What Is time?

Question

What is time?
I don't really understand that right now.
"Time is just time" (?)

Answer 1

Time has been studied by philosophers and scientists for 2,500 years, and thanks to this attention it is much better understood today. Nevertheless, many issues remain to be resolved—what time actually is; whether time exists when nothing is changing; what kinds of time travel are possible; why the time dimension has an arrow but a space dimension does not; whether the future and past are real; how to analyze the metaphor of time's flow; whether the future will be infinite; whether there was a time before the Big Bang; whether tensed or tenseless concepts are semantically basic; what is the proper formalism or logic that captures the special role that time plays in reasoning; and what are the neural mechanisms that account for our experience of time. Some of these issues will be resolved by scientific advances alone, but others require philosophical analysis.

Philosophers of time are deeply divided on the question on what sort of ontological differences there are among the present, past and future. Presentists argue that necessarily only present objects and present experiences are real; and we conscious beings recognize this in the special "vividness" of our present experience. The growing-universe theory is that the past and present are both real, but the future is not yet real. The more popular alternative theory is that there are no significant ontological differences among present, past and future. This view is called "eternalism" or "the block universe theory."

This raises the issue of tenseless versus tensed theories of time. Eternalism or the block universe theory implies a tenseless theory. The earliest version of this theory implied that tensed terminology (such as "will win" within the sentence "The Lakers will win the basketball game") is not semantically basic, but instead is analyzable into tenseless terms (such as "does win at time t" and "happens before" and "is simultaneous with"). Once all tenseless facts are fixed, all tensed facts are thereby fixed. Later versions of the tenseless theory do not imply that tensed terminology is removable or reducible, but only that the truth conditions of tensed remarks can be handled with tenseless facts. On the other hand, advocates of a tensed theory of time say that tenseless terminology is not semantically basic but should be analyzed in tensed terms, and that tensed facts are needed to make the tensed statements be true. For example, a tensed theory might imply that the world involves irreducible tensed properties such as presentness or now-ness or being-in-the-present, and no adequate account of the present tensed fact that it's now midnight can be given without these tensed properties. So, the philosophical debate is over whether tensed concepts have semantical priority over untensed concepts, and whether tensed facts have ontological priority over untensed facts.

Answer 2

Hghlander makes a good but long winded answer.
Man invented the MEASERMENT of time to mark the days and seasons when we were in the seminomadic state of development.as the ETNERNAL NOW moved and wedeveloveped cities and time sceduales to do things in the meaning of time changed into wrk cycles and to measure how long youv'e ben alive and how much longer you have to live.
The Celtic symbols of a circle with a equal armed cross in the middle is one way to think about time as the Creator of all things might view time as a never ending circle through which we move from one now to another now. and the interweaveing lines represent the choices we can make on the wheel of time . if we make a mistakewe can follow another path until we reach a point where we can return to our original path and try again.
Sometimes time as we preceive it seems to drag other times it flies by . That mabey just be our preception or mabey God did speed up the sense of time. Since It created it.
Time is movement through something we cannot quit wrap our minds around yet.
Okay mine is long winded also.

Answer 3

Experientially, there really is no time. There is only NOW.
The past actually does not exist. It's just our memories.

Likewise the future actually does not exist. It's only our hopes and expectations. The future is not real until it happens and then it's NOW.

All of the past for the last 13.7 billion years is contained in this moment, right here, right now.

All of the future is already contained in this moment, and stretches out for eternity.

All the past, all the future is right here, right NOW, in this moment. (And you're IT!)

Answer 4

Time is a way of measuring the relative movement of objects in space. Many scientists believe that Time is the 4th dimension, through which our Universe is moving.

Answer 5

I think that time was invented by humans...to do something at once.first the time was decided by the phases of the sun but it was not that exact.than they made all kind of clocks ...time exist only in the mind of humans.thing are happening recurring. and there are some things that can not be rated by time( haw can you explain that a dream in max 3 seconds... but in our minds can be days long?)time is some kind of meter invented by us(just like the other meters)

Answer 6

time is a demention that is imposible to completely understand for it can not be seen heard felt tasted ect, it cud b a figmant of the imagination, the most vitle thing in the univerce or even non-extantant

Answer 7

Time is the past the present, the future. the now, the then. there isnt a really good definition

Answer 8

Time is the stuff that keeps everything from happening at once.

Answer 9

time is a measurement of a dimension.

Good question