January 18, 2006
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Socrates Cafe Topic # 27 : What is Time?
topic 27: What is Time? Is it merely a human invention?
Does time really move fast and slow?In his book "A Brief History of Time" Stephen Hawking does a pretty good job of explaining the physicists’ view of time as a dimension of the physical world. It is part of defining where and when something exists and without time, real existence isn’t possible. Time, as a component of speed, also limits our existence and our observation of other phenomena. It’s a well-written interesting book. I recommend it to you.
Time is a dimension of the Universe that exists whether we are here or not but that doesn’t mean we can’t observe and even to some extent manipulate it. While our understanding of how we are “time bound” has come to us slowly, our use of time is as old as humanity. It is an important part of all religions, navigation, regulation of all societies, and very much the computer you are reading this on.
An important part of the human condition seems to be the struggle to control speed, )our concept of the combination of time and motion), and we have succeeded pretty well except for the fact that this dimension only goes “one way”- toward entropy. This has been called the thermodynamic arrow of time and it greatly influences the psychological arrow of time. Our brains, like our computers, remember or record things in the direction of the entropy arrow - toward disorder. To quote Hawking: “Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which order decreases. You can’t have a safer bet than that!”
Until about 140 years ago, time was thought to be “absolute” that is completely measurable and unchanging. Beginning with W.C. Maxwell in 1865 and continuing with the work of Michelson, Lorentz, and most particularly Einstein, we now know that time is really pretty variable - being slowed or increased by the gravitational attraction of large cosmic bodies. This, by the way, isn’t theory. The accuracy of global positioning devices depends on this fact.
Can we speed up or slow down time? The Earth and the Sun can, but our human mass is too insignificant to make a measurable change. We can, however, surely alter our perception of it. that’s why time runs so much faster on weekends and holidays.
Comments (15)
Yes, but...What is Time? Is it merely a human invention?
I love Hawkings. What is time?The fact that it would exist with or without us..but if it isnt recognized, it still is...correct? Interesting...thanks
Hi. I am your host for this topic.
I have never read Hawkings, but I am beginning to think that I should because I have encountered so many people who have enjoyed that book. I think that you have hit on something very important. Although time is dynamic and does change, we, as humans cannot really substantially affect it. It is an integral part of the universe in which we live and the existence of the universe both causes it and depends upon it. Can you imagine life without time?
Thank you for an excellent post.
How does one observe the mathematical nature of time as a part of the physical universe if it cannot be observed in an infinitely small instant?
Oh dear, eddiefromhb is going all Quantum Mechanicy on us. actually that infinitely small instant is a much part of time as an eon but trying to observe something - such as an electron's position in its orbit(?) or momentum- distorts the situation and causes the observee to change its state, so it can't - at least according to Heisenberg- ever be measured because the more exact you get in one area (position) the less you are in the other (momentum).
Another area of interest is the effect of time on gravity. If the Sun exploded this instant, we wouldn't know it for about eight minutes (time it takes for ther light/information to get here but apparently gravity acts instantaniously and boy has that caused those physicists trying for the Unified Field Theory (Theory of Everything) problems.
Very interesting post. Wish I understood more about the subject. I've read Hawkings book but need to go back and review; I'm also familiar with Heisenberg's work (as an interested reader, not as an equal). Physics is such an interesting subject and getting more so all the time. Thanks for making an interesting analysis. Peace, Annie
I agree with the we can alter our perception, some days seem to drag on and on and others fly by. hmmmm. I may have to check that book out.
ryc:Ok you got me on the AOL. My first computer was an IBM trying to steal Apples all in one style, screen and drives all in one. It did not have a hard drive, what would i need one of those for, I could buy some 3 1/2 inch floppies, a huge improvement over those 5 1/4 ones, and i upgraded to get 2 of those floppy drives. But after a year I did break down and buy one of those new fangled hard drives, and i'm sure it wasn't even measured in megabites. And like you the cost was astronomical, a few thousand dollars. But hey I could type up my reports and save them and if i messed up i didn't have to start typing the whole page over again.
This discussion is interesting because it seems to want to explore what would happen if we could somehow distort time. Can you pose ideas about that?
Actually we distort time every time we fly in a plane or send a rocket off - just not very much as far as our wristwatch goes, but have you ever flown from LA to Toykio? Talk about time distortion. you gain a whole day as well as some sleep time. If you could have flown a concord from NY to Paris, on the other hand, you'd land before you took off as far as local time went.
Einstein took the perception of the viewer into account and it's an important part of his Relativity theories.
The "Flying twin" is probably the best known time distortion example: One twin stays home, the other flys to Alpha Centauri at 90+ % of the speed of light. the trip there and back at that speed takes about 50 years but the flying twin only experiences a 8 or 10 year time span and gets back to confront a 40 years older sibling.
That's the way it's going to be unless we figure out how to unravel those strings.
Should we purposefully try to alter our perception of time...and how do you think it should be done?
I'm sorry if I implied support for the mathematical interpretation of time. I was comparing what you said about observing time with how you used mathematics, and I couldn't resolve the self-contradiction. Using Heisenberg, it seems that you've amplified my concern. Do we accept it as an unsolvable paradox? Or do we reject it as a self-contradiction? I'm just wondering how you dealt with the problem. I'm not trying to appeal to any field of study, just looking for your personal resolution.
You've proposed a neat dilemma. We experience time as a dimension of the real world and we can observe that it apparently only flows one way - toward entropy, or maybe chaos. I'm not a mathematician (I was a teacher of Social History) but one interesting thing about math is that it is NOT the real world, rather a tool used to describe thoughts about the real world, which may or may not be proved by scientific observation and experiment.
The dilemma, as I understand it, is that much of the action of reality described by Quantum Mechanics is counter-intuitive and the proofs are so obscure and complex that what appears to be paradoxical or contradictory is rather the result of confusion on the part of the viewer. A simple example not from quantium mechanics, is the motion of the planets around the sun. According to the General Relativity Theory, all bodies must move in straight lines in four-dimensional space but the mass of the sun curves space time in such a way that the earth's straight four-dimensional path appears to us to move in a three-dimensional orbit around the sun. This sounds absurd on the face of it, but the minor variation between the orbit predicted by Newton and that following the "real" physical world was proved in viewing the orbit of Mercury as early as 1915.
Since that time (ha), things have gotten more complicated in all of science and it is my belief that apparent contradictions concerning time and reality are more the result of our understanding than they are real paradoxes. The reason I say this is because of the surprising amount of observable proof that's developed around some of the most counter-intuitive theories.
I just re-read this and I would not be surprised if you gave up along about the second paragraph. The short answer is, I think, that the more we learn about this, the more the paradoxes resolve themselves.
RYC: I never thought of myself as a self-actualized person. I talked to Ron about your comment, and told him that surprised me. Ron has some familiarity with the concept, but doesn't know much about Maslow. I remember learning about his, "hierarchy" and such - and thought, "Well, certainly I haven't gone through all those steps yet" but I also remember a prof explaining that it wasn't always the case that people would go through the steps in order.
I guess I don't feel self-actualized - I still feel like I have a ton of room to grow. However, as rush24a said, I do have a basic sort of joy. Ron has said that to me as well - many times. And, when I am with him, he reflects that joy back to me - and we quickly escalate each other's positive emotions (however, when we have negative emotions - we don't, thankfully. If one has a negative emotion, the other goes into, "protector" mode")
I think reading those books would be great for us
I will look them up!
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