Time doesn't exist, clocks exist.

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Time doesn't exist, clocks exist. Discuss

Funny that you brought this up, because I had this very thought only yesterday.

I'm too tired to elaborate on that right now though.

Not that great at debating anyway.

Clocks exist. As to whether time exists, that would depend on what is meant by "time"?

Would, "sequencing of events" work?

time is an aspect of change of state. If motion exists then time exists. If any property of things increase or diminish time exists. A clock is a harmonic oscillator which can be used to count the number of cycles between two events.

Time has a primordial quality. We can say sometimes that event A precedes event B (with regard to some Minkowsky frame of reference). So this primordial notion we have of first This then That is the beginning of our idea of time. If Event A exhibits some state of an object X and Event B exhibits another state of object X and Event A precedes Event B we say that first X had a state or property then (later) X had a different state or property (for example position, color, temperature ....).

We all acquire such a sense of temporal ordering before birth. Somewhere in the sixth month the fetus develops hearing (it can be shown six month fetuses respond to sound). Which means it can hear its mother's heart beating. Beat, beat, beat.... So we get a sense of ordering and duration. Order and duration is the essence of time and that is based on change and order. First This then That then This (again) then That (again). And so it goes. Every mammal on the planet has a sense of time based on events that actually occurred.

Hence time exists.

ruveyn

clocks take time to make, so if clocks exist, then time does too.

QFT

Also, great post Ruv

Time is a dimension. Things exist in it.

Dimension is a mathematical artifact.

ruveyn

Not entirely....

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

It is, however, a useful illusion for expressing/tracking/cataloguing ongoing entropic states...

Most measurements of time are arbitrary.

Gotta love Douglas Adams

There exist, pre-programmed in our brain a transcendent idea of "time" which must have a correspondence within the real world, because otherwise this idea wouldn't be useful to survive. Therefore something like "time" must exist and is an attribute of the world surrounding us.

Distance doesn't exist. Rulers exist.

Discuss.