What is time?

Question

We are told that the unit of time is seconds or is it? But long time ago there were no clocks or calendars, yet there was time. The concept of time and how it relates with the human mind and life in general just overwhelms me. Is time a man made phenomenon?
Could someone enlighten me before time runs out on me!

Answer 1

The thoughts of time should overwhelm the mind of everyone who thinks about it. Time is deeply relates to mind so much so that we are hardly able to thinks beyond time in space. Time in essence is condition upon the matter of the universe in existence. Just like things that sink in standing water everything would sink into non-existence it not changing with time – time is the change that we experience and observe in all things.

Check: If the time would stand still
http://uk.blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-_f0Tu4kic6e_K8FnfZnOPxde?l=11&u=15&mx=18&lmt=5

Answer 2

Is 5 to 2

Answer 3

For an excellent understanding of the concept of time read a book on the Philosopher Wittgenstein by David Pears.Wittengstein says there is no philosophy other than the philosophy of Language.In short time is constrained by language.It is not a scientific concept.You may wish to consider how each second was the past is the present and will be the future.When did time start and when will it finish? See the complications when we try to correlate a word with a specific meaning.

Answer 4

The best theories of physics are distressingly time-symmetric (apart from the 2nd law of thermodynamics) and things can happen backwards in time just as easily as forwards. Many have posited that our entire spacetime bubble exists in a frozen block - past and future all together and yet why do we think there is a now which is 2006 why I am not aware of things that happened in 1806 or 2206? We don't know. This in my opinion though is more of a scientific question and you'd be better off reading some popular science books than listening to some meaningless twaddle from philosophers.

Answer 5

Hi Moff, i think the real concept of time before the adventure of clock, calendar, etc. is the duration between night and night. As you can refer to in the Bible(Gen 1), it says and there was evening and there was morning, sun(day), moon and stars(evening and night).
Even season are observed with the occurrence of the sun, moon, the galaxy and the host of others in the sky.

It was man phenomenon to invent clocks which reads in minute, seconds and all sort; because man changes, he grows and will die some day.

Answer 6

Two distinct views exist on the meaning of time. One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence. This is the realist view, to which Sir Isaac Newton [1] subscribed, in which time itself is something that can be measured.

A contrasting view is that time is part of the fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number) within which we sequence events, quantify the duration of events and the intervals between them, and compare the motions of objects. In this view, time does not refer to any kind of entity that "flows", that objects "move through", or that is a "container" for events. This view is in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz[2] and Immanuel Kant,[3][4] in which time, rather than being an objective thing to be measured, is part of the mental measuring system.

Many fields avoid the problem of defining time itself by using operational definitions that specify the units of measurement that quantify time. Regularly recurring events and objects with apparent periodic motion have long served as standards for units of time. Examples are the apparent motion of the sun across the sky, the phases of the moon, and the swing of a pendulum.

Time has long been a major subject of science, philosophy and art. The measurement of time has also occupied scientists and technologists, and was a prime motivation in astronomy. Time is also a matter of significant social importance, having economic value ("time is money") as well as personal value, due to an awareness of the limited time in each day and in human lifespans. This article looks at some of the main philosophical and scientific issues relating to time.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines time as "the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future, regarded as a whole." [5] The American Heritage Dictionary defines time as "a nonspatial linear continuum in which events occur in an apparently irreversible succession." Encarta, Microsoft's Digital Multimedia Encyclopedia, gives the definition of time as a "System of distinguishing events: a dimension that enables two identical events occurring at the same point in space to be distinguished, measured by the interval between the events."

Answer 7

On Earth the length of the day is determined by the time it takes for the planet to revolve on its axis. The length of a year by the time it takes to revolve around the Sun. These are givens and would apply whether we were here, or not. So we did not choose that there would be 365 days in a year, that is a given. To divide a day into 24 hours is (I think) arbitrary But that's the limit of my "expertise"!

Answer 8

Philosophically, one can look at time as change. If nothing changes, there would be no time dimension.

That is why it is supposed to be the Big Bang that gave birth to time just as it gave birth to space (according to that named theory), since it assumes that everything was a static no dimension point before the Big Bang.

I agree totally with you that unlike space, understanding the time dimension is quite mind boggling.

Answer 9

Time as we normally think of it is only a series of numbers that are indicative of individual events and occurences. The numbers are not time itself.

Time is a relative state split into three sections. Past and present are known and experienced while the future is anticipated and inevitable.

I think you worry needlessly as it is not posible for time to run out, it is only possble for you to not keep pace with it!

If time does appear to exceed you capabilities, what is the worst that can happen? As Douglas Adams used to say..."I like deadlines...I like the whooshing noise thay make as they go by!!!"

Answer 10

Bang, the clock started ticking.
Energy decays, things wear out and head for entropy.
That is a period duration = time, meanwhile galaxy's, planets, life, little itty bitty rocks come and go....
Energy decay goes on regardless of life.....