What would our world be like if time didn't exist?

Question

I don't think that time is a pshysical thing, rather a thoughtform which has given rise to a 'time culture' and offshoots. These include time pieces (watches, clocks, timers etc) lifestyles (nightlife, rat race etc) mindsets (jetlag, Monday morning blues, that Friday feeling) and so on.

This thoughtform has been perpetuated by humankind over thousands and thousands of years, to what we know today as time.

Answer 1

Star question!
Wonder why you chose to put it here under philosophy. The physicist has already given a highly read scientific answer which indeed is great!!
Let me anyway attempt a philosophical answer.

Indeed time is relative if we did not have scientific instruments to measure it .... more importantly, our thought process seems to beat the time though not quite totally.... but our physical processes can not beat time except for marginal changes... our heart beat is fairly regular in terms of time, we can run a mile in 3 minutes, but certainly not in 2 minutes or even less.

Even our thought process consumes time, however fast it might be.

I would therefore say that if time did not exist, there would only be imagination, no thoughts, no physical activities, nothing except imagination. The whole world would be non-physical imaginary existence... something similar to what we understand by illusion....

Mind boggling, really!! Thanks again for one of the greatest questions I have seen posted here!!

Answer 2

The world wouldn't be if time didn't exist. Time would always exist. Even if you smash all the clocks, tear up all the calendars, even if you have no means of measuring it and banish every reminder of it, time still is. It goes by, we're born, we die. If time didn't exist then everything would be static. No one would be born, no one would die, nothing would change. It would be a state of suspended animation. Nothing would exist. Time is an intrinsic part of life. Without it, life could not exist. It is because life is so transient that it is so precious. We won't know what it's like to live outside of time until the afterlife where we live forever in another dimension where time has no effect...

Answer 3

Very true! Time does not exist. It was made by man as a unit of measurement.

It's right up where with tons, pounds, gallons, acres, liters, kilometers, inches, miles. and so on.

I imagine this world without the measure of time, things would be very hectic. We would go to do things by the rise and setting of the sun. Which would be tough, since all days and nights change daily/ And what region of earth you lived. Try the extreme northern or southern region.

Think of schedules for planes, trains, etc. It would be idiotic.

Answer 4

Love your question.
Well, in order to answer this, we first need to define time. Can we do that? I don't know. Let's say time's a sort of phenomenon. How do we know there's time? Changes. We see changes. So, if there was no time, there wouldn't be any changes. So... I don't know if this world would exists if a change hadn't happened (the Universe was created by the big bang, and the big bang was a change). I guess. But, does it mean then that all of this exists because of time? I don't know. Maybe time emerged later, after the big bang, maybe it wasn't time that caused that change. Who knows...
Okay, I'm gonna stop thinking now.

P.S. Check Wikipedia for the definition of time. Very interesting.

Answer 5

The actual nature of time is concealed behind the time related jargon and the terminology we have devised over thousands of years, I agree that this is true. The way we are accustomed to seeing things is the main obstacle in the way of us seeing better. We assume that we know but all we know is only the limit we are able to know, and not all that is there to know. For example, the language we use to describe things and events in our life is in fact a wholesome arbitration where everything is known within contextual references of all other things. I am, for example, better known within the context of my environment.

Time is not an absolute reality; it is a fact a characteristic of the nature of all things. We cannot observe time as a thing but only as a universal characteristic of in all things. The simple fact is that all things change and we think they are changing in time, as if time were a river in which things are tumbling and turning, moving forward or lagging behind, appearing and disappearing. The reality of Time is quite contrary to this; it is not the Time that changes things, it is instead the very changing nature of all things that give us an observation of time passing – all things at a sub-atomic level change with the speed of light. The Time is the effect of this change that we observe from our own steady standpoint. But our minds are over dressed in arbitrary ideas, notion and assumptions preconceived through language that see everything as if it were run over, dragged along or propelled forward by Time as a running train.

If nothing would change and nothing would move then nothing would have ever existed; if electrons in the atoms of the table in front of you, for example, would stop then the table would cease to be in an instant; it would reduce into an ideas of a table in the abstract world of human mind perhaps. This is the only way that Time could stop, that all things in physical reality would cease to exist.

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AtVzKVA9iJXqSVfFc_yp2VkgBgx.?qid=20070217071838AAyjyBP&show=7#profile-info-4Kl79dd4aa
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AtJfdhyowwsBjw9cQ3i5vqLsy6IX?qid=20061220054835AA5WPep&show=7#profile-info-1cb39a7d10866d95b7a52a8b1fe6ba97aa
http://uk.blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-_f0Tu4kic6e_K8FnfZnOPxde?bid=170&yy=2007&mm=1

Answer 6

The world would be at a stand still

Time is ticking

The sun goes down all over the world each night
The moon rises each night
There is 24 hours in a day
Day turns to night
Night to day
Month after month
Years after year
Century after century
Eons and eons

Clocks were invented for our convenience in daily life

Time is real

Answer 7

Imagine living blinfolded so that you have no idea of time or daylight, and without any calendars, watches and timers.

No more Monday Morning Blues or Friday Feelings.

Answer 8

can you do an experiement for me. walk outside . leave your mobile phone inside wallet or purse and watch. when you go outside take a look around you and think of nothing. forget about time. and look at the sky the clouds the trees at night look at the stars . and think they will always be there. that time does not mean anything. go back inside turn the light off and sit down in the dark . for a few minutes and think what you could do in your time. think of nothing but you for a few minutes. then slowly get up turn on the light and ask yourself. Does time exist in me

Answer 9

This is a good question, but time always exists. It is a... thing... that has always existed, and will never cease to exist, even after the universe has blown up... or whatever its going to do. Human kind have merely found how to measure it, using clocks and the like. Really good question, keep it up.

Answer 10

let me say thet time is a finite concept that applies to the finite span of man as he exists here on earth. Every man is going to die certainly , this is when man faces the reality of ETERNITY. Unending existence in Heaven or Hell. If i may ask, "do you believe in both". You had better, Its the truth. Eternity is the only Description of a world without time. Live for God. Peace