Time: was it invented or discovered?

Re: Time: was it invented or discovered?


The way I am most comfortable handling my belief in time is to remember that there could be two types of knowledge, 'a priori' and 'a posteriori'. As Plato I think put it a long time ago there is "that which is" and "that which is observed".

Time can be both abstract and concrete. Time can be both finite and infinite. Time can be a constant and time can be inconsistently fleeting. Time can seem to pass slowly or fly by both figuratively and literally. Time can be measured and immeasurable.

We did not invent time. We only constructed the units to measure it and formulas to predict it. I suppose we may have discovered time but I submit that long before humans walked this planet and time was discovered seconds, days, and decades passed by unabated.

Time is something that we learned how to measure, in a very rudimentary way, for social purposes such as "The meeting is August 28 at 9 am." Everyone can agree when to meet, etc.

So we can measure time, in a way. But we didn't "invent" time itself. It has been going before humans, and will continue after humans leave the picture. We can tell ourselves that we can measure it to a degree...

But I am still convinced We don't actually know what Time is. What the H. is this thing called Time?

Someone prove me wrong?

"The real Universe arched sickeningly away beneath them.
Various pretend ones flitted silently by like mountain goats.
Primal light exploded, splattering space-time as with gobbets
of Jell-O. Time blossomed, matter shrank away. The highest
prime number coalesced quietly in a corner and hid itself away
forever."

- Douglas Adams

Time is money
I saw a medical documentary recently. We are not born with the concept of time. Babies and infant up to around 5 have no notion of time. I figure if we lose our parents there is no one to tell us how much we cost. So we become dysfunctional and does not realise that time cost money.

In keeping with Asherman's brilliant treatise on the illusory nature of reality (no link, you go and find it - that's your 'homework');

i repeat:

time does not exist!
it is illusory as may be the entire universe.
'time' is merely a convenient verbal 'handle' for use in therapy!

[and it ensures that the therapist will be overpayed!]

I think its safe to say you can distinguish our concept of time from the reality that drives our cosmos and its linkages to the Universe - at the macro and microscopic stages, in an empty vaccuum frothing with quantum bubble in a qunatum void, to time and space possibly swapping characterists as you voyage within the event horizon of black hole and enter the world of quantum gravity.

How much does our concept of time synchronise with the deepest reality of our Universe? We may never know!

BTW - there is still debate over whether time is quantised (10 ^ -45 seconds) or continuous, does time meaningfully exist is a volume smaller than a Planck cube 10 ^ -99 metres and did time or some exotic deravitive of it exist before the big bang (Hawking's virtual or membrane time -> real time at the moment of the big bang, to void a discontinuity).

Nice question!

Oft' times my brain explodes on impact with mind-boggling subjects such as this. Defining 'time' would be a good way to get more concrete theories from your audience...but then, that may just make the thread obsolete.

This thing is circular; consider decay. It happens, and in two perishable objects identical in all ways including environment, the decay should also be identical, but if a variable varies...which illustrates (simply through comprehending the example) that there is an existing "Time" beyond human observation. I make this claim in the mindset of a person rejecting the "if a tree falls in the forest" question as friggin' ridiculous. Also that cat in the box thing...that's just stupid.

Summation: There is an absolute Time evident in activity/events, and there is a Time that exists only in watches, clocks, and the human mind.

Another subject to smash your mind to pulp is Infinity. Does Space end somewhere? And what's beyond that end if so?

As some of you might know, Borges is my favorite author. He wrote a two-part piece entitled "A New Refutation of Time," so I feel that it is only appropriate to cite in this thread two passages, including his closing remarks, from that work:

"The denial of time involves two negations: the negation of the succession of terms in a series, and the negation of the synchronism of terms in two series. In fact, if each term is absolute, its relations are reduced to the consciousness that those relations exist. One state precedes another if it knows it is anterior; a state of G is contemporaneous to a state of H if it knows it is contemporaneous. Contrary to what Schopenhauer affirmed in his table of fundamental truths, each fraction of time does not simultaneously fill the whole of space: time is not ubiquitous. (Of course, at this point in the argument, space no longer exists.)

"And yet, and yet... To deny temporal succession, to deny the self, to deny the astronomical universe, are measures of apparent despair and of secret consolation. Our destiny (in contrast to Swedenborg's hell and the hell of Tibetan mythology) is not frightful because it is unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and ironbound. Time is substance of which I am made. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which mangles me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges."

Interestingly, Borges would say that by quoting him, I also become him for a brief moment, but that is a tangent to the topic at hand.

Time is not a concept that is problematical for me (not, for example, as problematical as "being" or "self"). But I'm sure if I were condemned to prison time would become the central concept of my life.

Time is the time of your life between the bookends.

Time does exist. Regardless of how it is disected or measured, time always has existed and always will exist. It does not depend upon a human concept. Plants experience the passage of time. Elementary particles experience time and do not require us to watch them.

When the tree falls in the forest it disturbs the air, which creates waves, which wiggle a bone in your ear, which registers as sound. The four necessary components are the falling tree, the air, the ear and a brain to perceive it. If there is one component lacking, then there is no sound.

tree vs. sound
That is rediculous. Existance of sound does not require you to hear it. Sound is the modulatoin of particles in the air (or other medium). They are there even if we don't hear them. A dog whistle makes no noise to us... but does in fact create a sound. Our inability to percieve the high pitch does not negate its existance.

If by "sound' we refer to the experience, then John is clearly right. If we equate air disturbances with sound, even when there is no experience of it, then USAFHokie is right. I personally prefer John's perspective. All there really is as far as I'm concerned is experience. Even thinking about and finding trace evidence of fallen trees are experiences. Objectivism makes sense, but it's so untrue to experience.

Nipok:

Plato was speaking Metaphysically - it was Kant that made the distiction bewtween a priori and a poeteriori.

G_day:

I thought M- theory was describing the most discrete untit of time as 10-42 seconds?

The Reverend:

The cat in the box is Schrodingers Cat:

http://www.phobe.com/s_cat/s_cat.html

I am not sure how you mean it is stupid. I think he is trying to prove that there is indeed an element to time that is hard if not impossible to define.

TF

Time is an index of our universe; Schrodinger's 'hour' is a place, an event definition, in which, unobserved two states simultaneously exist.

[Time serves to give perspective to all the various 'aspects of the universe]

Time is a measure of change, and change is a measure of time.

Change occurs whether or not we are around to perceive it. The earth and our universe have been changing at quantifiable rates for billions of years before human beings existed, which we can determine through observations and calculations.

The rate at which change occurs on a sub-atomic scale is slower where the gravitational force is higher (you can imagine a gravitational field as a kind of molasses which slows down photons, particles, and the speed at which atomic reactions can occur).

The experience of time is subjective, but the fact is that one moment can be distinguished from another by the change in position of the hands on a clock, the ebb and flow of tides, the erosion of mountains, the birth and growth of children, gray hair and wrinkles, and the accumulation of a lifetime of memories, at least until death or Alzheimer's erases them.

[Time is the 'medium'; physics is the 'message'.]

As a good friend of mine once said "I don't believe in Time"

Time would mean that there are specific points in space and reality in which our exsistence is headed. As if to say the path that we walk has already been cut out for us. But because choice is exstiential, then it negates Time itself. Choice has no bound nor end, and so there is no way to predict what a how the reality we are in now will move. The only reason we percieve "time" is because of the finite exsistence that we live in right now. When you have a mind bound by the parameters of material exsistence then "Time" is very real. We see each day as a begining and an end, becasue we see ourselves as having a begining and a end. So if you ask me, I don't think Time exsist, if by Time you mean that's it was about 4:15 when I wrote this post, then yeah. But if by time you mean how the reality moves around us, then no, it's all perception. What is time to a timeless being?