Abstract
In this short essay we postulate the "Epiontic Principle" (EP), a concept which underlies more or less explicitly many physical theories, and we study its implications, in particular for the nature of time. After a brief discussion about the distinction between temporal dimension and time evolution, we adopt the EP as a guideline in Gedankenexperiments in order to understand the inde finite and shifting essence of what it is commonly called "the past". Real experimental results -- analyzed here in accordance with the epiontic paradigm -- confirm our qualitative predictions. In a subsequent speculative section, the EP is applied to the understanding of temporal evolution and thus to the laws of physics. The essay terminates with some thoughts of a cosmological nature and on desirable future quantitative developments allowing to study the EP with the aid of toy-models: the epiontic foils.
Luigi Acerbi