A Little Debate I had at my school about whether or not Time was created by man or not.. Who's right?

Question

There was a question on a recent Exam in my history class about "When did man invent time?" Now I realize i could have answered with the answer he [my teacher] wanted but I really wanted to discuss this to him, so I simply wrote on the Exam "Time was not invented by man, it was created with the universe", and as I expected.. he marked it wrong, so I argued it with him after class. I explained to him that time wasn't created by man, and he argued back that all time is, is a measurement of our existence, and that what I'm thinking of is that existence was created with our universe. Then I explained to him that yes he was right.. Man did create a way to "MEASURE time" and that a "second" is no different from a "metre" when talking about "distances".. I got the question wrong, and am wondering who is right in this situation!

Answer 1

Physicists have been pondering the question of time for centuries, and a history teacher has the final word on it? Gimmie a break! It's one of the most difficult unresolved questions in physics, and regardless of what your history teacher badly undereducated in physics thinks, it is not true that any arbitrary physical system permits the existence of time as a parameter. We happen to live in an universe where time can be used as a parameter, we weren't responsible for that, any more than we were responsible for the Big Bang. If he wants to argue that man invented clocks and other time-keeping devices, give the man his ten points, but time as a physics variable is another story. He should stick to history.

As for the poorly worded history question, "When did man invent time?", that's lost in early Cro-Magnon history when men looked up to the sun, the moon, and the stars, and noticed that there was a regularity to the changes, probably the simplest being the lunar phases in addition to the daily cycle. I'm sure that even the earliest hunters were "pressured by time".

Answer 2

Try asking him whether mass was invented by man.. or whether objects may possibly have had mass even before we invented standard kilogram lumps of metal! As far as I can tell, this is an equivalent question.

The fact that thermodynamic processes invariably headed in one direction before man even existed is just one way to prove that the physical dimension of time wasn't invented by man.

I think your teacher is a bit confused and that you're on the right track.