The hodgepodge terms and theories about time—presentism, eternalism, tensed time, untensed time, the evolving block universe, relationalism, etc.—is a symptom of the fact that there is no consensus as to what time actually is. Nonetheless, to the extent that there is a favored theory in physics and philosophy, it is certainly eternalism. Eternalism, however, is not merely counterintuitive—it mocks one of the most universal features of human experience:
