gran Posted May 13, 2006 Report Share Posted May 13, 2006 How to define time? How should it be defined? By the atomic clock or by the motion of the earth? or both? It can be: A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future. An interval separating two points on this continuum; a duration: a long time since the last war; passed the time reading. A number, as of years, days, or minutes, representing such an interval: ran the course in a time just under four minutes. A similar number representing a specific point on this continuum, reckoned in hours and minutes: checked her watch and recorded the time, 6:17 a.m. A system by which such intervals are measured or such numbers are reckoned: solar time. An interval, especially a span of years, marked by similar events, conditions, or phenomena; an era. Often used in the plural: hard times; a time of troubles. times The present with respect to prevailing conditions and trends: You must change with the times. A suitable or opportune moment or season: a time for taking stock of one's life. Periods or a period designated for a given activity: harvest time; time for bed. Periods or a period necessary or available for a given activity: I have no time for golf. A period at one's disposal: Do you have time for a chat? and so on..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TJGladeRaider Posted May 13, 2006 Report Share Posted May 13, 2006 How to define time? How should it be defined? Time is Mother Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once. Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gran Posted May 13, 2006 Author Report Share Posted May 13, 2006 What about this? "Traditionally, the motion of the sun is represented by the moving hands on the dial face of a clock. The sun's motion has been called, "time" but it would be incorrect to call the motion of the hour hand, or the minute hand, or the second hand, "time." The hour hand moves twice as fast as the sun's motion. It appears to go around the dial face 2 times for every time the sun appears to go around the earth once. The minute hand moves moves 24 times as fast as this traditional definition of time. It appears to go around the dial face 24 times for every time the sun appears to go around the earth once. The second hand moves 1440 times as fast as the solar definition of time. It appears to go around the dial face 1440 times in a day. Almost everyone knows how to use a traditional timepiece. Almost everyone knows how to tell time. The problem is, everyone who knows how to tell time in the traditional way and is using time in the traditional way, is making a mistake. From a modern physics point-of-view, it is really stupid to use the sun's motion as our standard of motion. The reason is, if you move a traditional timepiece--whether it is analog or digital, whether it is a sundial or an atomic clock--the motion on the clock combines with the motion of the clock, and your standard constant quantity of motion is now different. You can move a ruler to a new location. But, you can not move a traditional timepiece. Moving a traditional timepiece defeats the purpose of the timepiece because the standard of motion represented by the timepiece is destroyed by moving it. But why? How did this come about? As people developed timepieces over hundreds of years they did not understand modern physics. The key detail that is now known in modern physics is, it appears impossible to move an object infinitely fast. The universe has a speed limit. Currently, the fastest known motion is the speed of light. This fact is why it is a mistake to move a traditional timepiece. It is the reason you can not move a traditional timepiece. Add 1 to 1, you get 2. Add 1 foot to 1 foot, you get 2 feet. But adding 1 second to 1 second does not necessarily give 2 seconds. If the 1st second is measured with a stationary clock, then its "1 second" is a true second. But, if the 2nd second is measured with a moving clock, its "1 second" is not equal. Einstein solved this problem one way. I found another way. He took the "traditional second," as defined using the sun's motion--or, as defined with an atomic clock--and made that "traditional second" slow down if the clock moves with respect to an earthbound reference frame. I abandon the "tradional second," and redefine time to travel at the fastest known motion. What has been called, "the speed of light" is now defined as "time." If time is defined as the fastest known motion, then all other motions are fractions of this fastest motion. You can add 1/2 the speed of light to 1/2 the speed of light and get the speed of light. You can add any fraction of the speed of light to another fraction of the speed of light just as you would expect when it comes to adding fractions--with one catch. You can not get a result greater than one. That would be improper." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pugwash Posted May 13, 2006 Report Share Posted May 13, 2006 It is the reason you can not move a traditional timepiece. Everything is already in motion. If you walk away from your watch, it's the same as it being moved away from yourself. Wearing a watch and moving with it means that it marks time at the same rate relative to you. "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." - Ford Prefect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pugwash Posted May 13, 2006 Report Share Posted May 13, 2006 Oh, and you're just quoting from here. If I were you, I'd stop trying to define time. Better men that either of us have tried and failed. We're all about measuring it here, not defining it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
archibald Posted May 13, 2006 Report Share Posted May 13, 2006 Oh, and you're just quoting from here. If I were you, I'd stop trying to define time. Better men that either of us have tried and failed. We're all about measuring it here, not defining it. There's an interesting special edition of scientific american out that is all about time--pretty cool stuff. According to the SA writer, nobody knows what the hell time is, or even if it exists apart from our consciousnesses. Speaking of measuring time, NASA has built a clock so accurate that it can't be set--no other timepiece on earth is accurate enough to use to set it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chronus Posted May 13, 2006 Report Share Posted May 13, 2006 Time is a man-made invention to help record and explain the passing of day to night, the passing of the seasons etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gran Posted May 13, 2006 Author Report Share Posted May 13, 2006 Time is indeed a conundrum but let us trough dialogue understand more about it. lets not give up before it is time. g. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pugwash Posted May 13, 2006 Report Share Posted May 13, 2006 but let us trough dialogue understand more about it. lets not give up before it is time. We'll get no closer to the truth: It's a waste of time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gran Posted May 13, 2006 Author Report Share Posted May 13, 2006 We'll get no closer to the truth: It's a waste of time. I think it is important to know that there is no ultimate truth Discussions like this reveal how little we know and our hero Socrates would have been pleased about that g. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jkerouac Posted May 13, 2006 Report Share Posted May 13, 2006 When my wife is late for an appointment or simply behind schedule, she often asks "How did it get to be so late?" My stock response is to say "tick, tick, tick....." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Tracy Posted May 13, 2006 Report Share Posted May 13, 2006 It's the passing, or reaching towards opportunities, to make the way easier, for those that follow.. It's before, or after, you take the time, to marvel at the Moment,.. It's the little slices of life that we find in our path, that are always totally natural, ... Where thought and feeling meld into one...and time ceases to exist..until the man made world catches up to us like a release of the pause button..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robideaux Posted May 13, 2006 Report Share Posted May 13, 2006 time is an illusion, reinforced by cartesian dualist and materialist ontologies. lets look at another perspective on time, from 13th century japan: Do not think that time merely flies away. Do not see flying away as the only function of time. If time merely flies away, you would be separated from time. The reason you do not clearly understand the time-being is that you think of time only as passing. In essence, all things in the entire world are linked with one another as moments. Because all moments are the time-being, they are your time-being. -Eihei Dogen it is the false ontology that the concious observer is separate from the external material world, which reinforces the illusion of time. When we make the distinction between subject and object--the primary dialectic which seems to be the foundation of cognition--a rivalry is made between two incompatible halves. the external world appears as material and lifeless, decaying according to the physical law of entropy. "Reductive" science displays its limitations here: according to physics, the teleology of the universe is terminal disorder and chaos; volition is dismissed as a hoax, because primacy is placed with the object, material configurations of the brain which correspond with mental states. It is not so much that science is false, than that it is relatively true. it requires a materialist ideology, which fails to explain the experience of free will as well as other observable phenomena, such as the decrease in entropy, called negative entropy, exhibited by open systems like biological lifeforms which complexify and evolve. The universe is not dead matter which over TIME becomes more disordered and chaotic; rather it is an open system which continues to develop and progress. blah. forgive me if it is not so cogent--kind of a stream of conciousness free write i just did. anyway, TIME is COOL dudes!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris5264 Posted May 14, 2006 Report Share Posted May 14, 2006 blah. forgive me if it is not so cogent--kind of a stream of conciousness free write i just did. anyway, TIME is COOL dudes!! Perhaps the best summary of our experience. Every WIS is a philospher of sorts, and it goes beyond stallone, 007 and marketing. If I'm correct, time, self and consciousness are all connected. Of course, I'm on the empty side of a bottle of italian red, but time can only show itself in a feeling. And it is this feeling we strive to quantify using discrete units, eg, seconds with objective intervals. If you remember from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the attempt to quantifiy quality can only result in ECT, electro shock therapy. so, don't worry what time it "really" is. It is some time, trust me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
archibald Posted May 14, 2006 Report Share Posted May 14, 2006 I was telling my wife about the SA piece I referred to earlier and she said, "See you shouldn't care about watches so much. They just keep track of something that doesn't exist." I said, "Nice try, Baby, but that made me love watches even more. How wonderfully, typically human is it that people make and wear amazingly complex an beautiful machines to keep track of an illusion, a phantom artifact of some mutation of a monkey's genes. Anyway, the next time it's 2:30 and I'm still out drunk, just remember I may be drunk and out but it ain't 2:30." BTW, SA had a picture of an atomic watch movement built at MIT that is accurate to 1/1,000,000 of a second per century or something like that, and would easily fit in the smallest ladies watch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gran Posted May 14, 2006 Author Report Share Posted May 14, 2006 Well said archibald Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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