Time: was it invented or discovered?

This is an argument that cannot be won. While "time" is absolutely a human idea, it is simply a word given to a phenomenon just as gravity is given to the force which pulls ovjects together. The universe would not stop changing or evolving without humans. Muons, quarks and all the other elementary particles would still be born and die outside of our perception. That is to say, the phenomena (events) that our created word/idea, "time," defines, would still exist. So "time" would still exist. There would simply be no one left to talk about it, or ask what time it is.

:wink:

My argument is that time is not a phenomena.

All the things that are events or particles would happen anyway: without the concept of time.

Saying time would exist without humans is like saying inches would exist without humans.

Well, then like every other debate in here, it comes down to semantics. Of course the events would still occurr. You argument is analogous to me saying that if there were no English-speaking people that time would not exist simply because the idea would have a different name, eg "tiempo" or "nanji". It's silly.

From the instant of the begining of any measurement of time, no matter the quantification, all that can be referenced is past .... plain and simple. Until the arguments of the measurement are met, we live in an arbitrary future that appears as the past unfolds.
Inherently we are unable to escape to either enternity. So the answer to the question 'Time: Was it invented or dicovered', would be yes.

Second, minute, hours, days, tomorrow, weeks, years, decade, century, yesterday, last year, 2000 BC, 200 million years ago, are all manmade concepts of earth's cycle.

I stated early in the thread that time was more discovered then invented but I suppose it depends on how you want to treat time. Time as we use it and measure it and describe it and manipulate it could in one sense be invented. We invented the year and the second. We measured them and classified them and then adjusted them. In that way we invented what we perceive as time.

BUT

25,000 years ago the word year and second did not exist. They were not invented yet. The earth still orbited the sun and what we would consider to be the passage of one day of 86400 seconds would still be 86400 seconds whether the earth took 90,000 or 80,000 seconds to rotate once on its axis. So in that way we discovered time.

There was no first second, there will be no last second, and there is no smallest indivisible unit of time. Time is infinite just like the 3 dimensions that we use for Cartesian mapping of our known universe. Time is not the forth dimension. Time is not a dimension at all. Time is an integral part of the fabric of space, time, and energy but existed before the planet and will exist after this planet.

nipok, Not quite true about the number of seconds in a day. Ever hear of leap year?

Guess the atom clock in Colorado is the closest thing that measures our days.

Kind of the exact point I was making. 86400 seconds is 86400 seconds regardless of the amount of time it takes the earth to complete one rotation. A second is not actually a measurement related to a year. They are based on different constructs. A second is measurments based on the speed of light in a vaccum and the distance it travels. A year is based on the revolution of our planet and over the course of hundreds of years the fact that the number of revolutions can not be easily divisible by a fixed number of seconds. The spare seconds build up and in 4 years we have enough to create an extra day and every 100 years they build up enough extra to skip the extra day but every 400 years they are just short enough the throw in an extra day in place of the day that would have normally been skipped.

A leap year has nothing to do with 86400 seconds being 86400 seconds on a speeding rocket ship, a billion miles away from here, or inside the center of our sun. It is the same amount of time. HOWEVER relative to a fixed observer, the observation of time can dilate. Time itself does not warp or dilate, just the observation of time.

There is a difference between time and the ways we mesure it.Mesuring time derives from empirical experience (the rotation of the earth, for instance). But time as duration in itself, seems to me to be a condition of the possibility of our experience of reality. Like Kant showed, we can only experience things in time and space, although we do not experience time and space in themselves. So time was not "invented" by us. Our experience can only occur in four dimensions, the three dimensions of space, and time as another dimension of space itself - this according to Einstein's Relativity.
So, time is not a phenomena but the condition of our perceiving of phenomena.

The point is ..... we live in a constant state of birth and death with life's events determining death's circumstance ..... and death foretelling life.

Which time are we speaking about?
Now the question is: was time invented or discovered? The answer is both, i will tell you why. As soon as the world was created and the sun shown on it, time was there, even in the prehistoric time, time was there. But not as specific as time now, back then, there was a morning midday and a night, there were no numbers showing what exact time you had to be somewere. Time was there, just not the time we have now. In that case time was discovered. But now thing about this, why does a clock have numbers on it? Because we have modifyed it, we have created a type of time were you can be late, early, or on time. In this case time was invented.

Time has always been there, but not as we know it now, so we have in a case perfected time. Time was discovered, but changed, time has always been there, but now it is different than it was found.

Mind is divisive, it perceives the distance. The distance between two points is space. The distance between two events is time. Time is a product of perception of distance.

We can (fortunately) experience timelessness too. In love or in a meditative moment, the distance disappears. And the time stops. But as the intellect re-surfaces, all the distance, and hence time kicks right back in. In that sense, we keep re-inventing the time.

nipok, You're absolutely correct. I didn't do too much thinking on the subject before I posted my comment to you. Lazyness of mind is my excuse. <smile> Thanks for the corrections. c.i.