Abstract

This paper explores the status of some notions which are usually associated to time, like datations, chronology, durations, causality, cosmic time and time functions in the Einsteinian relativistic theories. It shows how, even if some of these notions do exist in the theory or for some particular solution of it, they appear usually in mutual conflict: they cannot be synthesized coherently, and this is interpreted as the impossibility to construct a common entity which could be called time. This contrasts with the case in Newtonian physics where such a synthesis precisely constitutes Newtonian time. After an illustration by comparing the status of time in Einsteinian physics with that of the vertical direction in Newtonian physics, I will conclude that there is no pertinent notion of time in Einsteinian theories