Illustration by Claire Scully
Become a Friend of Aeon to save articles and enjoy other exclusive benefits
Make a donationIllustration by Claire Scully
Illustration by Fumitake Uchida
Photo by Barry Lewis/Corbis
Photo by James Clarke
Photo by Jon Higgs/Gallery Stock
A seance in Paris, circa 1900. Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty
‘Hume’s philosophy of time shows the fundamental relevance of the relation between an observer and a reference object.’ Photo by Himanshu Vyas/Hindustan Times/Getty
The teleologians: Plato (left) and Aristotle in Raphael’s The School of Athens. Photo by Ted Spiegel/Corbis
The last remaining house on Holland Island in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, United States. Photo by Baldeaglebluff/Flickr
Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx by Joachim Patinir, c. 1515–1524. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Photo courtesy Wikimedia
Detail from Non-objective 1910, by Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). Krasnodar, Museo D’Arte A.W.Lunascharski Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images
Illustration by Lee Moyer
Man of Science (1839), artist unknown. American. Courtesy the National Gallery of Art, Washington
Marina Abramović during ‘The Artist is Present’ exhibition at MOMA, 9 March 2010 in New York. Photo by Andrew H Walker/Getty Images
Life as a process; a cicada larva emerges from its shell, July 2016 in Jinhua, China. Photo by VCG/Getty
Notting Hill, London. Photo by Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum
Photo by David Malan/Getty
Václav Havel wrote: ‘all at once, I seemed to rise above the coordinates of my momentary existence in the world into a kind of state outside time …’ Photo by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum