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Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve
Actually, I said 'constancy'. That does have a connotation of time in it somewhere.
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My bad, I misspelled constancy and let my spell checker fix it - not the first time that's got me in trouble. I once spell-checked minister into menstruate
Quote:
Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve
I'm not sure we can define it and that's the problem. It doesn't break down into component parts. Our only means so far is to pick one change that seems pretty fundamental and use it as a standard. And maybe that's the best we'll ever be able to do.
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I agree completely. I think you're really, really on to something here. To me time is so fundamental that it is hard to define. We can represent it with things (for example geometry) and we can compare it to things to some degree with metaphors. But, as you say the fundamental units don't break down into component parts. As far as I can tell, time has no parts - physical or otherwise.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve
Another problem is that if time is thought of as having an essence outside of our consciousness, people start seeing it as something that can be traveled through, as in a time machine. At that point any connotation of esoteric disappears.
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It seems intuitive that moving through time is somehow analogous to moving through space. There are, however, very significant differences. All our experience with time has been unidirectional. If we elaborate on time allowing for the terms past and future, we'd say that our past is inaccessible and our only 'direction of travel' relative to time is toward the future. Furthermore, all our observations of things moving 'through' time depend on their motion through space. If something is traveling at the speed of light then it will not move through time at all.
So it seems possible to put constraints on the idea of time and make informed guesses as to its nature. But, as you say, these constraints are often based on assumptions such as treating time as a dimension we move through which I just did. It's a useful assumption because it helps further our understanding and just as important: it helps us predict future events. But, it is fundamentally an assumption. As Overdog points out - there is no way to prove such assumptions directly. All we can do is build on them and see if what we build works well.
Absolute Newtonian or Galilean time and space ended up not working too well. We were forced to change some of our assumptions about space and time when relativity was confirmed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve
When we consider 'constancy of change' we assume a cause for that change. And that's the reason I keep coming back to this point. Something is causing change to happen and the universe is the effect of that.
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I'm not exactly sure where you're coming from. Mass is fundamental just like time and there is now a proposed 'cause' in the form of a Higgs particle and Higgs field - which has not yet been observed. Is this like you're thinking? A physical thing causing change? Or, some description or process or something that happened when the universe formed. I don't want to make assumptions about what you're saying and it's not exactly clear to me.
~modest
