Galton A. Time flies but space does not: Limits to the spatialisation of time

Article. — Journal of Pragmatics. — 2011. — 43. — pp. 695–703.Spatial metaphors for timehave often been highlighted, but disanalogies between space and time, which preclude the use of such metaphors, have been comparatively neglected. Yet these disanalogies relate closely to the fundamental nature of time, with its key attributes of extension, linearity, direction, and transience. Of these, only extension is without qualification an attribute of space. Within space, though,we can recognise linear subspaces, on which we can impose a preferred direction, thereby allowing the first three attributes of timeto serve as a basis for spatial metaphors. But since space can only acquire the attribute of transience through correlation with time by means of motion, no purely spatial metaphor can capture the transience of time. All metaphors for temporal transience take some kind of change as their source, and hence themselves depend on temporal transience. We cannot describe this aspect of time without lapsing into circularity. Hence time, in its transient aspect, has a sui generis character that cannot be captured bymetaphors that do notmake use of the very notion to be described: time, as a fundamental and inalienable feature of our experience, will ultimately resist our attempts to explain it in terms of anything else.