Quote:
Originally Posted by freeztar
Indeed, this is an age old question in philosophy.
Just to clarify, time dilation does not imply that "time is the property being altered", but rather the *measurements* of time are being altered. Hence clocks are used.
Science does not have a definition of time in the way that you are assuming. Science utilizes the second to measure time. The "essence of time" is a question for philosophy to answer. |
Yes it is only our measurement of time. Our measurement of time is not time. Let me pose the question from a different perspective. There is a clock that keeps a very accurate measurement of time for us based upon some cyclic action. For simplicity, each cycle is named 'one second of measured time'. The point is that the name second is only a name. As you have implied, so far as we can tell we are not affecting the property of time. We are simply working with physical action and its rate of operation. Each cycle of the clock could have been named one 'cycle'. If we compared another frequency of operation to that of the clock, then we would have units of cycle(a)/cycle(b).
James
