philosophy of time?

Question

what is time? have you ever thought about it? how can time EXIST?

existance is majorly defined for objects. for example an apple can exist. a car can exist. an atom can exist. but what does it really mean to say time exists?

is there an outside existence?

time is related to space as a fourth demention but in reality is it even possible? a demention in the same coordinations as space? It's hard for me to see how a constant cocept such as space can be related to a constantly-chanting concept such as time.

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What are you views on this? How do you define time? could it be just a human perception?

Answer 1

At the moment of the big bang, space and time, were created together. Time is a property, or more accurately a temporal dimension of the universe, which in addition to the other three spatial dimension, form a continuum called spacetime.

Time should not be thought of as separate from space.
As Einstein proved in his theory of special relativity, time is not absolute. Before this, space was proven not to be absolute as well, as different observers disagree about distance (for example, imagine a train travelling fast, inside someone drops a ball, it moves in one dimension (vertical down then up) according to the observer in the train, but from the outside(assume train is transparent), the ball will travel in two dimensions because of the motion of the train. Hence a coordinate system must be used for each observer. Such is the same with time. Since the speed of light is constant for all observers, then any disagreement to do with the speed of light between two observers must be attributed to a difference in space and/or time. As mentioned above, time is relative, and it is well known that a clock in a ship that is travelling say .999 c will run slower than a stationary reference clock. hence reference time is speed dependent

Most people regard time as a construct designed by man to create order, by breaking our lifetimes into days which are governed by the spin of the earth, and years, which are governed by our orbit around the sun.
Others might describe time as simply ageing, by using some other phenomena as a reference upon which to describe time. Stephen Hawking, in one instance, described time by its thermodynamic property (if i can call it that), by which entropy (disorder) increases....
I would describe time as not a mere measure by which natural processes occur, but without using anything as a reference for time, it is a fundamental part of the framework upon which our universe is made from. It (time) along with space, is affected by gravity, and can be bent and distorted. Before the big bang, time may or may not have existed, because with no matter or energy (assumption) and only a singularity, all possible future events would exist in a region of infinite density, pressure, and temperature.... or perhaps the singularity at the time of the big band was a result of a previous universe/universes collapsing due to gravitation, crunching its way into a point, with all past events and matter and energy compacted, only to stretch back out into the relatively ordered universe we have today....
In that case time would exist only for what was inside the singularity, and my question to you is what surrounded this singularity? did it have any dimensions? could time have existed outside the singularity before the big bang?



I would advise reading Stephen Hawkings best selling novel
'A Brief History of Time'.
It isnt overly technical, and involves almost no mathematics, but rather focuses on the conceptual understanding of space and time, entropy and many other aspects of modern cosmology.

Answer 2

Time as a NATURAL feature of the universe does not exist. Time is strictly a concept developed by sentient beings like us to separate events into what we call 'past,' 'present,' and 'future.'

Saying that another way --- there is no Cosmic Master Clock that ticks off the correct time for the entire universe. Time is not an absolute, but is relative. For example, here on the Left Coast the time is 11:45 PM, but in New York City the time is 2:45 AM Because time is not absolute, i.e. the Cosmic Master Clock bit, neither time is "right," nor is either time "wrong."

The reason space and time can be considered as an interrelated entity is for no more esoteric reason than it takes "time" to traverse any "space."

Answer 3

Russell has a good quote on this: We may note one peculiar feature of philosophy. If someone asks the question what is mathematics, we can give him a dictionary definition, let us say the science of number, for the sake of argument. As far as it goes this is an uncontroversial statement... Definitions may be given in this way of any field where a body of definite knowledge exists. But philosophy cannot be so defined. Any definition is controversial and already embodies a philosophic attitude. The only way to find out what philosophy is, is to do philosophy. —Bertrand Russell, The Wisdom of the West

Answer 4

time is a measure of sequence of events, if there is no events, there is no time. Time is a really vague concept because we cannot see or touch or smell it. But imagine that you lose all of your senses, the ability to feel, see, smell, taste, what would you think when someone say the length of my pen is 20cm? Although you know that length is the measure of how long something is, but just how long is it?

Answer 5

Time, like life, is just one darn thing after another.

It also stops everything happening at once.

Answer 6

I don't have time to answer your question now. So therefore, it doesn't exist.