of the flow of time, it is generally assumed that it moves from the past through the present to the future. But here we should pay attention to the fact that the moments of the present, the process of alternation which allows us to talk about the passage of time, neither arise from the past's moments, nor repel from the past, not turning into moments of the future, and do not fall into the future. Time flows without leaving the present; it flows by changing the present moments, occurring due to its transformation from one moment to another. Therefore, it would probably be more correct to say that time flows from one present to another present in the direction of their following each other later. This is the direction of the "arrow of time," set by the general way of implementing all changes, transforming the current states of the existing one into another.

CONTINUITY. Time, understood as the continuity of the flow of its moments, is due to the continuity of the change of states of material processes in general and the earth's rotation as having a special relationship to the temporal phenomenon. But it does not imply the possibility of an infinite division of any real duration as the duration of any process. A necessary condition for the absolute continuity of both time and space is the presence of clear boundaries for bodies that exhibit the duration of material processes and show spatial properties. But in nature itself, there are no such boundaries. All its borders are more or less vague ^{[11, p. 88–97]}. By giving them absolute certainty, "forcibly," at one's own discretion, one is confronted with what found expression in Zeno's paradoxes.

ONE-DIMENSIONALITY. Time follows a regularity in forming relations of priority, as the formation of successive events and states of processes of one common to all that happens, the order of occurrence. All events and states are located in the same direction relative to each other – later than each other. This pattern allows one to express their place in the order of their occurrence (i.e., the time of the event) with just a single number or phrase like "tomorrow morning," indicating the degree of remoteness of the event from a certain conditional point in the events' order of occurrence.

IRREVERSIBILITY. Time is understood as the inability to return to what was and is caused, on the one hand, by the disappearance of what was, its irrevocable departure into oblivion due to the loss of material content. On the other hand, in the material world, access to the arena of being is provided only by material interactions, their ability to generate new things, starting from the existing one. All its events or states that replace the existing ones are necessarily new and not "used," necessarily newborn. Therefore, these events bring the world its new moments of existence into the world, recorded by man as new moments of time. Only a semblance of what it was is allowed in it. That's why you can't enter the same river twice.

Thus, the words about the irreversibility of time hide, first of all, the irreversibility of the changes taking place in the world due to the general way of implementing these changes. This is the fundamental law of the material world's existence, predetermined by its materiality and dictating the inevitability of its constant self-renewal.

Moreover, any material process, even one as periodic and straightforward as the swing of a pendulum, is fundamentally irreversible. Therefore, when dividing processes into reversible and irreversible, it is necessary to consider all the conditionality of such a division, associated with their only apparent reversibility. This, by the way, explains the non-cyclical nature of time, even though only cyclical queues are suitable for the role of time. But the "reversibility" of the classical formulas of physics, which reflect a particular dependence of physical quantities on time, consists only in the fact that they allow us to return to notational moments of time and the associated states of processes, and not at all to the moments themselves and the disappeared states. As none of the time points in these formulas is repeated, there are great doubts about the validity of the charges against them.

WATCH. Mastering the natural order of occurrence of the states of the earth's dual rotation as a multi-scale means of answering the question "when?" People are also faced with the need for more accurate (compared to what the division of the day into morning, afternoon, evening, and night allows) tracking of the process of increasing the daily duration. At the same time, life itself suggests to a person that for this purpose, it is only necessary to divide the day into smaller parts (hours, minutes, and seconds) and ensure their repeatability and counting in some artificial order of occurrence. Such a device was created. A clock is a means of numerically expressing the duration shown by the earth's diurnal rotation from the conditional initial state of this systematic process to its current state. Moreover, this attachment to the beginning of the day is significantly different from other devices for measuring the duration (for example, sports stopwatches). It is only because the daily duration measured by the clock is taken as a background of human activity as a means of accounting for the relations of priority, called time, that the clock eventually began to be perceived as a means for measuring time, thereby causing philosophers to wonder how it was possible to learn to measure "something" without knowing "what."

However, "time is measured," strictly speaking, not by clocks, but by people using devices created by them, clocks that turn out to be only for those who know about the purpose of these devices. And the clock shows the value, first of all, of its own distance from the conditional beginning of the day. Just as the readings of a measuring tape reflect the length, first of all, of the corresponding part of the tape measure itself, so the readings of the clock reflect the duration, manifested, first of all, by the clock itself (the corresponding change in the state of its own periodic process). However, due to the general regularities of the formation of the relations of the order of appearance, the device of the clock and its correct use, in their current readings, one can see both the past and the remaining part of the day, and in what place of the day a person is "now." At the same time, the movement of the general "now," which is tracked by the clock, hides the non-spatial movement (within each current day) of everything in general. That which moves, and that which rests against the background of a never-ceasing movement, brings into the world more and more all-encompassing moments of existence, thus all-encompassing duration. The choice of the conditional start of the day depends on the corresponding "time zone."

As you can see, the watch is a tool for just clarifying the answer to the question "when?" in terms of using (to answer the same question) the order of occurrence of the states of the earth's diurnal rotation. It is not the clock that plays the leading role in the temporal phenomenon. It is only a numerical expression and repeater of what time is in human activity. But this was enough to make them a visible symbol of time to people.

But in general, both clocks, calendars, and time itself result from a practical form of world exploration, not a theoretical one, which is very much ahead of the theoretical one. Moreover, people also learned about the one-dimensionality of time, not because they decided to study the properties of "who knows what" hidden behind the word "time," but because in the course of practical activity, they noticed that one "time coordinate" of this event is quite enough to answer the question of when an event occurred.

SIMULTANEOUS EVENTS. These events do not appear earlier or later than each other, i.e., they appear at the same time as each other. They, therefore, occupy the same place in the background (and therefore in the general order of occurrence).

From the essence of simultaneity as being in the same place as the background sequence of appearance, from the essence of duration as the remoteness in the order of appearance of successive states of processes, and from the fact that the degree of manifestation of duration by processes is limited to the beginning and end of their course, it follows that by changing their states, all simultaneously occurring processes form as different bodies whose ends coincide spatially and have the same length. Different processes whose ends coincide in the order of appearance have the same duration. This is the most important regularity in the manifestation of duration by material processes. This predetermined the well-known method of direct (i.e., without hours) comparison of the durations of various processes. Thanks to this, the current days, hours, and years "embrace" everyone and everything at once. Also, as it implies the independence of the magnitude of the duration formed by the processes not only from the nature and place of their course but also from the scale of the processes. Then, apparently, its manifestations gave rise to people's intuitive confidence that time flows everywhere in the same way: both in the macro, the mega, and the microcosm.

However, it is possible to agree with this intuitive opinion with some reservations. As follows from the essence of time that we have identified, it can neither flow everywhere in the same way nor different ways at different points and scales of space because it doesn't flow anywhere in space at all. The wall clock does not count the time that runs on the wall! The universal "now" does not move in space but in a qualitatively different dimension, fixed in the concepts "earlier" and "later." On the other hand, nothing, in principle, prevents a person from covering, reflecting with the help of clocks and calendars, the relations of priority not only in the macro but also in the mega and the microcosm. However, this possibility is provided not by some mythical entity that flows everywhere in the same way and allows itself to be counted but by the laws of the formation of priority relations. But the result is that there is no single, universal time, only a single, omnipresent substance. Still, it is a single means for all people and events to answer the question "when?" in the role of which the order of appearance is publicly available to people.

At the same time, when talking about the properties of time, we should not lose sight that the absence of any spatial attachment to time is also its most important property, which is widely used, but which has not yet been recognized by everyone. It is the spatial locality of its moments, in which the qualitative specificity of the relations of priority is expressed, allowing us to argue about what is happening confidently. Now it takes place in various remote locations and records the time of remote events on your watch.

But we also note that since, on the one hand, there is no other duration than that manifested by material processes. On the other hand, since absolutely all simultaneously occurring processes necessarily exhibit the same duration, it is meaningless to talk about a certain speed of time flow. I.e., the concept of the speed of time flow has no objective content. This means there is no objective content or idea of the course of time's uniformity (for the uniformity of the course means the constancy of speed).

SECOND. Based on its origin, the value of the duration is equal to a certain fraction of the solar day. At the same time, only an exemplary reference clock, which is already by definition the carrier of the second, can count it by itself without looking back at other clocks. All other clocks can count it only by keeping strictly in step with these main clocks for expressing their magnitude (since, as we have seen, only the simultaneity of the processes guarantees the same magnitude of the duration they manifest). This means that by no change in its course, the non-etalon clock cannot speed up or slow down the countdown of the second as a duration equal to that of the reference process. Any advance or lag behind the reference clock can only mean one thing – a transition to a different (not in seconds) time scale.

It is difficult for a person to say something definite about the magnitude of the duration before it is measured. However, the certainty of the value of any process' duration is in no way related to the procedure for measuring it, which is just a reflection procedure, a procedure for giving the value of the duration already manifested by the process a relative, subjective form of expression that appears as a designation by the result of comparison. Just as the magnitude of the spatial extension of any body can obtain a relative form of expression in a person only through the presence of an absolute, natural form of its expression (by the ends of the body), so the magnitude of any process' duration can also obtain a comparative form of expression only through the presence of an absolute, natural form of its expression (by the ends of the process), which allows for comparison. But this is also natural since the qualitative certainty of any property is inseparable from the quantitative certainty in the manifestation of this property. The form of a quality's manifestation is the form of manifestation and its quantity. In addition, the place of the event on the background sequence of occurrence is determined, set by the event itself, by the fact of its occurrence in a particular current state of the process forming this sequence. Only can a person identify this place (determining at what time this event occurred at the clock reading).

In words about the relationship between time and space, the relationship between the two types of relations of the material world (represented, respectively, by the questions "where?" and "when?"), two fundamental aspects of its existence are derived from its qualitative heterogeneity and its variability. Any spatial changes are inseparable from the formation of the corresponding order of appearance generating it. What is the state of the movement, such as the corresponding moment, the stage of this movement, expressed in the duration manifested by this movement? I.e., the movement acts as a generator of the formation and renewal of both relations. However, the obvious interdependence of spatial relations and relations of the order of appearance still does not allow us to ignore the qualitative specifics of these two types of relations, their irreducibility to each other and non-derivability from each other. Here it is worth noting that the possibility of measuring time in meters, which can be heard in conversations about time, is nothing more than an illusion that arises in conditions of insufficient awareness, on the one hand, of the qualitative specifics of the time phenomenon, and on the other, of the fundamental difference between the procedure measurements (based on a comparison of similar properties) and the procedure calculations (carried out based on an established pattern of changes in something over time and therefore does not require strict consideration of the qualitative specifics of the participants in this procedure). But without seeing these differences, you can believe in the possibility of "measuring" time in liters, and in kilograms, and even with the help of thermometers.

4. The essence of space.

But there is a problem not only of time but also of space, about the nature of which there are also different opinions. Let's try to achieve maximum clarity in this matter.

Again, let's start with the fact that the principle of materialistic monism does not allow us to consider space as an independent entity. But space is not the relationship that is called spatial. The generally accepted synonym for the concept of space is not "relation" but "place," a place for someone to find, a place to exist. It is in this sense that the concept of space is usually used. Therefore, the question of the existence of space is, in fact, the question of the existence of a place in which something is located.

But where did the idea of the presence of places for existence come from, if in reality, we observe that all bodies are at some distance from each other, and, consequently, the location of the body is a characteristic of the body itself, its external relations, relations?

There is only one answer here. A person in the course of mental activity abstracted from the material, carriers this characteristic and began to consider the place of the body in isolation from the body itself, as something independent of that place it's located. This is especially evident in the example of the appearance of a three-dimensional coordinate system as a geometric image of space. As a result of this abstraction and subsequent absolutization (expressed in recognition of the right to independent existence) in a person's subjective reality, it is designed to reflect objective reality. In addition to bodies located at different distances from each other, there were also places of their existence, places for existence. The external characteristic of the existence of bodies was transformed in the human consciousness into a certain necessary condition for their existence and to denote what supposedly everything is in. It took the word "space."

And this means that the concept of space arose based on the idea that there is no one universal receptacle. This is the meaning that this concept carries from the moment of its birth, no matter how many philosophers disown such an understanding. But man has discovered this preliminary condition of everything existing only in his own head due to the separation of the external side of the existence of bodies from the bodies themselves and its absolutization! Because space is a product of a mental activity that does not go beyond this activity, the objective essence of this phenomenon is precisely expressed.

Therefore, it follows from what has been said that nothing is hidden in objective reality behind the concept of space. The existence of the world requires not space (= emptiness, nothing) but matter. At the same time, a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of various material objects is the qualitative heterogeneity of matter and a necessary and sufficient condition for their movement relative to each other. Thus their different locations relative to each other is their material interaction. Neither space nor time are any "actors" in the world of universal interaction.

But we also have to admit that space and time are not forms of moving matter's existence (as many philosophers were inclined to believe). Relationships are more suitable for this role, especially those related to the question "when?" and those related to the question "where?". Space and time are just something derived from the activity of the human brain. But if the form of the ghostly existence of time is the specific attitude of a person to the special order of appearance to him, dictated by the reflective activity of the human brain, then the form of the ghostly existence of space is just an abstraction that allows a person to study the properties, possibilities, and laws of the mutual position of various objects, distracting from these objects themselves. Therefore, all the properties, possibilities, and regularities that material objects exhibit in their relationships with each other were attributed to space in the human consciousness. This is also indicated by the well-known Noether's theorem, which states that the law of conservation of momentum corresponds to the homogeneity of space, and the law of conservation of angular momentum corresponds to isotropy. But, let us add, the world is also three-dimensional, not because of the alleged space, but because this is the limit of the ability of material bodies to move in different directions, established by material interactions, i.e., the properties of matter itself.

At the same time, it is logical to call the concept that considers space an empty abstraction, detached from matter, abstract to the concept of space.

5. Who needs definitions of temporary concepts?

Surprisingly, in the absence of a generally accepted definition of various temporal concepts, people manage to apply them in the same sense to everyone. How can this be?

This situation is somewhat similar to the one we have already considered with the creation of a clock in the face of the unresolved question of what time is. People can do without a strict scientific definition of time, first, because the objective content of the concept of time (as, indeed, of any other) does not depend on one or another definition of its content. This is because the objective content of any concept primarily concerns both the concept and its definition. No concepts can appear until their objective content is discovered. First, a person discovers something that generates a corresponding image in their head (sensory or verbal). This image, in turn, causes the need to designate what is reflected in it, a certain set of sounds. In this designation, the act of becoming a concept appears (simultaneously, for the appearance of the need to develop a concept of time, a person has had to have had enough of the vague and also insufficiently conscious verbal image of "something that allows you to answer the question: when?"). Only then, after the concept's appearance, does one move in their thought process as if in the opposite direction from the concept to a clear awareness and fixation of its objective content, giving an appropriate definition to the concept that appeared, indicating what certain set of sounds were required to indicate and consequently receive the status of the concept. At the same time, the truth, expressing the objective content of this concept, is only the definition of it, in which this indication is contained. As there is no single concept of physical time (since different areas of physics use different definitions of time), the essence of the matter does not change. Nor can the concept of time be "initial and indefinable," as some of its researchers tend to describe it ^{[4, p. 17]}.

Secondly, we should not underestimate the role of practice in teaching people the rules of applying temporary concepts. Having created the need for time as a means, suggested a way to satisfy it, and forced a person to develop a variety of temporary concepts, it also forces them to develop unwritten rules for their application, fixed in the corresponding conditioned reflexes for certain situations. For example, it forces people who plan their future actions within the current day to consider their location in one or another part of this day. The question "what time is it now?" developed in the course of practical activity aims at such accounting. It arises in the absence of a clear understanding of both what time is and what is now. Still, it forces us to react to it unambiguously (by looking at the clock) and, most importantly, in full accordance with the objective content of the time concepts involved. There is some unconscious, reflexive knowledge that equips a person with their practical activity. "Our advantage and disadvantage at the same time are that we act first, and then we think. But this is a given" ^{[12, p. 8]}. This is just as ignorance of the laws of mechanics does not prevent people from acting in accordance with these laws.

People began to treat their special order of appearance as time (i.e., as something that allows you to answer the question "when?") even before the concept of time was born, showing such an attitude in response to a situation that gives rise to the question "when?". With the advent of temporary concepts, such situations force a person to apply these concepts according to their objective content. This explains the lack of people who are not engaged in science, the request for definitions of temporary concepts (reflexivity of application is no different from others). But even for people of science, such definitions are not necessarily for greater confidence in the correctness of everyday manipulation of temporal concepts, but for a better understanding of the qualitative specifics of the world order from the perspective that they reflect by its unconscious projection on the special order of appearance for people, which, thanks to their use, received the status of time.

The presence of time in human activity as a universal means of accounting for the relations of priority, indicating the use of certain orders of appearance as such a means, is the greatest achievement of the human mind, which predetermined the appearance of astronomy, physics, and many other sciences about nature and society. An intelligent being cannot do without such a basis, without such a means of mastering the world. Assuming that we are not the only ones endowed with intelligence, we must admit that other intelligent beings have their own "single, universal time," which, however, due to the same general laws of formation of priority relations for the whole world, differs from ours only in that it appears and is present only in their activities, thanks to the reflective activity of their brains and on the basis of a special order of appearance for them suitable for the role of time.

6. About the name of the concept that expresses the objective content of the concept of time and some of the reasons for its problematic nature.

As now can be seen, the concept of time's objective content follows from the fact that we have identified the use of a special order of appearance for a person as a universal means to answer the ever-topical question "when?" None of the known concepts of time are consistent. This is not surprising since none of them took this fact into account. In addition, they were created without a clear awareness of the distinctive feature of time, thanks to which someone once discovered this phenomenon, based on which they managed to distinguish, even on a subconscious level, a temporary phenomenon from any other.

Thanks to our initial postulates, we still managed to discover what the concept of time was required to denote. Moreover, it was possible to identify the main stages of forming a temporary phenomenon and the corresponding concept, which can be represented as follows: 1. People felt the need for a uniform answer to the question "when?". 2. Their brains, in the course of their practical activities, have found something that can be used for such an answer. 3. People began to regard what was suitable for the role of a given means as a means they need. 4. Having discovered the presence in their activity of something that allows them to answer the question "when?" in a certain way, they designed this something by combining the sounds of "time," thus giving rise to the concept of time.

This means that a wide gap has been made in the problem, which is chronic in all respects. But how can we define the concept of time that arose during the successful assault on this fortress?

At first glance, it is similar to a relational-dynamic one. However, while recognizing the indissoluble connection of time with certain objectively arising relations, it also points to its non-identity to these relations and recognizing that everything that happens in the world happens only within the framework of successive moments of the present time. It also points out that there are present moments only in the human perception of a special place in the objectively formed general order of appearance – the space occupied by current events and process states. As for other existing concepts, it has nothing in common with them. Therefore, this is a completely new concept of time, which arose in the context of awareness of factors related to the temporal phenomenon, which its predecessors did not consider in any way. This is the concept of time as a universal means of accounting for priority relations. This is its full name, expressing the essence of the phenomenon it describes. In short, it is, in a certain sense, a pragmatic concept of time.

But why did it only appear now? What objectively prevented the solution of the problem of time?

First, these are the shortcomings of the founders of dialectical materialism, who believed in "the basic forms of all being... the essence of space and time" ^{[13, p. 51]}. In contrast, it would probably be better to proceed from the form of being of matter as spatial and temporal relationships (relations of coexistence, mutual position, and order of appearance). But this also includes a lack of consistency in implementing the principle of materialistic monism, the heuristic potential of which, we can say, is inexhaustible. Moreover, it slips even in the famous Lenin's dictum: when after the words that there is nothing in the world but moving matter, it is stated that it can move only in space and time as an allegedly necessary condition for its movement ^{[14, p.171]}. As such, their "flaws" pushed the materialists on the path of unjustified ontologization of space and time. And here, it is impossible not to agree with the fact that "the scientific concept of time is immersed in the worldview" ^{[15, p. 60]}. The only question is whether this worldview position is justified, objective, and fundamental.

Secondly, it is the inaccessibility to the senses of even that objective factor, which in human activity is taken for time. It is impossible to see or touch the relations of priority, as well as any other. Moreover, these relations also cover what is not present anywhere else in the world, already or still present only in human memory and forecasts.

Third, there are unresolved related philosophical problems. Where, for example, are the scientific works devoted to studying the general regularities in the formation of relations of priority of appearance? Those relations that are no less fundamental than spatial ones? And where are the studies of the specifics of the objective content of the concepts-statuses? As a result, many philosophers still believe that spoons are on the tables, and signs are on the roads, not in their heads. And that the words can actually be heard or seen (on paper). Are there ready-made answers to the questions about the level of organization of matter at which ideal phenomena arise and what objectively manifests their presence? But when moving towards an understanding of the essence of time, it was impossible to avoid all these philosophically unresolved and neglected problems.

Fourthly, it is the presence of various illusions associated with a temporary phenomenon. First of all, it is the illusion of its independence, not only from a person but also from everything that happens in the world and how they connect with the real independence of the background sequence of appearance from all events for which it acts as a background in human activity. This apparent independence of time was absolutized in the Newtonian concept of time as an independent entity. There was also the illusion of its omnipresence. But it was not without the apparent uniformity of its course, as demonstrated by all the "correct" clocks. A negative influence on the way to understanding the objective nature of time was also exerted by the illusion of its physicality when from the fact that time is present in the equations of physics as an independent argument, it is concluded that in nature itself, it also "conducts" everything that happens. This can also include the illusion of the possibility of measuring it in meters, with tape measures, under the talk of "light hours" ^{[16, p. 11–16]}.

Nevertheless, the fact that in everyday life, people never confuse time with other phenomena and apply a variety of temporal concepts in the same sense for all indicates that at the level of reflexive activity, the objective content of these concepts has long been grasped and is waiting only for its realization. The fundamental step to this realization is realizing the functional feature of time discussed in this article and which people use automatically, without noticing.

It is impossible to live in a changing world and not consider the relationships derived from its variability. In joint, collective activity conditions, people also required an indirect way of accounting for these relations, to meet what they began to use as special orders of appearance for them as a necessary means, called "time." Only a lack of awareness of where they suddenly got this invisible tool gave rise to a very paradoxical situation, when people, confidently navigating in time (because they know how to answer the question "when?"), can not say what it is.

Thus, the problem of time appears as a problem of human awareness of the widespread use of the order of occurrence of the states of the earth's rotation as a universal means for reflecting or coordinating the relations of priority. The realization of this fact allowed us to dispel the veil of the mystery of time and expose its complex essence. Therefore, there are excellent reasons to believe that the cherished key to solving a centuries-old problem has been found. Right before our eyes, the long-awaited transformation of time from an unknowable "thing in itself" into a "thing for us" is taking place.

Since inaccessibility to the senses; one-dimensionality; irreversibility; fluidity; divisibility into the past, present, and future; spatial locality (perceived by man as omnipresence); an indissoluble connection of movement and spatial relations; and the possibility of counting with the help of clocks and calendars follow only from the nature of time, which is reflected in the pragmatic concept of time, truth is on the side of this newly appeared concept of time.