Understanding Time

[rabid reader]

Whilst reading a poem by Aunt-Shecky(sp?) I was reminded of an interesting topic that I had seen raised in my fiancée's anthropology texts. In understanding the social convention of Time and how our relationship with our environment is also effected by that idea.

The concept of Time that we have developed is dependent on "clock-time" meaning that we brake our life into "years" and then "Months" "Weeks" "days" and then into "hours" "minutes" and "seconds." The interesting thing is that our measurements of time with regards to the clock have only really existed since the advent of the industrial revolution (Hassen, 2003: 225-230). Not to say we did not have a conception of Days or years or months, but that hours, minutes and seconds were not a significant tool of description in our relationship with time.

The reason that it is significant that our contemporary understanding of time is from a time of great economic growth is because of how this concept has changed our perspective of time unto its own axis. Clock time was invented with the goal of organized production, these are the hours of work, and as such it is no longer acceptable for you to be here after this time and leave before this time, no matter if the sun has yet to raise or is unwilling to put off falling.

I know it seems odd that I mentioned this was inspired by a poem but what was truly intriguing for me was here comments above said poem where she discusses the idea of solutions or decision making not occurring in time, whilst one would have to say the everything that is done, has been done and will be done is done in the exact amount of time that it is done in, thus faster, slower and expectations have little influence on the results.

Just wondering what you think and what your idea of what time is... is?


Bibliography


Hassan Robert. 2003. Network Time and the New Knowledge Epoch. Time and Space Vol. 12 Iss. 2: 225-241.

[keilj]

My viewpoint of time is pretty much summed up by that Chicago song

[hillwalker]

Time is very much a figment of human imagination. They say it is relative - but in fact it is much more complex than Einstein's theorising. Everything is down to an individual's perception.
Time and motion and the speed of light, for example, are different for each observer. We don't notice the differences during our day to day life because the differences are minute. But if were travelling at the speed of light these differences would be evident, to such an extent that no two people can experience the same reality.
Eistein did manage to show that reality actually exists in an infinite number of states, depending on where you are and how fast you are moving. Two objects moving apart, for example, give the observable impression of pulling away from each other at speeds dependent on whether one, or both, are moving, and at what speed and in which direction. But from the perspective of the light beam there is no movement between the two objects.
Two objects travelling at, say, 50% the speed of light and 99% the speed of light respectively would neither appear to be moving from the perspective of the light beam itself - because in both cases light itself would still be travelling faster than both objects by the speed of light. Logic says that light would only be travelling 1% faster than the second object, (compared to 50% faster than the first) but light always travels at the same speed whether you measure it from a static point (and there's no such place in the universe) or a moving point.

Confused? Sorry - me too.

H

[keilj]

Q in Star Trek said something like "You humans have such a linear view of time"

[rabid reader]

Time is very much a figment of human imagination. They say it is relative - but in fact it is much more complex than Einstein's theorising. Everything is down to an individual's perception.
Time and motion and the speed of light, for example, are different for each observer. We don't notice the differences during our day to day life because the differences are minute. But if were travelling at the speed of light these differences would be evident, to such an extent that no two people can experience the same reality.
Eistein did manage to show that reality actually exists in an infinite number of states, depending on where you are and how fast you are moving. Two objects moving apart, for example, give the observable impression of pulling away from each other at speeds dependent on whether one, or both, are moving, and at what speed and in which direction. But from the perspective of the light beam there is no movement between the two objects.
Two objects travelling at, say, 50% the speed of light and 99% the speed of light respectively would neither appear to be moving from the perspective of the light beam itself - because in both cases light itself would still be travelling faster than both objects by the speed of light. Logic says that light would only be travelling 1% faster than the second object, (compared to 50% faster than the first) but light always travels at the same speed whether you measure it from a static point (and there's no such place in the universe) or a moving point.

Confused? Sorry - me too.

H

It is a little mind boggling but I think I understand what you're saying. Another interesting concept of time that I read in Nietzsche and a similar thought in Heidegger seems to circle around the idea of eternality of life. In Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra the character Zarathustra becomes distraught with the idea of having to relive his life again with all the choices he made, including the ones he regrets, it is accompanied by the allegory of a shepherd choking on a snake. Presumably it is an allegory of personal regret, choking an individual and not allowing it to pass, eventually the shepherd, under the guidance of Zarathustra bites down on the snake, allowing him to swallow his past sins and his remorse, and allowing him not only to life, but he:


No longer a shepherd, no longer human-one changed, radiant, laughing! Never yet on earth has a human being laughed as he laughed! O my brothers, I heard laughter that was no human laughter; and now a thrist gnaws at me, a longing that never grows still. My longing for this laughter gnaws at me;

What seems to be described here is a longing for a life without regret. The idea of life being repeat, consciousness continuously progressing in the same cycle, thinking the same thoughts experiencing the same happiness, and the same sorrow at the same time, for all eternity, that is the most terrifying hell for Zarathustra. The shepherd on the other hand embraces it as this is his life, this is the time he has and he will welcome it fully.

This idea of life, individual life, as an eternity is shared in the philosophies of Heidegger in the concept of the dasein. I apologize if I bastardize this theory, but what Heidegger postulated is that each and everyone of us is but a memory, or a past of our dasein, living eternally as the same person in the same experience. Our individual futures are our individual histories.

Now how is this relative to the concept of time? If one considers their own life as a semblance of eternity, then really time is nothing but perspective, as Einstein wrote, albeit in a much more scientific mind set. Light is a constant and as such is the length of your own existence. If you live ten years, and your friend lives twenty the time of a year is not a constant between the two lives.

An interesting side effect of viewing ones life as an eternity is that one has as much time as they need to accomplish what it is that they will do, and the time that passes in accomplishing those deeds is the time that it is necessary to finish them.

[The Atheist]

I apologize if I bastardize this theory, but what Heidegger postulated is that each and everyone of us is but a memory, or a past of our dasein, living eternally as the same person in the same experience. Our individual futures are our individual histories.

Heidegger should've laid off the booze.

Time exists, and we know that from the movement of the stars. Humans just measure it in convenient - to us - terms.

[JuniperWoolf]

Something cool about one earth year: there are variations in the amount of time it takes for the earth to make it's way around the sun. I wonder why that is. If the earth isn't meeting any resistance in space and the sun's gravity is constant, shouldn't our rotation always be predictable?

[OrphanPip]

I think it is mostly predictable, but the Earth's orbit is eliptical and goes through phases. Not an astrophysicist though, so don't hold it to me.

Although, given enough time the mass of the Sun will change, I imagine this will have an effect on the Earth's orbit, but everything on Earth will likely be dead by that point.

[Gladys]

Niels Bohr once said to Werner Heisenberg that the role of physics was not to describe how nature is, but to find out what we can say about it. Theory is but a model.

Human understanding of time varies from culture to culture. Culture and language necessarily limit our ability to understand or communicate about most aspects of nature. Still, we do our best and, sometimes, make more than a little progress.

[The Atheist]

Something cool about one earth year: there are variations in the amount of time it takes for the earth to make it's way around the sun. I wonder why that is. If the earth isn't meeting any resistance in space and the sun's gravity is constant, shouldn't our rotation always be predictable?

Nope. There are far too many variables, not least of which is gravitational pull of other planets.

[Revolte]

Time is nothing, it doesn't exist (sorry athiest, I get why you said it does, but I'm not getting into it that deep, I think alot more simple then that). All it is, is a man made idea to help keep things in "order" though I must say it seems to have the opposite effect sometimes. I think time, as well as age and dates ( months, years ect.. ) are BAD for our mental and emotional health. If I could, I would destroy all knowledge of time.

[Cunninglinguist]

Time is nothing, it doesn't exist (sorry athiest, I get why you said it does, but I'm not getting into it that deep, I think alot more simple then that). All it is, is a man made idea to help keep things in "order" though I must say it seems to have the opposite effect sometimes. I think time, as well as age and dates ( months, years ect.. ) are BAD for our mental and emotional health. If I could, I would destroy all knowledge of time.

I have to disagree on the simple basis that you cannot start out an argument saying "all it (time) is..." and end with "therefore time does not exist." In other words you cannot start out with a premise "x exists" and end with "x does not exist." Contradiction. E.g. you cannot say "a table is made of a slab of wood and 4 legs, therefore tables do not exist."

One might like to think of time as an extra spatial dimension, t. And just as two experiencing entities might not exist on the same stratum as eachother on the x, y, or z axis, the entities might not have the same value of t either. This discrepancy is acheived through time dilation, as hillwalker points out. Though this leaves many questions unanswered.....

[Revolte]

I have to disagree on the simple basis that you cannot start out an argument saying "all it (time) is..." and end with "therefore time does not exist." In other words you cannot start out with a premise "x exists" and end with "x does not exist." Contradiction. E.g. you cannot say "a table is made of a slab of wood and 4 legs, therefore tables do not exist."

One might like to think of time as an extra spatial dimension, t. And just as two experiencing entities might not exist on the same stratum as eachother on the x, y, or z axis, the entities might not have the same value of t either. This discrepancy is acheived through time dilation, as hillwalker points out. Though this leaves many questions unanswered.....

I still think time is something people have created, and without people time wouldnt have any use, so it really doesnt exist, but can still be talked about because we keep it afloat. It's nothing physical, it's an idea, idea's don't really exist as you can't hold them, breath them, be in them, or touch them. You can think them, but you can think anything.

[Cunninglinguist]

I still think time is something people have created, and without people time wouldnt have any use, so it really doesnt exist, but can still be talked about because we keep it afloat. It's nothing physical, it's an idea, idea's don't really exist as you can't hold them, breath them, be in them, or touch them. You can think them, but you can think anything.

You're onto something there, but you're still stuck in a semantic paradox. "nonexisent" and "dependent on human experience" are not synonymous, i.e. just because an idea's existence is dependent on human experience does not make it non-existent. In fact one might suggest that even the existence objective things is dependent on human experience, in this way one might argue that ideas are just as objective as a vase, book, computer, etc. or that these things are just as subjective as an idea. There is something to be explored there, as everything is just an experience of some sort.

[The Atheist]

I still think time is something people have created, and without people time wouldnt have any use, so it really doesnt exist, but can still be talked about because we keep it afloat. It's nothing physical, it's an idea, idea's don't really exist as you can't hold them, breath them, be in them, or touch them. You can think them, but you can think anything.

You're confusing Bertrand Russell's teapot orbiting Venus with reality.

I can't prove the teapot doesn't exist, but I can certainly prove that time exists. The expansion of the universe provides proof that time began and is still running. Human time is a construct, but the passage of time is not.

Seriously, if you want to make time go away because of some pre-conceived idea, you may as well join the thread about the universe orbiting earth, or try to prove that 2+2=5.

Reality really is real.

[Revolte]

You're confusing Bertrand Russell's teapot orbiting Venus with reality.

I can't prove the teapot doesn't exist, but I can certainly prove that time exists. The expansion of the universe provides proof that time began and is still running. Human time is a construct, but the passage of time is not.

Seriously, if you want to make time go away because of some pre-conceived idea, you may as well join the thread about the universe orbiting earth, or try to prove that 2+2=5.

Reality really is real.

2+2 isnt 5 it's 22.

anyhow, maybe I got a bit lost on the exact kind of time we are talking about, but in terms of 9 PM kind of time, we created it, it's not a universal truth, that's what I was getting at.

[TheFifthElement]

I thought we'd all moved past the concept of time into spacetime.

[keilj]

Time is nothing, it doesn't exist (sorry athiest, I get why you said it does, but I'm not getting into it that deep, I think alot more simple then that). All it is, is a man made idea to help keep things in "order" though I must say it seems to have the opposite effect sometimes. I think time, as well as age and dates ( months, years ect.. ) are BAD for our mental and emotional health. If I could, I would destroy all knowledge of time.

good point. kids get along fine before the concept of time is ever explained to them

[hillwalker]

I have to agree with Revolte on this. Time is a human concept created to make sense of what we see around us - events occurring in sequence or at a particular rate rely on the concept of time so that we can explain their interaction with each other.
So - the concept of time exists. But 'time' itself - does it exist in space as some kind of matter? No.

Likewise one could say that gravity is also a human concept - it exists as a concept to explain how one body attracts another dependent on relative size. But you can't grab hold of gravity and pass it on to someone else. You can't store it for future use. It is purely a way of explaining what we observe.

If we think logically enough most of our understanding of the universe and our place in it has been simplified to bare-bone concepts that we are comfortable with. Confusing the existence of a concept with the existence of the man-made conceit on which that concept hangs is easily done. But as Captain Kirk would confirm, there's a lot more out there that we cannot begin to comprehend.

H

[keilj]

But as Captain Kirk would confirm, there's a lot more out there that we cannot begin to comprehend.

H

comprehend and seduce

[rabid reader]

Heidegger should've laid off the booze.

Time exists, and we know that from the movement of the stars. Humans just measure it in convenient - to us - terms.

It was less about freewill and movement through time and more about the psychology of personal history. By claiming your individual life is an eternity he is basically saying "All those people out there telling you to do this and do that and this wasn't done on Time, they are essentially misguided."

Time exists for the individual in relation to their life.


As for what Revolte says, about time "not being real" time is as real to us as the concept of value which is another human manifestation that dictates to our existence. Meaning it is real in its influence. Which I know you addressed, but I am confused where you thought this discussion had moved into the understanding time as a physical entity? Now time as a physical entity can be examined not in hours/minutes/seconds, not even years, time can be seen as infant, adolescent, young adult, middle aged, elderly, death. The evolution of ones own life in itself a clock of sorts, it needs movement through a temporal understanding to take physical affects, otherwise if we were not moving from present moment to present moment we would stand still and not change frozen like a picture, an eternity (the absence of time).

[The Atheist]

anyhow, maybe I got a bit lost on the exact kind of time we are talking about, but in terms of 9 PM kind of time, we created it, it's not a universal truth, that's what I was getting at.

Yep, and I'd agreed with that. We put it in terms we can understand or we'd need a PhD astrophysicist to tell us when breakfast was due. We're just lucky that the rotation of the earth gives us convenient units.

If the earth didn't rotate and an orbit of the sun took 457.334 years, we'd look at it quite differently.


But 'time' itself - does it exist in space as some kind of matter? No.

What does "matter" matter?


It was less about freewill and movement through time and more about the psychology of personal history. By claiming your individual life is an eternity he is basically saying "All those people out there telling you to do this and do that and this wasn't done on Time, they are essentially misguided."

Time exists for the individual in relation to their life.

I can't agree with the concept as it's too solipsistic.

Because we live in a world created by our forebears, ignoring time is just a self-centred way of looking at the universe. Zaphod Beeblebrox would approve, though.

Can I use dark energy as a metaphor for time? We can't see it, we can't measure it, but it clearly exists and we have a planet and solar system because of it. Ignoring it changes nothing except our understanding of it - the little understanding we have yet, anyway.