Time: Linear or cyclical?

Question

To you ...
Does time go on and on and on ....
Or is there only so much of it and it just repeats itself in different patterns?

Answer 1

Neither, it's conceptual. Linear and cyclical are just tags that we use to solve the problems that concern us in our 21st century 3-dimensional brains.

Answer 2

According to McTaggart, time is not real, in which case how can it be either linear or cyclical?

Some Eastern ideas of time believe that time is cyclical, but repeats over very long intervals. It is difficult to see how we can tell if time is organised thus rather than being linear.

Time relates to our universe. If there are multiple universes, as many people believe, perhaps time could be cyclical in some of them and linear in others.

The concepts linear and cyclical relate to the spatial dimensions. If time is a separate (fourth) dimension, does it make sense to apply these spatial concepts to time?

Answer 3

Its rather hassle-free to confirm the way it would desire to be cyclical. recognize the increasing and contracting forces of nature, as you may that of breath, heart beat. Its some thing a 5 12 months old might desire to do. If there is an increasing singularity and contracting singularities, does not that create a cyclical action? the super Bang is merely one kind of the commencing place of the universe. we've so far long gone previous it, and different fashions are often aired on television and can be discovered actual on the internet.

Answer 4

Eastern beliefs say time is a spiral which is both linear and cyclical. It always travels forward, but it also cyclically travels around, constant permutations of the same cycle endlessly.

I'm gonna trust Einstein on this one. If time is another dimension of space and all of our spatial directions travel linearly (i.e. up is just up, it doesn't cycle), we can infer that time too travels linearly. Although, to a fourth dimensional being, all of our time is a dimension of space, so to them, our time wouldn't travel at all. It would be a still sculpture that they could examine in it's entirety.

Answer 5

Time is merely a construct, created by our brains, to organise and order the universe around us. It is inseparable from space and matter, one cannot exist without the others. Hence your question is invaid. It is not a question of linear or cyclical, it does not flow from one side to another, it does not go round in circles or up or down or backwards. It is like colour, it is like sound, it is simply our brains making sense of things, because without this way of creating order and understanding, the universe would appear chaotic, a muddled mess of everything that ever existed and happened colliding with everything that is happening and that ever will happen.

Answer 6

Time is cyclical in the respect that once a minute passes another begins or a year passes another begins, but time is also linear as it only goes in one direction. It isn't possible to go back in time (as yet???)

Answer 7

Time is linear,it's the Universe thats cyclical.

Answer 8

"Time" is a form of energy and part of the light spectrum which only surrounds and/or adheres itself to that which is living/alive.
In deep space there is no "time".... (it exists but doesn't effect).

"Life" both generates the frequencies which attract it and which pass it on. The frequencies around such objects are in layers and become more compact as the living entity progresses through its own cycle constantly emitting them, the older something is the more external pressure which is added to it by the weight enhancing wear.

The mind is capable of tapping into any of the frequencies generated by and surrounding ones self...... "memory". Likewise, it is also possible for an entity to tap into any of the frequencies surrounding and which have been emitted by our planet.

Ok, that's enough........

Answer 9

I'd like to think that it goes on and on and on but only when I feel happy, so that it would mean I could only get happier.

When I am miserable, I tend to see it as a cycle because 1) that way I am not surprised every time, and 2) if I thought of it as going on and on, I would definitely run to the nearest train station and get a post mortem Ana Karenina club membership card.

Answer 10

time: man's attempt to measure/explain the changes he observes in the universe. time ( as a period of change ) is tied up with the universe and has no existence outside it.

the universe: since the big bang, will either:
1, continue expanding - linear
2, settle into a balanced state - linear
3, contract into the big crunch - cyclical

2/1 on linear, but that could easily change given time.