In both cases the imbalance caused by the existence of the exterior region yields time. In other words, time is an indefinite desire to reach the balance that only the universe has. And I think Albert would be delighted if someone successfully challenged his theory. That's why he wrote it. Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement.
Mankind has to be stirred up.
Dear child, go enjoy the world while it is still a mystery. Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. For the advance of the exact sciences depends upon the discovery and development of appropriate and exact ideas, by means of which we may form a mental representation of the facts, sufficiently general, on the one hand, to stand for any particular case, and sufficiently exact, on the other, to warrant the deductions we may draw from them by the application of mathematical reasoning. From the straight line of Euclid to the lines of force of Faraday this has been the character of the ideas by which science has been advanced, and by the free use of dynamical as well as geometrical ideas we may hope for a further advance. I find this continuous feedback and interplay between pure mathematics and theoretical physics most fascinating.