Does time really exist?

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In an individualistic sense, time and matter did just appear suddenly. But we also can percieve life objectively, recognizing how we fit into a causal chronology. "The man who reads 1000 books, lives 1000 lives", in this sense we may also interject ourselves into different periods of time, through historical accounts of man and societies.




Lol
If a tree fell on a mime in a building, would anyone care?

Time is change itself though, and its existence is known through memory of the changes. Memory itself is a way of perceiving change. So of course it exists as a dimension. Change is an intrinsic part of space, because space is constantly expanding, and the matter within it is constantly re-ordering.

Laying aside how things originated for a moment, of Time, Space and Matter, only Matter seems to exsist.

Space is essentially nothing and until proven otherwise looks to me to be infinate in all directions. An endless supply of nothing.

Time does not seem to exsist of itself or be a dimension. You can't move along it in either direction. It only appears to be something in the sense of being remembered as JNathanK mentioned. But its just memory like in your brain or written on a piece of paper, or remnant evidence like a fossil in rock which has survived, but those events no longer exsist.

Where did matter come from ? Beats the S*** out of me. God is a conveinant answer, but their is no objective evidence as their is no scientific answer yet either. Maybe it always was, and maybe it was created. But while the law that matter can not be either created or destroyed holds up, I would lean towards it having always been there.

On the 6 second delay Anotherkind,, I think that guy makes too much of it really and I didn't find it odd at all that the brain operates in a more or less logical fashion. Hand in fire bad! So that as we deal with situations we draw on learned behaviors and programmed instinctive behaviors. Plus & its a big plus, the experiment was too simple to determine much. It probably was the equivalent of simple decisions (Notice it didn't say what they were) that are mostly instinctive after some point. Lets see what it showed with complicated questions and decisions. I'd bet it was not so predictable.

Last edited by Toy_Soldier on 20 Oct 2012, 11:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i read in a book by j.h. brennan called "time travel- a new perspective" that "time is not intrinsic to the physical universe at all, but is instead a function of the human mind. in other words, what we experience as time is nothing more than the way our mind orders events so that we can make sense of our experience."

IOW it is nothing more than an existential meter for sentient beings to assign temporal locations to events.

i only know that i don't know enough.

I wouldn't say that empty space is "nothing", at least in the sense that we typically understand nothing, since it can be bent by mass. We don't usually think of "nothing" as "something" that can be bent or warped. I wouldn't say time is strictly a mental phenomenon either. Time is change in motion itself, whether a human mind is there to perceive it or not.

To walk backwards and forward on a plane, time is necessary to do it, because change in motion is necessary to do it. In an abstract sense, we can separate the concept of time from a progression of points on a graph, but in reality, "anytime" you physically move backward and forward across an access, "time" (change in motion) is needed to do it. Could you realistically stop the passage of time and move backward and forward on an access or plane? no, because if you stopped time, motion would cease, and you would be unable to move. Because of this, the concept of space, when relating to the motion of objects within it, is inseparable from the concept of time.

Time also exists through contrast, and I think that matter may be an analogue of some kind to the empty space that it occupies. The fact they play off of each other in forming gravitational fields makes me think they exist through a duality that's intimately interlinked. The background radiation may even suggest that matter and void formed dialectically out of a common homogenous singularity into contrasting opposites. The contrast between material energy and empty space also forms relativity which is necessary for relative changes in motion (time) to exist. There'd be no arbitrary reference point in relationship to another arbitrary reference point if all things were one grey homogenous fog, one smooth distribution of energy as it was before the big bang (or the big bloom as I like to think of it).

They say it was all compressed within a volume smaller than the head of a pin, but I think even this analogy is irrelevant, because size was irrelevant at the pre- big bang singularity. There was no space or time, only a homogenous distribution of primordial energy that may as well been infinitely large or infinitely small, however you wanna look at it.

There may even be two flat dimensions that came together to create space-time, one of primordial darkness and one of primordial energy. The background radiation suggests all material energy was one singularization of dense energy, but what may have happened to spark universal expansion, is the void dimension collided with the material energy dimension to infuse the pure energy with empty space to create atoms and matter, since, after all, atoms are energy with empty space between them. I also think that the phenomenon of consciousness may exist in the void realm and is currently undergoing a process of freeing itself gradually from the grip of the material energy dimension to become pure consciousness and pure emptiness again. That's a bit more on the esoteric side of things though and something I've thought of while researching Buddhism, Qabbalism, Gnosticism, and Platonism. If you're going to go this route, time would technically be an illusion since its a temporary, non-eternal state of things, but it would have a very real phenomenal basis from the demiurge dimension of material energy imposing itself holographically on the void/consciousness realm.

I have a serious problem with this guy's view, and that's objective reality. The way we perceive time, as a linear set of events, may be specific to the human experience, but the basis of our perception of time, the relative changes in motion of objects within spacial dimension, is very much a part of the physical universe. I mean, if you're going to argue that time isn't intrinsic to the universe, you may as well argue the same thing about space. Without a mind to perceive physical space, it might not exist either like the tree falling in the woods. I think that there is an objective reality that unites all things, and it may be a thing unto itself without a human ego to interpret it in a human way as Kant argued, but it still exists, whether relating to the form we know as time and space or not. There's a real phenomenon behind space, time, and the material universe, even though it may be very different when not related to the concepts our brains project onto it.

I just think, culturally, we have a skewed view of what time is, and that's why people are lead to conclusions like what that author was proposing.

Last edited by JNathanK on 22 Oct 2012, 3:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Immanuel Kant did precisely that in Critique of Pure Reason, published around 1784.

ruveyn

"I also think that the phenomenon of consciousness may exist in the void realm and is currently undergoing a process of freeing itself gradually from the grip of the material energy dimension to become pure consciousness and pure emptiness again."

I would disagree with only this point in your statement. Most eastern philosophies believe, as I do, that consciousness is a by product of the combination of Void and Energy, Ying and Yang, and that it is only when you balance these perfectly within yourself that you archive complete enlightenment.

Time is the flowing river we are caught up in. The two primordial forces, that collided to form our universe, are spinning together towards maximum entropy. Time is how we experience this.

In terms of oriental philosophy, I'm basing this in the concept of emptiness as the liberating identity from the impermanence natural to carnal existence, as well as the the basic ideas proposed by Gnosticism and neo-platonism about flesh being a spirit or enslaver of the soul. I think the synthesis between void and matter creates variation, which leads to the island effect in consciousness that were familiar with as beings of ego. However, I see consciousness less as this effect, though, and more like a primordial surface, like a very old slab on which impermanent temporality is projected through the sense input supplied by the material plane. The fact that everything is mostly empty space also leads me to speculate that void may be primary and energy secondary.

However this is just speculation, and I ultimately think you can identify with different aspects of this cosmos. There's the impermanence, the ever changing tug of war between void and matter that creates the cosmos, and there's also the pure emptiness that always was and always will be that impermanence briefly overpowers to supply the novel notes that make up the rhythm, the song of eternity. I

I think there is a use in synthesizing the identity between the two aspects of self, even if one is more permanent than the other, and its for perfectly practical reasons, so we don't become neurotic and fragmented while we still exist in this form, through this ongoing conflict between the waves of form and void.

My main question I have is if the bending of space fact or theory ? From what I gathered quickly, it seems to be theory. As far as I could tell there is no evidence of space bending, other then theoricals, just light bending. But light is just another form of radiation made up of particles (matter) and I can believe it would be effected by gravitaional forces. But that does not seem to prove it takes space with it in the bend. Light can be bent or reflected easily with a simple prism, but it doesn't show any effect on space.

The Speed of light stuff, so long used as a kind of standard and basis for some of these theories, is under review as well I thought. I read in passing about about something recently thought to possibly exceed the speed of light. But I didn't follow up and don't know if something presented evidence or its just another theory.

Smart as he was, I am very sceptical of Einsteins bent/curved universe and time theories. I get the feeling he went 1-2 theories too far, if the main concern is accuracy.

Well, until you can provide a counterexample to Einstein's conception of space-time, it stands as an accurate description of what we see in the universe around us.

There are very few, if any, "facts" in the natural sciences. We cannot see a sub-atomic particle--they are far too small to interact with light in the visible spectrum--but we can see where they have been, and so we can describe them, and predict what they will do. When our predictions are borne out experimentally, that validates our description. But when experimental results contradict our descriptions, we have to go back and refine them.

The fundamental basis of all chemisty is rooted in the structure of the atom--the Atomic Theory. But since we cannot see the structure of an atom, it remains just a theory. But so far is has accurately predicted all of the observations that we have made about chemistry, so the theory has been elevated to the status of a scientific Law. That does not mean that one day an observation mightn't be made that would contradict the Atomic Theory, but until that day occurs we have no reason to believe that it is not an accurate description.

So it is, too, with space-time. Just because you cannot conceptualize it does not make it false. But if you can conceptualize an inconsistency with it, then that is a legitimate prospect for research.

I can't agree with this as written, but if you call it the 'most accepted theory' instead of 'accurate description' I can go along.

The thing is not to confuse theory with fact, and some maybe do that with Einstein's (or other) long standing theories. Assuming Einstein based his theory on facts, only the theory is in question. But if others then base additional theories extended off of Einstein's theories, its more like very questionable spectulation.

But as for the value of such theorical work, as you mention in, I do not disagree it has value and its place in the process of discovery.

Nearly one hundred years of highly resolved verification (6 sigma) and not a single falsification (yet). That is pretty solid evidence as such thing go.

Both Special Theory and General Theory of Relativity provide time corrections that enable the GPS to put you within ten feet of the correct location anywhere on the planet. Each time, every time.

ruveyn

Lawrence Krauss argues that matter can in fact pop in and out of existence. Space as an infinite supply of nothing, wherein it is carved out by the existence of something(matter), makes room for that worldview.

What is a quantum field then, or entropy? What is most of physics if space, time, fields, force, energies, and functions do not exist in nature... they are just formulaic observations we can describe nature with but beyond that they do not exist.

If time didnt exist I wouldnt be killing Quarm 10 years ago [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnyGyu_4MqI&feature=relmfu[/youtube]

Yes. Time really exists. Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.