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Thread: Does time exist?

  1. #1
    deciphering the codes Apotropaic's Avatar
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    Does time exist?

    My first thread, yey!
    Please forgive me if I've got a wrong view on this, but here it goes:

    I've read and heard certain people claim that time does not truly exist. They see time as a shred of reality, a human representation created merely to use as measurement for the 'how longs'. Cos really, when you think about it, what would change if the human mind never thought of the concept of time?

    Well, that's their view. As for me, I think time does exist. I'll expound further, but someone react first. I want to know what you people think.
    go to sleep

  2. #2
    De Memoria
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    I would think that if it is a construct of the mind, then it presupposes its existence a priori. If anything, I wouldn't call it a human conception, but a human perception.

  3. #3
    deciphering the codes Apotropaic's Avatar
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    So is time existent? Or just a perception, as you say?
    By the way, I don't know what the heck that first sentence meant. Im only 14
    go to sleep

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    You bring up a major issue that has intrigued folks since day one, whenever that was (there's a time-loaded statement). However, there is the word "eternity" and "timelessness" in the dictionary, also untimely, so there is a potential reality as to time's opposite.

    Then there is Harvey, in his own play "Harvey." Elwood P. Dowd says something like, "Einstein has overcome both time and space. Harvey has not only overcome both time and space, but any objection." That idea is worth spending some time, or non-timeliness, on.

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    learning IrishCanadian's Avatar
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    Saint Augustine adresses this issue in his confessions. Book 11 I think. He says that time exists, but only the present time. Heres why:
    The past has ceased to exist because it is passed. And the futer has ot happened yet. This is true even for the tiniest fragment of time. The only time that we can "percieve" is the present time, which is ongoing. He says the present moment is eternal and the rest no longer exists and the rest has yet to be.
    Irish poets, learn your trade!
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  6. #6
    De Memoria
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    St. Augustine raises a good point, and the only problem that I can find with this is that although time does pass and future has not come yet, it is more than perception that allows us to notice. It is our bodies, as they age they die. History is a bad word, but the past is obvious. The future on the other hand, exists as a will of thought. It is not yet, but it can still be percieved in the minds eye. We may just be using different defintions of the word perception, though lol.

  7. #7
    deciphering the codes Apotropaic's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by IrishCanadian
    Saint Augustine adresses this issue in his confessions. Book 11 I think. He says that time exists, but only the present time.
    Quote Originally Posted by Satirical
    St. Augustine raises a good point, and the only problem that I can find with this is that although time does pass and future has not come yet, it is more than perception that allows us to notice. It is our bodies, as they age they die.
    The thing is, time may have nothing to do with the aging process of matter. It is chemicals, cells wearing out, or running out of nutrition. It is the bones repeatedly being exposed to work. It is the skin suffering constant bacteria, and its moisture depleting. So again, what is time?

    Picture a world without gravity, things would not stay down. Picture a world without inertia, things would move continuously. Picture a world without the three dimensions...OK, too complicated. But picture a world without the fourth dimension, time. Would things freeze? Why? Cos time stopped? There's no time remember? One would imagine things would be exactly the same. Perhaps we'd need a new system of measure for 'how longs', but otherwise, things will remain the same.

    I spent days thinking about this. It's a mind-boggler
    go to sleep

  8. #8
    I gave this question a lot of thought after I read several books on quantum physics and relativity. Einstein proved mathematically that time is relative to motion and simultaneity doesn't exist for people moving at different speeds. One quantum physicist argued that two kinds of time exist -- ordinary human time and time at the quantum level, which can flow backwards under the right conditions.

    The 19th century German philosopher Nietzsche had a curious idea called eternal recurrence. It means that everything that can possibly happen has already happened an infinite number of times and will continue to repeat forever.

    But for me the question of time comes back to lifespan. Every living thing has a lifespan that more or less defines time for it. Even inorganic things like rocks have a sort of "lifespan": they break down over time and become dust. Stars definitely have a lifespan. After they burn up their nuclear fuel, they collapse into black holes or super-dense neutron stars.

    I know I will die some day in the foreseeable future and that makes time very real to me. Maybe time doesn't exist in the minds of animals who don't know they will eventually die. They might think in terms of an eternal now if they think at all.

    One thing I have noticed: the older I get, the faster time seems to go. When I was a young kid, an afternoon could seem like a week if I was doing something that fascinated me (or waiting for something bad to happen.) Now it seems like only a day or two has passed between my readings of the Sunday newspaper.

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    I always assumed it was the opposite, then again i'm only 15.

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    Fingertips of Fury B-Mental's Avatar
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    I think time does exist, at least on the biological level. Surely many rules of physics are bound by time. What is time on the astronomical level though. Do stars have a life? My answer would be yes. Even the universe has a proposed start. The fact that we as humans have measured it some would say makes it an invention of ours, but don't all things have a beginning and an end?

    Quote Originally Posted by starrwriter
    One thing I have noticed: the older I get, the faster time seems to go. When I was a young kid, an afternoon could seem like a week if I was doing something that fascinated me (or waiting for something bad to happen.) Now it seems like only a day or two has passed between my readings of the Sunday newspaper.
    Sounds like time is relative.
    "I am glad to learn my friend that you had not yet submitted yourself to any of the mouldy laws of Literature."
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    "My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends - It gives a lovely light"
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    confused1
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    Time. A question I have thought of continuously. But can it truly exist if man created it? Man creats flaws....!!!!
    When you look back you can only speculate and "fill in the gaps" of what has passed. Is time future and past but not present? Can it be that the clock time doesn't truly exist because each person goes by a "biological clock" from within. And can it be that the calculations and revolutions around the sun are not accurate? Are we not living by God's time? Time can just be a corralator between realities of what we know of ourselves to be true (intuition) and of what we think we know.
    This then poses more questions of truely existing....we can only SEE LIGHT!!!!!

    *if eternity means "NO TIME". can it be that we ARE living in Eternity........*

  12. #12
    Fingertips of Fury B-Mental's Avatar
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    How did man create time? Put it in a cooker and wait? Man created a method of defining time. The time itself had to be there in order for us to measure, and I am lost after line one of your post. Consider me confused2

    note to confused1:
    Can I get a couple of bags of what your smoking?
    Last edited by B-Mental; 10-26-2005 at 05:58 AM.
    "I am glad to learn my friend that you had not yet submitted yourself to any of the mouldy laws of Literature."
    -John Muir


    "My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends - It gives a lovely light"
    -Edna St. Vincent Millay

  13. #13
    confused1
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    has anyone ever seen "Waking Life" ???

    time reminds me of alice and wonderland...it's ALL in YOUR head...!!!
    "Names can be named, but not the Eternal Name."
    -Tao Teh Ching
    Lao Tzu

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    Quote Originally Posted by Apotropaic
    My first thread, yey!
    Please forgive me if I've got a wrong view on this, but here it goes:

    I've read and heard certain people claim that time does not truly exist.

    They see time as a shred of reality, a human representation created merely to use as measurement for the 'how longs'. Cos really, when you think about it, what would change if the human mind never thought of the concept of time?

    Well, that's their view. As for me, I think time does exist. I'll expound further, but someone react first. I want to know what you people think.
    Time is tightly linked to the concept of Entropy in Science. Entropy is an Energy measure of the disorder of a system. The law of Entropy is that without forces that counter it, Nature will tend from Order to Disorder: and it is this CHANGE IN ENTROPY that "causes" TIME TO EXIST. So time exists in that sense.

    Now what scientists thought before Einstein is that time was Universal that is to say a human on Earth and an Extraterrestrial somewhere else would read the same hour on their clock. This is not the case because it will depend on their speed relative to each other. Time is no more absolute but relative. I think that because of relativity people would talk about non existence of time I think the colloquial english term of existence may be misleading.

    An other question about time is: can we reverse the clock ? Until recently the Entropy of the Universe was supposed to be growing eternally (because Order as by law is not natural and since Universe is the ultimate system one could not act upon it by some forces) so that time couldn't go backward but new scientific theories may discover something else. For example the speed of light may be not as constant as one could think (whereas it was an essential postulate of Einstein's Relativity).
    Last edited by NewWorldOrder; 11-11-2005 at 01:37 PM.

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    Registered User Bmblbee's Avatar
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    Parmenides had it right!

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