is it true that time is just an illusion invented by humans to make life more organized?

Question

my friend sais that time is just an illusion invented by humans to make life more organized so they can just say come at 9:00 instead of saying come when the moon apears to be three inches in the air but then we advansed it to be like no time no life is that true.

Answer 1

Time was invented by humans, nothing else cares about time but just exists. Even other animals don't care about time, they know the difference from day and night but everyday is basically the same day to them.

Answer 2

There are 5 different types of time. There is physical, psychological, philosophical, scientific, and biological. Each has it's own concept.
The philosophical one says; 'The past is totally abstract, it has already happened and can only be in your head - it cannot be held. The future is also totally abstract, it has not happened yet. It can only be in your head - it cannot be held. The present is an infinite small reality between the future and the past. Like trying to think 'think'. Once you think 'think', it is already a 'thought'. It cannot be held. So, is everything in your head, do they exist outside of your mind?
Scientific time is relative. As one moves faster, the time slows down. Until you reach the speed of light, where time no longer exists. If a twin left earth in a rocket ship that travels near the speed of light, and comes back after a year, when he returns to earth his brother will be years older than him. This was proven when they put 2 atomic clocks on 2 different airplanes, and had a 3rd atomic clock at the airport. Both planes left in opposite directions - flew around the earth, and landed at the same airport. All 3 clocks show different times accordingly.
There is so much more info on this....

Answer 3

it is true. time is an illusion of the mind. ask yourself what exactly is a minute? you might say, 60 seconds, but what are seconds? these measurements were put in affect to “stabilize” things. we have this illogical calendar (called the Gregorian calendar, put into affect by the church), we go by to keep things in order but when you closely examine it you quickly realize it doesn’t make sense. One quick example, look at the names of the months. We have November, the latin root for nov. refers to the number 9, not eleven as it corresponds to. Same thing with September, sept. refers to 7, not 9. our calendar is so off that we have to add an extra day every four years (leap year) to balance it out. And do your homework kids, it is a fact that there is no object in space that orbits or revolves 365 days in a year, we made that up. now with all that said, there are cycles that come and go. Such as winter, summer, spring, etc. but refrain from thinking of these periods in months/days/weeks. The sun rises and sets every day, but there is no real measurement for that. You should study the mayan calendar if you are interested in learning more about these cycles.

it is a really hard concept to grasp, especially since we’ve been using this system our whole lives. But once you realize there is no time, that’s when you everything comes into focus. The beauty of this is once you accept that time is an illusion, that’s when you really start living. Live in the present and don’t worry about the past or future. A wise man once said, “If not now, when?”

And for anyone who is reading this and is saying I’m a crazy idiot, I wouldn’t expect you to understand. you’re just so caught up in what you’ve been told and you just accept it without question. Besides I wouldn’t expect everyone to understand, it’s a spiritual thing.

Answer 4

There are different "types" of time. Biological time, psychological time, and of course lastly, physical time which your question is referring to.

There is mound of evidence to support that many living organisms incorporate "biological clocks" that govern the rhythms of their behavior. Animals and even plants exhibit circadian cycle in their behavior and biological processes.

Psychological time is best described as being conscious of physical time. "Psychological time" passes slowly who is taking an math exam, but later on he or she goes and plays a video game in which physical time goes much faster.

Physical Time is not an invention of man. That is like saying that man invented the seasons. Time would go on whether or not we are conscious of it. Time began at the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. Time is a continuum and is not dependent upon humans.

In telling time, we have been more sophicated in our modern society. Ancient Egypt and in ancient china, both societies used sundials dividing time 12 hours for the day and 12 hours for the night around 1500 BC. Sundials gave way to primitive water clocks. Eventually escapements were added to water clocks by 8th century c.e. The escapement is a ratchet that causes a wheel to move only so far and then stop, so that there is no runaway action when the clock is fully loaded with water.

By the beginning of the 14th century, the concept of escapement was known in Europe, used to slow down the motion of a falling weight attached to it by a cord or chain. This motion could then be converted with gears to turn the dial of a clock. Mechanical clocks using escapements and weights were gradually improved and put in towers all over Europe. Eventually, these clocks gave way to the atomic clock.

Time measurement of course, consists of counting the repetitions between recurring events or phenomena and subdividing the interval between repetitions, such as the earth revolving around the sun and rotation of the earth.

Now, if the moon consistently rose everyday, and you had to be someplace when it was three inches in the air everyday, that could be considered a repetition. But, there are times when the moon is not there at all (which is called a new moon), and unfortunately you could not use the moon as an interval of repetition in that way.

Answer 5

No, your friend is wrong.

Time was invented by rich bosses who wanted everybody to show up for work at the same time so they could get something done and make lots of money. Rich people like to criticize people who don't have a lot of money and they really get off on talking about being late, so they invented time so they would have a way to get their kicks every day fussing about someone being late.

Answer 6

Richard Feynman said that "Time exists so that everything doesn't happen all at once!"

By the way, if time didn't exist, neither would Newtonian gravity. The Newtonian "acceleration of gravity" is given by the change in the rate at which time runs in different locations. Yes, time runs at a different rate in different places, that is, at different heights as far as we're concerned here on Earth.

That difference in time's running rate with height here is almost unbelievably small, as the following example illustrates:

Consider two synchronized, identical, "perfect" clocks. Put one at sea level, the other on top of Mt. Everest. Watch them until
their reading differs by 1 SECOND. How long do you think you'd have to wait? The answer is:

30,000 YEARS!

(The one at sea level runs slower.)

You may think that this is an absolutely untestable idea,a mere example of the vapid musings of an airy-fairy unworldly philosopher idly sitting in an ivory tower, but NO, an equivalent thing HAS been done, and won its experimenters the Nobel Prize in Physics! In fact, it was done by two experimental physicists in a tower only 70 feet high, at Princeton in the early 1960s. (The method involved measuring the implied frequency shifts in photons from top to bottom of the tower; the results agreed with theoretical predictions to about 1% accuracy, a phenomenal result given the difficulty of the experiment.)

Time runs at a slower rate, the deeper one goes into a gravitational well. The limit is when it stops running all together, at the surface of a Black Hole. We can see and measure many such and analogous effects, as light brings information to us from elsewhere. These things are all going on without us being able to explicitly be there to impose human ideas about time on those different places far away from us. This indicates that time does have its own existence, quite separate from our puny lives. We are simply privileged too see it all happening, and able to interpret it self-consistently with the rate at which we find time is running here on Earth.

Tell your friend that!

Live long and prosper.

Answer 7

LOL, some people who answer this question are, lack of a better word, dumb.
Time is not man-made, the number symbol we use for time are, such as 'an hour, or a minute'. Those are based on the decay of some radioactive element.
In a sense, your friend is right that time is man made, but only how it is perceived and interpreted. But time itself is a continuous state of progression, thus not man-made.

Answer 8

Time is a unit of measurement so that we can understand how long it took between sequence of events. It provides a point of reference. Man has been trying to measure time for thousand of years. Because we can measure time so well now, it helps understand nature and the world around us. Also, I know exactly when to leave home so I won't be late for work.

Answer 9

Measuring time is a human invention just like measuring inches. However, time still exists without measurement just like a ruler has length without inches.

Answer 10

Well, let's try an experiment.

If time didn't exist, all events would be percived to happen at once.

So, unless you can look around you and see, for example, a tree outside as a sapling, full grown tree and being chopped for firewood, time must exist.

If time didn't exist, you'd be experincing your birth and death at the same time right now and for eternity.