What is time?

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by xersan

… But our clocks have standart pulses for every condition. The clocks are neverbecame slower or faster by the theory SR. If tempo of time can differ because of any reason, the clock can not show it. For example the period of day is became small, the clock show forward.

Please, if you will, let’s try to keep this thread free of the lively ongoing debate about the validity of Special Relativity. Many other threads are doing a good job of hosting this debate.

[Qfwfq]

Originally Posted by CraigD

I can't rotate it in a way that effects its time coordinates. For example, I can’t manipulate it in a way that swapps its time coordinate for its north-south coordinates, so that my old stylus becomes longer, or newer.

Yes you can rotate it. Er, uhm, not exactly rotate, but pseudorotate. Just run past it.

The so-called time dilatation and Lorentz contraction are nothing but a pseudorotation, in a plane that isn't spacelike.

[saidevo]

I would like to subscribe to the following theory on time, since
it is scientific, logical and spiritual -- all rolled into one.

1. Time is an illusion: not a reality, not a dimension.
2. Time is an illusion, born out of changes in space.
3. Time as an illusion, is cyclical, not linear.
4. Time as an illusion, is infinite, like space.
5. Measurement of time is a conditional break of infinite time.

I have the following reasons for subscibing to this theory:

1. Time is an illusion: not a reality, not a dimension.
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Firstly, time is an illusion, a mostly visual perception.

Close your eyes, switch off all lights, and sit down in a dark room.
Try to relax and still your mind. Just watch the thoughts flow by,
do not participate in them. Stay on in this position as long as
you can.--Now, what impression do you get of time or time passing?

You are sleeping. Deep sleep, no dreams. Do you feel time?
You are sleeping, there are dreams. You sense passing of time
in the dream events, but is that perception just not visual?

How does a blind man perceive time and its passing? He knows about
time, because he is conditioned into it, but how would he sense it?
What reference does he have as to events and the gaps between them?
His world may be mostly aural, but I dare say he still thinks
pictorially, because human thinking is mostly pictorial in nature,
and this man is blind only physically.

How do the animals, birds and other creatures perceive time?
The patterns of their behaviour sure do indicate sensing time,
but how do they do it, if it is not visual?

Secondly, time is not a dimension.

The idea of time as the fourth dimension is a favourite pick
of science fiction, and possibly started with H.G. Wells' novel
"The Time Machine."

Space has three dimensions according to Science.
Spiritually, however, space has n-dimensions.

Time has a dimension when measured: linear in local measurement,
cyclic in universal. But time as a dimension is an illusion because
of the illusions of the past, present and the future. As some of
the replies in this thread indicate, there is no question of any
time travel, only space travel.

2. Time is an illusion, born out of changes in space.
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Time, as we commonly know it, is the duration or interval between
two events. Where do these events happen? In space, inner or outer.

An event or happening, basically changes something in space.
A change occurs at molecular, atomic, sub-atomic or energy levels
with every passing event. We cannot think of time as separate from
space. The term lightyear affirms this fact.

Whereas space is real, time is not, as it is only a form of
measurement between two successive manifestations of space.

3. Time as an illusion, is cyclical, not linear.
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The very measurement of time is cyclical. The passage of time from
the future through the present to the past appears linear, but time
as such, whether measured in solar years, or some other scale is
cyclical. Nature shows that time is cyclical: sunset follows
sunrise, night follows the day, and the seasons repeat every year.

Further, the concept that space manifests as forms that are
created and dissolved back to space makes time to be cyclical.

4. Time as an illusion, is infinite, like space.
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Did not the time start when the universe was born? Will not time
end when the universe is ultimately dissolved? Where will it end
when the universe is dissolved? It will end into the inifite space
that ever remains as the primordial, unmanifested space.

5. Measurement of time is a conditional break of infinite time.
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The measurement of solar time in year, month and days and further
down is just a conditional break (Khanda kala in Hinduism) of the
infinite time (Kala in Hinduism). Because it is cyclic in nature,
we have the illusion of a continuous flow of time.

Regards,
saidevo

[Southtown]

Confucius say: Man in dark room grow old and die.

Though I truly like the cyclic part, and perhaps that is how uncivilized creatures perceive time. Everything seems to exist in an interactive state with something else. Consider orbital bodies, and the soothing of babies by rocking...

“Then God said, 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years'” — Genesis 1:14 nkjv

After all, every measurement of time comes from astrology except the week, which comes from the Genesis creation.

[CraigD]

Thank you, saidevo, for you words on “time is an illusion” – I think you do an excellent job describing this major position on “what is time?”

Originally Posted by saidevo

…Close your eyes, switch off all lights, and sit down in a dark room.
Try to relax and still your mind. Just watch the thoughts flow by,
do not participate in them. Stay on in this position as long as
you can.--Now, what impression do you get of time or time passing?

As someone who grew up in the 1960s and 70s in a liberal household in the US, I have done and continue to do quite a lot of what you describe.

I have just finished doing it again. Among many sensation, I felt an increased awareness of my body’s activity. One of these activities is the regular, clock-like beating of my heart, and the slightly delayed pulsing of the arterial termini it supplies.

So the impression I get of time it that it passes regularly, peacefully, and with awesome ease, but that is does pass, irresistibly.

Here is an exercise I’ve found more conducive to producing a sensation of timelessness:
Position yourself in front of a clock with a smoothly-moving second hand.
Still youself.
Focus on the second hand, anticipating first its position now, and its position one great division – five seconds - hence. See that it has reached the anticipated position. Now, anticipate its position now, and in a shorter division hence. See that it has reached that position. Continue.
At some point, without shifting your attention from the clock, consider what you are doing. Consider that 5 seconds is a long time, and that each subsequent division is likewise a long time.
What impression do you get of time or time passing?

[xersan]

Originally Posted by saidevo

I would like to subscribe to the following theory on time, since
it is scientific, logical and spiritual -- all rolled into one.

1. Time is an illusion: not a reality, not a dimension.
Regards,
saidevo

Your vision has large perspective about TIME.

You are right we don’t measure a concrete. Time is abstract, and our clocks run by the fixed tempo. And our clocks measure the time at this meaning (fıxed tempo).

If the tempo of time becomes slower, our clocks can not be reflected to us.

Besides, It is defined “lightclock” theoretically (I don’t know that it was realized). Lightclock uses the reflecting light instead of pendulum. Perhaps, it can determine the real tempo of time. But it has other problems for example direction.

[infamous]

Time is only the memory of passing events, to know the future would diminish the concept of time.

[Qfwfq]

Quite appropriate. Much like Kant's notion of time. Today, one should of course say "proper time".

[Little Bang]

The definition of time in a dictionary seems pretty straight forward to me. but apparently it flies over most peoples head.

[Qfwfq]

I don't think he was asking for a dictionary definition.