how do we define time?

Answer 1

...the measurement of action!

Answer 2

Well your answer is in part in your question. Why measure it at all? Many cultures would not even think to "measure" time nor do they even have words for it. The reason is that they can not imagine what it is to do it. They live in the moment and can't get out of the moment without great effort. To measure time we first have to stand outside of being in time and observe it! Isn't that weird? How did we ever learn to do that? I bet those other cultures that the settlers first bumped into that did not have our time concept really were sent into shock when they realised what time was all about.

What if instead of using minutes hours days and years we arbitrarily think of life as divided by the number of product sales we make? Life would be so different in this system. The system we use automatically makes certain types of judgements and observations possible. You could be prtactically a baby with no sales at twenty-five of our years of age or ancient with 6000 sales at sixteen of our years of age. This would make sense to a lot of business minded people, but would be pretty horrible for the rest of us.
Time is an organizing principle but an organizing principle could be anything. One group of scientists worked it out in heart beats as one would expect of a science/medicine culture. A very close model to the clock but more person specific.

All of these use systems where the measuring increments are the same. I think that most people are fascinated with meaning based views of time. The micro second before the crash can last very long and the four hour agonizing wait for news about a loved one after the same crash will become a blip of memory a few days later. The stretching and taffy like experiences of time are truly most interesting. So what if we made a system that organized life not by time but by meaning instead? Would not all people identify with that system easier?

Answer 3

Ironically time is difficult to define but easy to measure.

I believe time is necessarily illusionary, wether that means hat there is only the now or all concepts of past and future are "now."

It is only by nature of the mind that we can "feel time" pass. Some drugs alter our feeling of time. Likewise, though we are not smarter taking drugs such as LSD we "feel smarter."

Surely there is a cause and effect nature to the universe but why these events take a long time as opposed to being experienced as one event immediatley happening right after enother is due to the "feeling aspect of time" that we experience some time intervals as short or long. (This is different from many things having to happen beore the other than little things having to happen before the other.)

Answer 4

Time is a dimension. Time is a commodity. Time is the plane in which we were designed to coexist. Time can't be saved, inherited or transmitted. G-D is capable of seeing time from beginning to end, HE just leans back and is able to see the whole picture, we are so little that we can only see intervals of time. Did I make any sense to you? I hope so. Happy new year.

Answer 5

I've always defined time as "measured Existance". whether some people measure life from minutes, hours, days... and others measure from event to event, becomes irrelevant.

There's my $.02

Answer 6

I think we can define time by the repeated occurence of events in nature.we can define the day by rising and setting of sun.Night time by the rising and setting of moon.Year by the seasons.etc.

Answer 7

Time is the measurment between movements in the world. Without movement, there'd be no time.

Answer 8

Time only exists for the living. When we die ,we are out of time.

Answer 9

Perceptual illusion.

Answer 10

can we really define it as such?