A journey over time

What is the nature of time? What is its dynamics? How does it affect us and everything else in the Universe? These questions have instigated human reflection for millennia. There are consolidated answers that make everything even more complex, such as the space-time model of the Theory of Relativity, and proposals and findings for specific theoretical and empirical aspects.

“Off the Clock: The Many Faces of Time” is a massive open online course (MOOC) available on the Coursera platform (www.coursera.org). Its purpose is not to provide answers, but rather a comprehensive overview of the main formulations about time.

The journey through this breadth of concepts and theories includes paths that range from the conceptions of pre-Socratic scholars to Heidegger’s phenomenology, from the discussion about the arrow of time towards the future to the inexistence of the concept of time in quantum gravity, from geological time to circadian cycles that control our organism.

17 video classes divided into four modules have been produced by 13 young researchers from different areas and nationalities. They were the participants of the 1st Intercontinental Academia (ICA) launched by UBIAS, a network of university-based institutes for advanced study on all continents.

The ICA on Time has been organized by the Institute of Advanced Studies (IEA) at the University of São Paulo (USP) in partnership with the Institute for Advanced Research (IAR) at Nagoya University.

In two immersive meetings held at the IEA (April 2015) and at the IAR (March 2016), the participants had the opportunity to participate in dozens of conferences given by senior researchers in anthropology, philosophy, physics, neurobiology, chronobiology, psychoanalysis, environmental sciences, and other areas of knowledge.

The MOOC is the result of this interdisciplinary and intercontinental work. The content is offered free of charge, guiding those interested in the field of academic reflection on time.

We still don’t know if it is possible to travel in time, but we can already travel between ideas about it.