Yes, I heard of that, there was a review of it in next week's paper. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by kilted exile
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Yes, I heard of that, there was a review of it in next week's paper. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by kilted exile
First off, nouns are not limited to physical objects. Never have been. The old "person, place, or thing" is merely a way to explain a noun to first graders. A noun, says Merriam-Webster, is "any member of a class of words that typically can be combined with determiners to serve as the subject of a verb, can be interpreted as singular or plural, can be replaced with a pronoun, and refer to an entity, quality, state, action, or concept."
Thus, time, being a concept, is a noun. Some would accept that as existance, others might not. However, if we challenge the existance of time we must also challenge other concept nouns: anger, love, passion, sadness, and any other emotion. Anyone who has experienced emotion has a hard time challenging its existance.
However, that is a proof by collaboration, and is not exactly definate.
It seems clear to me that time must exist. I'm wasting time by posting this comment. Just because the past does not exist physically does not mean that it does not exist. In Orwell's 1984, he says the past exists "in records and in memories." Also, if I exist only in the present, then how do things I made in the past still exist now? Thus the past, at least, exists. The future, also, has to exist. Otherwise we could not be constantly moving into it.
Again, just because something is not physically existing, with mass and filled with atoms, does not mean that it does not exist.
Indeed, one would even say that time is intimately linked to the existance of everything. If there was no time, than how could anything exist? What would existance mean if it did not have a past or a future? Existance, to answer the question of rhetorc for this debate, could be said to be anything that can be expressed in knowledge, and expression and knowledge both require time. Imagine that there is no time. I would have no past or future. Then I would not exist. There is no third dimension if it can not exist in a fourth.
Finally, I would like to add something to console the skeptics. Time does exist, however, the measurement of time, a human creation, is not pure or absolute. However you define time, everything passes though it. While time exists, "hours" are merely a human measurement of it, a measurement that is flawed and could be said to exist only in human perception.
Outside of the debate, I must point out that the old joke "Time is something created by God so everything doesn't happen at once" is getting old on this forum. I swear, it's been posted at least once a page. Give it a rest.
Read The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. Very interesting. Its physics, but it gives you a whole new outlook on time.
time is a device, its how we reffer to yesterday and tomorrow. even the immediate. So yes- augustine was very accurate.
Than, time is alot like the bible - its just something that we invented because we believed it should exist, and be understood as reality. but time is not as arbitary as the bible, in that its nessisary to function in our societies. time just reminds me of an alright religion.
time is arbitrary even more so than the bible. at this exact moment, there is no time but an illusion of passage that our imperfect minds percieve, time is non existant and can only be percieved when one is not enlightened. Our existance is more like a movie, uncountable amounts of freeze frames run together, with each previouse frame affecting the next, time is only the percieved sense of these frames running together. Once enlightenment is reached time is irelevant since one will percieve its non existance.Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoffrey
Time is a way of humans explaining existence, death, and so on.
what does and doesn't exist depends on our understanding, our ability to comprehend things.
I do not think that it is unlikely that time exists, but I also do not think that I am one to say what does and does not exist, seeing as how I really understand nothing.
as humans we think we can explain and prove a lot of things. but the reality is that we cannot explain anything. nothing can be proven.
all I know is that i know nothing at all.
I think... therefore I know nothink...nothink!!!!Quote:
Originally Posted by hastalavictoria
I am not sure that I agree with you, I understand the idea that we know very little in the great scheme of the universe, but I wouldn't say we know nothing...we know quite alot actually, it just doesn't seem like much, since our knowledge generates new questions.
Actual time is only in the present. Before you blink that moment in time is gone and the next has come and gone. The past exists through artifacts - books - relics - what have you, but it still is existing in our time. The future can be predicted too, but only today - not tomorrow or yesterday.
I am a big fan of godfather clocks and pocketwatches though. I'd hate it if they lost there function.
A watch is the perfect existance of time, the past is not atainable, nor is the future, just the point that the hand stops on, for that instance that is a freeze, a stop, and then the next instant, the hand is at once at another location, and not at the previouse location in the same context.Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoffrey
...unless it stops! Sorry. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Stanislaw
well if it is allowed to act in its natural fashion...asuuming it is wound...and no one is playing with the arms or the like.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe
Sometimes I wish that stopping a watch would halt the perception of time though. :D
Maybe if everyone in the world all stopped their watches and clocks at the same time ...
Nah! :lol:
well...theoretically if everyone ignored time at the same time, it is reasonable to assume that people may no longer see the need to percieve it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe
:D
But wouldn't we all be late for work the next day? Sounds risky to me! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Stanislaw
well, if everyone ignored time...work would be irelevant, wed be a bunch of sitting-ignoring-meat-popsicles doing absolutly nothing...actually that would be pretty funny. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe