Talk:Time/Archive 4

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

1 New Page
2 The Lead . . .

New Page

Mostly new. I've kept the recent debate of the lede and its images below, as it is ongoing.

The debate on the E+ pages is in Archive 3, and imho should best be considered CLOSED MERGE INTO "TIME" and "SECOND" REJECTED by the community of editors on this page. If you want to keep debating it, there are all those E pages to discuss it on. :) -- Yamara 21:56, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I got lost trying to follow the archived debate. Was the conclusion to do nothing? Ie. do not merge anything into Time and do not merge anything into Second? If so can I remove the first two merge tags from Orders of magnitude (time)? -Wikianon (talk) 20:41, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The Lead . . .

Images

The connection of the statues with time is not at all obvious - Is one "Father" Time? and the other? They look a bit too ugly to me - there must be a story that goes with them, but it is too vague for a TOP image The long-case clock has NEVER shown up on this page for me - it does on other pages. Does anyone see it? I think a more appropriate TOP image would be an "hourglass" - it is ~~ancient~~ not overly modern, represents past present & future, & is iconic

Some of the recent changes to the text have been quite good. I do not recall reading anything about the problem of simultaneity yet though. And it appears there's great agreement on merging the E-## articles - only question being whether to have 1 or 2 articles. Can I suggest we try ONE & divide if there is a reason to do so - so we can move on & move the templates off the page. --JimWae (talk) 19:54, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I would not object to a more distinct Father Time image or other symbol, but we could be more profound in our choices than just another clock. There are already plenty over at the Clock article. The top image should be an expression of Time that is not only about measurement. The reason is simply that the introduction is clear that measurement is only one way to understand Time. The article's detail sections leads logically with measurement, but there are too many other facets to Time, one of the major aspects of life. A more eternal image works better with the text-- a watch is very workday related, but the overview of Time in the opening text is contemplative. Which I believe is perfect for explaining one of the great ideas of mankind.

(As for the statue, the winged old man with a beard is Father Time, but I made sure to include the statue's title, "Time", in case that wasn't clear. Time liberates Man with one hand, and blocks him with the other, though I don't have a cite for that.)

(Also, I don't think van der Stappen's work often gets the critique that it's "too ugly"... The image might look clearer if it were larger, but that's not a good solution for the page.)

(And the pocketwatch that it replaces was the same image as the one someone chose for the Time Portal -- which is now minimally useful, btw -- and looked blatantly redundant on the top.)

All that aside, I was searching more a more iconic picture of Time, preferably not another clock.

The longcase clock image-- I can see it using Firefox 2 on Windows XP. I can also see it on my friend's Blackberry. ...Testing it on IE, you're right, it vanishes. Any solutions? That big space to the right of the TOC is not pretty.

Ah, Simultaneity! Something to add to a Time Topics Template!

And please someone make the argument over the merging of the Es come to a conclusion. Maybe it's just time to "be bold" and remove them. -- Yamara 23:09, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, just did some tests on the longcase clock. First, the wiki syntax was not understood by IE until I placed it in the right order. I also imitated the placement of the image next to the TOC in the Clock article. But the longcase only shows up on IE when at 250 px, which means it's too long to be seen in its entirety on the screen, and tends to cover the TOC when the window is reduced.

This is strange and frustrating. Someone summon a geek. -- Yamara 00:24, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

My last guess is it's a png vs. IE problem. So, I've switched the longcase png with an hourglass jpeg. It's visible in IE. -- Yamara 00:35, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I've moved the statues down. The background & lack of detail because of size, make it unclear whether the "guy in the back" has horns. Image is just too obscure - relevance of top image should be obvious, not obscure. I took out the image sizes -- thumb lets user preferences decide. Yes, I have IE7 & the longcase clock shows up in its article, but not here. We need a pendulum image too --JimWae (talk) 04:33, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Correction - longcase clock image does NOT show up in its article either - only when I click on the blank image there & go to the image page --JimWae (talk) 04:37, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

By ugly I meant the fact that the statues are deeply discolored & the apparent horn on the unnamed "guy in the back" - at normal resolution, I cannot tell that he is assisting - only blocking came across --JimWae (talk) 04:41, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I think an hourglass qualifies as being "not only about measurement". It concretely displays past, present, & future - and the QUANTITY of elapsed time it "measures" depends on the amount of sand (and other things). Especially in the contemplative sense, time is still about sequencing events - and an "hour"glass iconically & concretely represents that. I agree that a clock or watch is too "dated" - but I think we can expect hourglasses to be around a few more centuries without changing in appearance very much - whereas clocks & watches often easily show their date of manufacture --JimWae (talk) 04:52, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I added a timeless image, an absolutely universal icon - a flower opening up over a couple hours. Potatoswatter (talk) 09:00, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

While a time-lapse of a flower opening is catchy (and also distracting), it does not demonstrate or illustrate much at all (if anything) about time. What it does demonstrates is that motion can be conveyed by images with time-intervals. ALL moving images do that. The best claim this time-lapse has over an image of a man running is that the interval of time is more apparent. An hourglass signifies elements of past, present, future AND measurement - and is traditionally and clearly associated with time. Perhaps a time-lapse of an hourglass would satisfy everyone (however, showing top & bottom quantities changing [not really necessary] would require a flip too). --JimWae (talk) 09:11, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, all moving images illustrate time. So the moving flower is superior to the static hourglass, which requires an extra dimension from the viewer's imagination. Furthermore flowers are much prettier than hourglasses, and the hourglass image is very drably generic, not to mention so tall as to disturb the page layout. And what does the hourglass signify about the past or future? I think the flower does more to unify the scientific and philosophical aspects. Maybe a nicer natural image could replace both the separate father time and scientific measurement images. Father time is an abstract personification of already abstract philosophy inspired by flowers blooming. Potatoswatter (talk) 09:21, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I cannot find any section of the article that the flowers relate to. The hourglass relates to many sections --JimWae (talk) 09:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC) --- Run it backwards & it will relate to one section anyway :) --JimWae (talk) 09:55, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll see Potato's flower and raise him the Sun.

Putting a moving image at the top was the right direction for this article, and kudos to Potatoswatter for that; I only wish a better sunrise were available. But the statement "This event is timeless, as it could occur on any date" was simply untrue, since it could not have happened during a harsh winter, let alone during the Precambrian. The Sun, on the other hand, is the defining object of time, even after we were able to discover things like cesium. It may not be eternal, but it will outlast a flower, this planet, and quite possibly our species.

I was growing fond of the hourglass, and especially liked the caption, so it's back. The bronze I've moved way to the bottom as a kind of visual coda, at least for now.

I've also cleaned up and revised much of the opening language. Cites should come for much of that from me sometime this week... -- Yamara 18:16, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Another idea about images of time -- time has universal relevance to human beings because we have our own internal clocks. These clocks help keep us awake in the daylight hours, prepare us for sleep as night approaches, wake us up before the alarm clock rings in the morning, etc. They give us the sense of passage of time, of having been waiting too long for something, of some other animal coming upon us too fast, etc. We know now that these biological clocks are either chemical or neurological circular chains. The first link in the chain activates and send an impulse to the second link, the second link fires off a signal to the third, etc. It takes a fairly constant length of time (as measured by things like the atomic clock that are even more regular) to go once around the circle, and at that point a signal is sent off somewhere else. (The heart has its own clock for obvious reasons.) An image of the chemical kinds of clocks (formation of one compound instigates the formation of another compound, etc.) would be too abstract, but there may be images of circular configurations of neurons. Probably such an image could be turned into a GIF sequence to put some action into the picture. P0M (talk) 06:55, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Changes to lead & other text

Time is NOT easily defined and the lede needs to deal with the issues of definition. Saying "Time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe" has at least 2 problems. First it is not a definition, 2nd it takes a POV in the debate on what time is, 3rd it is vague - and really says very little (except that the other main view can be ignored). Much of the rest of the recently composed lede is also vague and many sentences are repetitious or if they were eliminated, no meaning would be lost. Most of the recent changes to the text are NOT improvements to text that has been stable for about 3 years now. Agreement from others should be sought before such widespread changes in the text are adopted --JimWae (talk) 19:13, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Strongly agree about the first sentence, and much of the rest. The lede as it was a few days ago needed more simplicity, but not the brevity and inaccuracy of the current post.

I think it would be helpful to match the lede of Time with the lede for Space, though I'm not saying Space has a perfect lede yet either.

In a related matter, I had a problem with "Newtonian time" being leaned on in the previous lede, as that article, as it stands (and seemingly has always stood) does not address the classical physics of time, but instead the Austrian School of economics' view that time is irrelevant. Very unhelpful, though not the fault the contributors to the Time article itself.

Would not oppose restoring the previous lede and going slow with hashing it out here on the Talk page. -- Yamara 22:19, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

For the sake of discussion, here is my reduced lead ("lede"? where do you get that?) paragraph:

Time is a dimension of our universe. Objects and events may be identified with positions in time, like space, relative to an observer's frame of reference. Unlike space, movement through time cannot be controlled. The fundamental importance of time results in great philosophical and spiritual significance. From the dawn of history to the present, questions of mortality, life cycles, and the permanence of the universe have been inextricably linked to the science of chronology. To accomplish absolutely anything requires some measurable time, and even the human sense of time varies with time.

The function of the lead is to introduce the topic at hand, briefly enough to give the reader an overview of the article before they are confronted with the table of contents. The "stable" alternative rambles for confusing paragraphs without even mentioning issues of technology or standardization, which in fact make the bulk of the article. So some kind of WP:BOLD change is certainly needed... please try to defend this reversion beyond the argument of "stability."

Also, you clearly misquoted my first sentence. Apparently you are looking at a revision before I wrote any new text. I reorganized with copy & paste before deciding to contribute original words - originally the beginning read (sans paragaph breaks):

There are two distinct views on the meaning of the word time. One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence, and time itself is something that can be measured. This is the realist's view, to which Sir Isaac Newton subscribed, and hence is sometimes referred to as Newtonian time.^[1] An opposing view is that time is part of the fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number) within which humans sequence events, quantify the duration of events and the intervals between them, and compare the motions of objects.

The first and fundamental assertion is that there are two incompatible definitions of time. This statement is completely unreferenced, and to me is blatantly false. Everyone can agree that time is a single dimension, in which the universe moves from the past through the present to the future. Spiritual and scientific thought naturally consider different aspects of time, as my intro mentions. But to invent incompatible warring schools makes it sound like you're muddling the situation for the sake of some faux philosophical depth. Our object is not to confuse anyone.

Honestly, can you find a single scientist who would claim that time is not a fundamental intellectual structure, a property of visceral metaphysical being? And can you find even a crackpot philosopher who would deny that time is a dimension of the universe? Simultaneously accepting the notions of a soul and a universe, which every infant does right off the bat, requires some tacit innate understanding of both "disctinct" views you present.

Considering the physical definition is absolutely incontrovertible and unambiguous (though not well stated in the original text), my first edit was simply to erase the first sentence and present the two "definitions" as complementary rather than conflicting. Which both clarified and shortened the text.

So please reference your confusion, or let someone clean it up. Potatoswatter (talk) 12:33, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I do not have much time to respond today. There is a much difference of opinion over whether or not time is part of the structure of the universe or a kind of "imposition" made by our intellect. I have produced several sources & quotes to demonstrate the disagreement. You seem to take the realist position a la Newton - one that few scientists would accept post-Einstein. Time cannot be easily defined & that needs to be dealt with in the lede. I do NOT see ANY sources for what you wrote. Nevertheless, I have reworked the lede, putting the operational definition first because it is more easily understood. I have also made other changes which I think you might find more palatable. More later --JimWae (talk) 02:48, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The above statement: Everyone can agree that time is a single dimension, in which the universe moves from the past through the present to the future: is blatantly false. Pragmatically TIME is the MEASURE of change which uses stable, repeating, countable events as a guage for changes which are not. The only REAL time we know about is this time, which is obviously part of our intellectual stucture and is no dimension through which anything flows. The idea that time is a thing in its own right and that stuff moves through it is hard to shake considering that our mind seems to portray things this way... we have memories of objects in the past and projections of them into the future while seeing them in the "present" and get a feelling that in some way we are referring to three distinct objects even though we understand that they are connected to the single set of stuff making them... yet a bit of thought will reveal that we understand that the one set of stuff does not leave copies of itself in the past, only in our memory...that the past stuff has changed relationships with other stuff and is still with us, though in a new configuration. TIME as a dimension has never been demonstrated to be anything more than a sci-fi device for story telling. While some may claim that time travel is possible, no one has presented any evidence. Those who hold to the time as dimension belief seems to be mistaking a chart for reality. While Einsteinian spacetime seems to require it, that is not the case at all and other ways of seeing his results are possible. Past is memory, future is anticipation, now alone is real. It is always NOW, but the contents of NOW are always in motion and changing relationships...that is hard to grasp. Jiohdi (talk) 17:57, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

See the definition of dimension. The fact that you can quantitatively measure time, and there is no mathematical relation between position in time and position in space, make it a dimension. Whether or not the future and past "exist" despite our inability to perceive them is irrelevant. Just because some things are too far away to see doesn't make distance "not a dimension." Potatoswatter (talk) 11:26, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Jiohdi, that is Pee oh vee. 1Z (talk) 13:05, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I think there is still a problem with first sentence of the current lead: "Time is a basic component of our measuring system...". Who is the "our" referring to? All of humanity? Western scientific measuring systems? Amazonian indigenous communities? Since time is understood differently by different cultures, this statement is problematic (and violates NPOV). Also, do "we" have a single measuring system? If this is actually referring to standardized scientific measuring systems (which I think it is), then we should be clear, i.e. "Time is a basic component of scientific systems of measurement..." (although I actually think it would be wrong to privilege scientific perspectives of time from the very first sentence).
I also think we need an attempt at an actual definition or series of alternative definitions as well, since this is an encyclopaedia. The current lead, although well and carefully written, doesn't give a hint of what time is, just says that it's a basic component of the way we measure things, while the second paragraph just says that it's a "fundamental quantity". The third paragraph says that it's either a fundamental structure of the universe or a fundamental intellectual structure. Still no attempt to explain either what it is or how it is generally experienced, or of the concepts of past, present and future. --GKantaris (talk) 10:34, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

This sounds like an anthropocentric sidestepping of the statement "time is a dimension of our universe". Any useful "component of a measuring system" is a dimension. By leaving out who is measuring what, the author seems to be trying to imply that the universe is being measured. I would say "our" universe is measured to cover the possibility of other universes (whatever that means). Potatoswatter (talk) 11:26, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Since we shouldn't only criticize but also suggest alternatives, how about something like this for the first paragraph: "Time is the presumed passage of a given system from its present state into one of its potential future states. The perception of the passage of time gives rise to the concepts of past, present and future. As a result, time is sometimes considered to be a dimension analagous to the three dimensions of space, although this is the subject of much controversy. It is a basic component of most human measuring systems and has long been a major subject of art, philosophy, and science."

That is a circular definition because "present", "future", and "state" are defined only in terms of a sense of time. If time weren't a dimension, physics would not be a mathematical science. Time appears alongside distance in the wave functions that give rise to the consistent description of reality that mainstream scientists call "physics". And no we don't need to bring Einstein into this.

Physics is a more encyclopedic topic than philosophy. This article will be better if we progress from one straightforward definition to the next rather than try to sidestep defining anything (which seems to be the essence of academic "philosophy" anyway). Potatoswatter (talk) 11:26, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

The following (existing) paragraphs would then follow on well from this.--GKantaris (talk) 10:56, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

how about:

Time is the measure of changes in relationship between and among objects using stable, repeating, countable events as a gauge. The past is the remembered relational state[s] of objects that have become the currently perceived state of those same objects. The future is the likely state[s] those objects will rearrange themselves into following their current trajectories.Jiohdi (talk) 00:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

You're again going out of your way to replicate the definition of a dimension. Distance is also a measure of the relationship between two objects using stable, repeating, countable markers (as on a ruler) as a gauge. Furthermore there's no need to invoke the concept of memory just to define time. The propagation of information (light or other) through empty space creates a natural delay, so everything actually observed is already in the past. The past "contains" everything that has verifiably happened. Most everything that has happened is not remembered (if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?) and it is easy for a person or scientific instrument to accidentally remember something not in the past. Furthermore contents of the future has nothing to do with "likelihood," which you should define, it is up to our imaginations.

The notion of a timeline may be derived from the physically observable growth of successive light cones from the world line of a frame of reference. These cones bound the size of causal relationships from the originating point. Tying that to human perception would be a good, fun project. But what the "philosophers" here seem to be clinging to, that time is a figment or at best a convenient approximation, is dead wrong and ignoring some pretty obvious physical reality.

If time weren't a physical dimension, it would not be physically measurable. Time and space are physically related by the universally constant speed of light. If you can measure distance then you can measure time. Consider an experiment where one burst of photons is reflected from a series of equally spaced mirrors. Such a device translates directly between the time between pulses and the space between mirrors. End of story. Potatoswatter (talk) 04:59, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I think you miss something important in thinking of time as physical. Consider a pool table with balls in motion... the number of balls never increases nor decreases, but just change relationships with each other. now an observer can take photographs of the changing relationships and that is equivalent to our memory sampling the changes of the world around us. those photos can be arranged in order and numbered and we can see TIME as this numbering of the images. there is no physical TIME otherwise existent but only the ever changing present mapped out. WE call the most recent image the present and the prior ones the past... we can sketch an image of what we think these balls will look like or using a computer program take the data from the images and project where they will likely go next and that is the future. Also, years ago Scientific american mag. had an article showing that because our sampling rate is never infinite, there is always a data loss which exponentially increases making accurate predictions of the future impossible after just a few moments.Jiohdi (talk) 23:45, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

You say I'm missing something important. What am I missing? You are speaking of direct human perception being very limited. I agree but being a believer in science I think that instruments capable of repeatable, quantitative measurement are superior to our unaided ears and eyes. If you look at a videotape of a pool table, you can conclude either that the familiar laws of physics are being obeyed as usual, or that some conspiracy rearranged the frames to make it look as if there's such a thing as scientific physics. You could fully expect the balls to do something different the second time you push "play," due to forgetfulness or another conspiracy theory. Or could accept that the video represents something called the "past" but it's actually just a miracle that God lets us repeat experiments as a grand joke. In any case, you are the one "missing out" on something, if you are truly denying that data can be recorded over time. That Scientific American article was about perception, not reality.

Is it philosophically invalid to argue that nothing really exists at all, that the Big Bang was fifteen seconds ago and the edge of the universe is ten inches from your face? And illusions to the contrary are just miracles? Should WP tiptoe around every philosophical "possibility" and "uncertainty" or just go with scientific consensus? Potatoswatter (talk) 10:35, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

what you are missing is that it is not about perceptions of the eyes and ears, but about what is going on and what is being measured and how it is being measured. you seem to think that something called TIME exists independantly of the pool table and balls in motion while I am trying to show that time is not a thing of itself but a measure of things in motion using other things in motion such as a camera or video taper as the scale of measure. that time has no independant existance. there is no such thing as THE PAST other than recordings of prior states, you cannot travel to THE PAST as if it were a location in reality. space can be travelled right to left and back, but time being a measure of changes cannot be travelled. there place is here, the time is now, all stuff only exists as one set of things existing and there are no copies of it in the past nor in the future. if you were to go to the location the stuff was in in "the past" it would no longer be there because it has moved to where it is in "the present". the only way you could travel backwards in time would be to rewind the entirety of the universe.Jiohdi (talk) 16:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I find myself in agreement with Jiohdi. Take a look at this week's New Scientist, the article "Is Time an Illusion?". Reserchers have managed to come up with descriptions of quantum interactions that do not rely on an external temporal frame of reference. They do this precisely by including the measuring device within the framework of quantum uncertainty. I'm not qualified to summarize this, and don't have the article in front of me right now -- it suggests that time is little more than a statistical artefact of averaging various interactions in the same way that temperature is (the averaging of the individual movement of many molecules in a system). In any case, whether time is real or whether "The greatest trick the universe ever pulled was convincing us that time exists" as the article suggests, is kind of irrelevant for an encyclopaedia. I don't think it is possible to come up with a non-circular definition of time that doesn't reference notions of past, present and future states, which is why in my definition above I wrote "the presumed passage of a given system from its present state into one of its future states". That is how we experience the passage of the present into what we guess will be the next thing to happen (our brains seem hard-wired to make these guesses all the time, although we often get it wrong). The illusion is that if we could know the totality of a given system, we could predict the next state it must be in, or that the next state is a pre-determined outcome, but quantum mechanics long ago blew away that God-like fantasy (while relativity doesn't need a concept of "flow" and doesn't even give time an arrow). At the beginning of the lead we need some basic reference to what human beings in everyday life presume time to be. It can be hedged with scare quotes or whatever, but we need something succinct and comprehensible that doesn't privilege any ONE intellectual system's way of understanding time (scientific, philosophical, quantum, relativistic, literary...). I like the first sentence of Jiohdi's above, although I wonder if it is necessary to collapse time into measurement quite so quickly (by the fourth word). The definitions of past and future that follow are perhaps just a little too technical to place at this point in the article, although they could certainly be put in later. How about the following, which combines some of the above but tries to make it more accessible for laypeople (which I firmly believe is needed at the beginning of an encyclopaedia article):

"Time is the perceived change in relationship between and among objects in a given system. It is measured using stable, repeating, countable events as a gauge, such as the ticking of a clock or the rate of decay of a radioactive element. The perception of change gives rise to the concepts of past (the remembered state of objects), present (the current perceived state) and future (a potential state that could arise from the current one). As a result, time is often presumed to have a "flow" and considered to be a dimension analagous to the three dimensions of space, although this is the subject of much controversy. It is a basic component of most human measuring systems and has long been a major subject of art, philosophy, and science."

Please, any improvements on the above without making it too technical at this stage of the article.--GKantaris (talk) 10:44, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Because time is a dimension and not a "thing," physics still works if you ignore it. That is the same as saying that the laws of physics hold at any instant of time.

Things interact with each other by wave propagation. Waves propagate over time from an initial point in space. The further in time, the farther the wavefront. If you're genuinely confused about the basic nature of time, or the very validity of the concept, perhaps you shouldn't hold yourself responsible for this article? Potatoswatter (talk) 05:41, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I would be worried by any argument claiming certainty in defining what time is, given the huge mass of scientific, philosophical, mythical and literary speculation about it over the centuries, which has come to no clear consensus. Your definition, based on the notion of wave propagation, comes from one of those specialized branches of human knowledge, and should be expounded in sections of this article, but a more general definition is required in the lead. I would say the same for definitions of time (or its arrow) based on the second law of thermodynamics. Or for objections to the concept of temporal flow based on the relativity of simultaneity. I was merely pointing out that today's scientists are still debating whether time is an illusion, or a fundamental property of the universe, or a "dimension", etc.. Given that, it would be misleading to state with certainty at the beginning of an encyclopaedic entry, that time is a dimension (a concept derived from the Block Theory of the Universe and popularized by H.G. Wells). I am not "holding myself responsible": I came across this article while researching other things and strongly felt that the lead was missing an operational definition of time, which makes it read very oddly. If there is absolutely no consensus on an operational definition, then the article needs to start (like the article on Space) by stating the difficulty of definition and listing some competing ones.--GKantaris (talk) 10:16, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

All branches of scientific knowledge are equally true for everyone, universally.

Doh? I know no serious scientist who would hold that view. The natural sciences are approximate analytical systems which, based on empirical observation, produce testable predictions about the world. They constantly revise themselves, which is their strength compared to religion (the only branch of human knowledge which lays any claim to truth). But this is by-the-by: the point is that "Time" is a concept which spans many branches of human knowledge and it should not be defined at the beginning of an encyclopaedia article only through a very narrow interpretation of its role in physics.

Devices can measure and record the passage of time, therefore it is certainly a dimension. It is totally untrue that there is "no consensus." If scientists were still debating whether time were a dimension, there would be no such thing as the second.

Devices do not directly measure "the passage of time". All they measure is some uniformly repeating event, which is always an analogue approximation for time and ultimately based on the movement of particles in space, whether its an egg-timer or a caesium clock.

I have not been proposing "definitions" in these arguments on this page.

Which is the problem. If you'd try constructively to propose some which are general enough to cover various knowledge systems, we might advance the article.

I'm trying to point out the most obvious evidence that time is a measurable dimension and the past is unequivocally distinct from the future. The best operational definition of time is that used to standardize the second, and it's missing from the lead because it's unwieldy.

You need to understand the fundamentals at dimension, causality, and operational definition before you start going on tangents like the second law of thermodynamics or H.G. Wells. I can assure you that time goes the same rate no matter how fast entropy changes and there were units of time pre-1870.

How do you know what "today's scientists" are debating, and what does the existence of scientific debate indicate to you as a non-scientist? Do you believe that renewed debate casts doubt on established consensus? It doesn't. Observations contradicting accepted theory can unseat consensus. But anyone can propose a new theory and doing so means little.

Please try to stick to a few clear arguments and avoid saying things like "the relativity of simultaneity."

Thanks for the lessons. You in turn could do with understanding the fundamentals at Special_relativity, Relativity_of_simultaneity and Arrow_of_time if you are having trouble with concepts I refer to shorthand by way of illustration only. Try not to put down your interlocutors by disqualifying them. What does it mean to you as a non-philsopher that there exists a major academic discipline called "philosophy of science"? Or many other branches of human knowledge which use and define the concept of time in radically different ways to the narrow measurement systems by which you understand the concept? If you want to broaden your outlook, read Jorge Luis Borges' brilliant "New Refutation of Time" (the paradox of the title is intentional).

Potatoswatter (talk) 12:17, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Unless you wish to disregard nearly a hundred years of testing you are completely mistaken about time going the same rate no matter how fast entropy changes. Time rate or the rate of changes in a system is governed, per the einsteinian relativity theories, by speed and accelerations so that one system's clock is not identicle to anothers as in classical physics. Rate of change is variable and that is what time is a measurement of. now you can use your personal clock to gauge all other systems and for you time remains a fixed interval but that is not identicle to what you imply.Jiohdi (talk) 14:42, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

how about this for the lead-- or a suggestion for it:

Time is an essential basic measurement (usually denoted as 'T') which uses a semi-independant stable, cycling, and countable system as the means for the creation of a fourth space-like dimension which, along with the other three spacial co-ordinates, is required to define the dynamic relation and location changes of any group of elements. Unlike classical physics which held that all stable systems were merely tracking some universal called "Time" and thus would always give the same readings, Relativity theory holds that time is not a universal but the actual effects of objects changing relationships and postulates a four-dimensional spacetime gridwork to chart their movements. Thus different frames of reference will have differences in their chartable spacetime grids because even the nearly identicle cycling systems can vary for each frame of reference due to velocity and accelerations experienced from one relating to another. These differences can be co-ordinated using a mathematical formula known as the Lorentz transformation. Jiohdi (talk) 15:41, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. I think it is a little technical for the very beginning of the article (why introduce symbols such as T?) and too narrowly focused on physics. We need to think general layperson looking to get a sense of the range of ways in which time has been understood within social, cultural, prilosophical, religious and scientific discourses.--GKantaris (talk) 19:47, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Time measures the interval between cause and effect. What more is there to say? ;) -- JocK (talk) 20:27, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

While all definitions are circular to some degree, defining a term by means of itself is generally considered bad form. Jiohdi (talk) 02:57, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, so we should not use words like 'stable' and 'cycling' when defining 'time'. Much better to relate time to a causal structure and define time as the path-dependent separation between cause and effect. In fact, any attempt to define time without relating it to causality is meaningless. Time is a by-product of causality. Whilst causality is fundamental and absolute, time is not. Time is relative. Your 'now' is not my 'now'. Yet we agree on what is cause and what is effect. Hmmm... something tells me this discussion will not lead us anywhere. lol. -- JocK (talk) 06:33, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

actually, even cause and effect is not sacred. One view of quantum physics holds that everything is made of random elements which only give the appearance of cause and effect in large numbers the way temperature is really just a statistical average of large numbers of molecules in motion. Like my idea below on the arrow of time, the perception of cause and effect only follows from the way we compare what we are currently witnessing to what we have already witnessed and our minds color this as cause and effect. The current state of the universe was not CAUSED by the prior state, but is just a event that on the atomic scale is simply one of many probable states that does not necessarily follow from any prior state, but since we can only seem to perceive trillions of these events at a glance as single objects with a significantly delay of about 300 milliseconds for brain quantum computing, the overall probabilities seem to work out to an approximation of cause and effect. Odd events that defy cause and effect are explained away or ignored.Jiohdi (talk) 15:15, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Between a second and a millisecond?

I see that a millisecond is considered 0.0001, if second is 1, what is in between them? walkingonthesun Say something to me 06:22, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

see: SI prefix for those uncommon units. Btw, the prefixes are not just for seconds. Btw2, a millisecond is 0.001 s NOT 0.0001 s --JimWae (talk) 07:45, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I would like to submit for the PHILOSOPHY section an article that examines the philosophical and pragmatic meanings of time. Here's the lnik: http://www.artsandopinion.com/2006_v5_n1/lewis-20.htm Thanking you for the consideration, Artsandopinion (talk) 17:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)Robert Lewis

between second and milliseconds

pico Prefix meaning one-millionth of one-millionth (10^ -12 ).

nano Prefix meaning one billionth or (10^ -9) .

micro prefix meaning (10^ -6)

Jiohdi (talk) 22:24, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

milli = thousandth nano = billionth and pico = trillionth Potatoswatter (talk) 13:27, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

the arrow of time

A thought occurred to me whilst pondering time-- why does time seem to move only forwards. Seeing this from a quantum probability point of view rather than the standard way of thinking a new thought emerged: the current state of the universe resembles no other prior since all others prior were within a smaller universe as the universe appears to be expanding. in other words the arrow of time is due to novelty. this current perception of the pattern of all things is unique and unlike any prior. by comparison to memories and records we can establish this as verifiable in every moment. We have no evidence what so ever that any state has repeated a prior, even though this is entirely possible in a quantum system, here too, the likelihood that any current state resembles any immediate earlier state drops to zero until such time as the universe begins to contract, should it ever do so. Even if the universe does start to contract, the likelihood that it will do so exactly as it expanded seems to drop to zero as well and so all sentient entities with memories will still perceive time moving forwards as the universe shrinks. only at point omega when the universe resembles point alpha can we say that the universe has made an exact repetition and we cannot even say that as no one will be around to notice but perhaps the alpha and omega itself Jiohdi (talk) 04:03, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Wow, you're a genius. That's a nice piece of evidence that instants in time cannot be placed in arbitrary order. Convenient that you'd start a new topic rather than put it above where it's relevant. Unlikely however it's why time "seems" to move forwards as most folks don't personally notice intergalactic distances. Time seems to move only forwards because you can't remember the future. Potatoswatter (talk) 05:25, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

you cannot remember the future because it has not happened yet or is that too hard for you to grasp? You can remember the "past" because your brain has the ability to sample events and record them and compare them to current states of the elements that were part of that former event. You again miss the basic point that it is novelty that gives the arrow of time even if you cannot know the universal scale.Jiohdi (talk) 14:45, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

That is gibberish to me. Absolute measurement is possible (by the brain or some other device) without comparing successive "states." A photograph shows one "state" but is still meaningful. You use the word "state" an awful lot, what do you mean by it?

I believe the future "exists" just as much as the past. The only difference between the future and the past is that the past can be observed, given a method of observation. How else do you propose to express the meaning of "happened yet", Mr. I'll Write The Article Myself? Potatoswatter (talk) 15:39, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

state means a specific arrangement of objects, elements, or things. as for the future existing, you are in the vast majority who seem to just assume that this is so, but I find there is no basis for this belief. 1. for the future to exist means that the universe we know should in principle be viewable by some hyper-dimensional being as a solid 4-d object. if this were so then this being would have no reason to see any particular point in that object as the present, nor would that being see anything resembling movement. the question would then become how can we see movement if there actually is none? do you propose that we exist hyperdimensionally and are just viewing reality as a film? that we are the light passing through the frames? I find that scientifically dis-satisfying. I believe we are part of reality as it is happening and as such need to find an explanation that keeps us within the system, not external to it.

If the future exists, what connects it to the present? Who built the future? How did it get there? Do you disregard cause and effect, evolution or any other sort of apparent change as mere illusion?

Jiohdi (talk) 16:50, 24 January 2008 (UTC) ___

Another way to see the arrow -- all elements exist now and now alone. they are always in motion relative to each other. the illusion of an arrow of time is accomplished by the awareness of unique or novel patterns rather than repeating ones. We compare what we witness to memories and find novelty even if small portions seem to be retracing steps, the overall context is still unique. we run a film backwards, but the rest of the world around us is still changing and so is recorded by our minds as forwards in total. time is neither moving forwards nor backwards only our mental charting of events is causing us to feel like time is thing in motion. what is actually moving is just the elements of our perceptions. This is some what analogous to power in an electronic circuit which is the measure of heat loss, which is always a one way event.Jiohdi (talk) 16:20, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Moderate modification of lead/lede - Jan 28

I moved some stuff around & re-added a comment about the difficulty of definition

Time is a basic component of the measuring system used by humanity to sequence events, to quantify the durations of (and intervals between) events, and to compare the motions of objects. Long a major subject of mythology, philosophy, and science, defining time in a non-controversial way applicable to all fields of study has eluded the greatest scholars. While this article does not attempt to devise any such definition, it will discuss some of the main topics regarding time.

We cannot agree on a definition, yet there seems above to be an expectation that we *might* eventually find one. Wikipedia is not a dictionary - it cannot cite 6 or 7 competing definitions, and then drop the matter. Look at the articles on number, space, truth - they too do not give a definition of their topic. If scholars cannot agree on a definition, we certainly cannot pretend to have one here. BUT, whatever we say by introduction, it is important to make it clear that such is NOT a definition.

We can say that time is used for sequencing events, comparing the duration of events, comparing the intervals between events. We can even add (quite redundantly) that it is used to compare the motions of objects (which are also events). We can say this either in the 1st paragraph or a bit later. Not even in science is time restricted to motion.

I'd like to say that time is used by ALL human cultures, but too many Whorfians would likely object. Even though his contention has been discredited, I am content to omit both "all humanity" and "all cultures". I suspect dogs have a "notion" of time too, but that is too speculative as of yet.

We could omit the motions of objects from the first paragraph, but I suspect the physical science people might feel overlooked. We could try other ways to deal with the parenthetical in the 1st paragraph - but the order there serves to highlight the growing complexity of the concept - from sequencing (before & after), to comparing "lengths" of time (quicker & slower), to numerical quantification of physics (which involve not just TIME, but also SPACE) --JimWae (talk) 04:38, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

We can even add (quite redundantly) that it is used to compare the motions of objects (which are also events). That's not very accurate. In physics velocity, momentum,e tc are used to deal with motion.1Z (talk) 11:33, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Lede - 2008 Jan 30

A reminder that Time is both a Vital and a Core article, and if we want Wikipedia to be the best encyclopedia this is one of the primary places to make that happen.

With that in mind, the lede must be of FA quality, and thereafter not encouraging endless tinkering or elaboration.

So let's see how that other encyclopedia leads off on Time...

1911 Britannica (11th Ed.):
TIME, the general term for the experience of duration or succession, either in whole or in part.

1929 Britannica (14th Ed. - under copyright):
TIME, the general term for the experience of duration.

Note that both the 11th and the 14th editions have separate articles on the measurement of time. The main article grew more brief, and the Time Measurement article grew longer, until they simply merged them:

britannica.com:
Measured or measurable period.
More broadly, it is a continuum that lacks spatial dimensions.

The 1911 and current online Britannicas expand from there, but the 14th edition only goes on to mention psychological time in passing (as "See Space-Time" ( ! ) ), and spends its only other paragraph on describing keeping time in music. The bulk of the discussion goes under Time Measurement. Britannica.com's concise article is as equivocal about a definition of time as ours is, so far.

First paragraph
Time is a basic component of the measuring system used by humanity to sequence events, to quantify the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to compare the motions of objects.
The measuring system is used by humanity, but time has effect on other forms of life, and inanimate objects. Also, emphasizing a "system used by humanity" would not be met seriously under review, as I discovered when I tried recently to emphasize the human origin of the Pioneer plaque displayed on the Human article-- even though that was Carl Sagan's point-- because it's too seemingly redundant, and I was slapped down by scientist contributors.

The older Britannica phrase TIME, the general term for the experience of duration still elegantly describes how average people feel and live through time. This is important, as readers want to confirm as well as discover information about Time. Potatoswatter should not be rewarded for his 'tude, which has no place here, but it is indicative of the common feeling that Time is "obvious" to "most folks".

Also, if velocity and momentum are used to measure motion (as per 1Z), Time is at one remove from the quantity used to define that.

Time has long been a major subject of mythology, philosophy, and science, but defining time in a non-controversial manner applicable to all fields of study has eluded the greatest scholars.
"Time has long been" is very circular and unhelpful, and would qualify as weasel words in other contexts.
Religion should be listed instead of mythology. Not interested in debating their similarities and differences; suffice to say considerations over time in religion has had historic real-world ramifications, mythology less so.

While this article does not attempt to devise any such definition, it will discuss some of the main topics regarding time.
Redundant, even if we were the "greatest scholars" themselves. We're arguing it out on the talk page, this shouldn't be on the article page.

Second paragraph
In physics and other sciences, time is considered a fundamental quantity, i.e. one that cannot be defined in terms of other quantities because those other quantities – such as velocity, force, energy – are already defined in terms of that fundamental quantity (in these cases, both time and another fundamental quantity, space).
This could be phrased more simply. The focus should remain on Time as a fundamental quantity, and what that means in defining Time. There are too many qualifiers and parentheticals.

Within science, the only definition needed or possible is an operational one, in which time is defined by the process of measurement and by the units chosen.
This seems clear, but needs a steadier lead-in sentence preceding it.

My recommended change to the first two graphs:
(Relevant links not shown - and we will need some serious & sober inline citations):

Time is a common term for the experience of duration, and a basic component of current measuring systems. Time is an intrinsic subject of religion, philosophy, and science, but defining time in a non-controversial manner applicable to all fields of study has always eluded the greatest scholars.

In physics and other sciences, time is considered one of the few fundamental quantities: Other physical quantities (i.e. velocity and force) can be generated from time, but no other quantity defines time. Thus within science, the only definition needed or possible is an operational one, in which time is defined by the process of measurement and by the units chosen. In this capacity time is measured to sequence events, and to quantify the durations of events and the intervals between them.

The rest of the opening
I blanche at the thought of asking JimWae to make the intro synopsis on philosophy more concise, as I wouldn't know if it's possible. In any case, he has citations, so that's farther along of the rest of opening, anyway.

The last paragraph before the TOC seems like it should lead out from the second paragraph, since it's about measurement, but then ends with some references to other fields interested in Time. This should probably be retooled as well.

Looking forward to people's thoughts. I may be away for a few days, and responses may not be immediate. Cheers. -- Yamara 00:56, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

First off-- Time is a common term for the experience of duration --Time is another way of saying the experience of duration, perhaps? because what is the experience of duration other than time? time is time? really not saying anything at all other than saying another way of saying it.

secondly= I do have a problem with insisting that time cannot be defined in terms of anything else, as this was the notion under classical physics which has been disproven over a hundred years ago by Einsteinian physics... in relativity physics time is part of a co-ordinate system which is always defined in relation to another co-ordinate system with the speed of light as the only constant. Basically light is measured by a comparison of an arbitrarily chosen distance measure such as miles or kilometers compared to a standardized count of some countable cycling event such as a fraction of the rotation of the earth or a second. The idea in physics is that no matter which co-ordinate system you find yoruself within, the same measure and same rotational fraction will yeild the same speed of light, no matter how much this violates common sense when two or more systems are involved and classical physics says the result should not work out that way... like when you and I are passing each other at close to light speed, our measurements relative to each other should not result in the same speed of light, yet they still do. What this means is that for relativity to work, time is no longer a fixed quanity, but is variable due to the combined differences between your and my coordinate systems. even though we use identicle time pieces such as watches, the duration being measured is varied because light is the same for both of us and we must use the Lorentz transformation to adjust for each others time factor to get the correct readings.

Jiohdi (talk) 17:35, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Time is a common term for the experience of duration

This is based on older Britannicas, true. And it is neither a comprehensive view taken by philosophers, nor the detailed understanding required by physicists and other chronometricians and chronologists.

But it is how time is commonly used and understood in the English-speaking world. People-- the common readership-- think in terms of being late for work, or knowing when the sun will set For instance, I right now have to run to post office, and I only have so much time' to write this before it closes. Time is commonly considered a known quantity--even if it literally is nothing of kind, its nature still being reconsidered by our best minds.

The readership does not live by Planck units, and only some are maintaining an awareness of Kant or Julian Barbour as they consult this article. This should be acknowledged first, as it is the assumption the readership will generally bring. The article has plenty of space to disabuse and inform the reader, but time is indeed a "common term for the experience of duration". It is the most widely understood use of the word, even if the definition has far more surprises and detail in store.

Excuse me for now, I'm running out of time. :) -- Yamara 22:26, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

(Back. --Yamara 23:37, 31 January 2008 (UTC))

Time difference instead of a top mass quark

Sorry for the strange bold topic, I dont want to introduce a new theory (or upset you physicans). I just wonder where we are in modern physics these days.

As it's a known fact; Time goes slower here down on earth (close to earth's mass). Compared to far away in space satelite / astronauts. The mass of earth is quite big but as a general effect in the universe it should aply to all kind of masses. Altough a widely known fact, i'm missing any reference of this in particle physics/quantum mechanics.

I'm wondering asking here for any theories, is mass just slowed down time?. Where gravity (or bended space) is just like (ahum sorry) a waterfall of space-time* between different spaces. I'm not a physican but it's the level at wich i understood some of einsteins concepts.

Einstein talked a lot about spacetime, but somehow it seams the concept of the 'empty spacetime is not much used in particle phyiscis. Altough it's a great concept Einstein tought of; he for saw gravitational lensing - einstein rings - blackholes etc..

So i just wonder is there a modern theory of space time for the small scale atomic world?

Where mass of a particle is taken into acount with time delays in the particle, where 'particles/>>spaces' bend space surounding them. And where it might be that mass is explained by the time difference of that area. It might be a theory of a universe based on a pure: space & time only concept. (particles and gravity and all other forces as side effect)

I'm curious, is there such a theory, these days (be it proven or not quit yet ?) I'll be happy to read it.. --82.217.143.153 (talk) 22:26, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Have a look at Quantum gravity... -- JocK (talk) 16:20, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Time doesn't exist?

I have been reading in the popular science books (Greene) that according the theory of relativity, the usual experiencing of time as a moving quantity is wrong and that such time doesn't exist. If I try to express that idea in my layman terms (if I remember correctly), in spacetime all the time coordinates exist all at once - just like all space coordinates exist all at once and consequently past, now, and future are just subjective sensations imposed on us. Should something like that be mentioned at the section about time in physics/relativity (and other more specialised pages)? NikNovi (talk) 23:24, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

It's covered under Time as "unreal": (Julian Barbour in his The End of Time). That leads into the physical sciences section, at least.

—Yamara ✉ 00:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict)

I don't remember anybody's making the claim that "time doesn't exist" can be derived from Special Relativity or General Relativity. One has a theory that relates several fundamental terms, including time, in a mathematical way. As I recall, one of the things that Greene does relate is that the "arrow of time" is not implied in theory, or at least is not always implied in theory, so it is possible to theoretically explain an event that is diagrammed vertically on the page as going from top to bottom or from bottom to top. (On a quantum scale there are "different" events that look exactly the same except for the direction in which they move according to our clock sense.)

I think this question is more like the arguments regarding the interpretation of quantum mechanics. The math is clear, but people tend to try to interpret the math and the experiments in different ways. People have the black box. They know what goes in and what comes out, and they are not satisfied with that unless they belong to the "shut up and calculate" school. They want to know, "which slit does the photon really go through in any run of the double-slit experiment." "Why does the photon show up in this interference fringe band rather than another one? There has to be a reason!"

Time does not move in time, or so logic and common language would seem to indicate to us. If time did move in time then infinite regress problems might result. If so, so be it. But let's not borrow trouble just yet.

Space can have concrete markers, at least in local experience. If we were walking around on an abandoned air field, we could pound nails in the concrete wherever we wanted, and we could use any piece of bronze, steel, or whatever as a standard of measurement. Given that we could repeat the development of our classical ideas of space assuming that we were as smart as Euclid. We get into trouble when we assume without good evidence that a triangle's three angles will always equal 180 degrees. It took Western science centuries to come to the conclusion that maybe geometry as we conceived it is not the word of God, the law of the Universe.

Time doesn't work that way. We can't make a marker in time, a second marker, and so on, and then come back to the first marker. At least not in everyday experience. (Greene also talks about ways that we might be able to return to the original "peg" by, e.g., revisiting the first sign of a nova as seen from Earth.)

The operational definitions that are gathered around our ideas of space involve driving nails or making dots on paper, making meter sticks, drawing straight lines using tools (a laser is a present-day convenient tool), laying our meter stick along the line and noting down how many times we do so before we get from one point to the other.

The operational definitiions that are gathered around our idea of time involve comparing processes. The earliest actual clock may have been a biological device for keeping biological activities synchronized with things like high and low tides. Biological clock frequently work by having a circular series of events. If you are aware of the dark of the moon, and notice that it "comes back" and "goes away," then you can also count the number of times some circular event series occurs between appearances of the dark of the moon. Heart beats are not entirely reliable because sometimes our bodies need our hearts to cycle more energetically to pump more blood. Special time circuits that are "dedicated" are not so tied to transient environmental features. So even simple organisms with dedicated clock circuits may do a good job of timing activities like ovulation (which involves some growing time) to the phases of the moon and the rising of the tides.

There is a fine book by Gottfried Martin that describes the development of our ideas about time in the context of explaining Kant's philosophy (which took a maverick view of time). The book is, if I remember correctly, called Kant's Metaphysics and Theory of Science. The general sequence of historical developments (leaving out some intermediate figures) was that St. Augustine figured that space and time were both created by God, and God was therefore outside of time and would see everything from an e-tern-al perspective. People might make their own free decisions but God would know about how everything turned out without involving the need to work through things sequentially. It would be like somebody perceiving the way out of a maze by looking at the pencil trace left by the child that worked the maze puzzle. The Medieval philosophers, Aquinas et al., worked on it some more. Leibniz decided that time was a relationship among events, and not itself a thing. Kant had his try at it, and Einstein was influenced by being in a historical position not to have to work through all of the intricacies of the problem from scratch.

Going back in time implies a sort of "river of time" to swim against. Things that are located in space can be visited by moving around in space to readjust one's individual coordinates with the coordinates of the Space Needle, or whatever it is you want to visit. Is there something called time that has its coordinates and that one can adjust one's own coordinates to? If one is in inter-Galactic space, traveling along in a space ship, what would be one's experience of going back to where one was before? I met Mary Lou in the S.S. Enterprise at x, y, z, t, and now I want to see her again. Does it make sense to go back to x, y, z at time t'? Or have Mary Lou and her ship moved somewhere else? If Mary Lou and ship have moved somewhere else in space, does it look particularly promising to expect that they would still be stuck in the time where I met them?

In Buddhist thought, or at least in some varieties, the universe is re-created from instant to instant. What I experience as movement in space is actually the "quantum" recreation of my cat or my finger in a new place vis-a-vis my desk, the earth, etc. What I experiment as movement in time is actually the "quantum" recreation of me, of my cat, of my computer, of my wall clock, and the computer and the wall clock have been recreated showing slightly different times. So all of time exists "simultaneously" in the sense that all of the events shown in a movie exist "simultaneously" because the whole spool of film is in the can.

The Buddhist way is a little more concrete than the four-dimensional space-time view with different time-lines, etc., so let's stick with that simpler model for a while. The Buddhist idea is that one is recreated from instant to instant according to the laws of karma. Basically, intentional acts in instant x are causal factors in what occurs in instant y. It's at least conceivable that one flock of karma might cause the creation of the next instantiation of me back in days of Confucius. I think I would be severely disoriented if I retained memories of sitting typing at my computer and then tripping over the threshold of the front door of the Duke of Lu. From the standpoint of people "back in that time" a strangely dressed individual would pop out of empty air. In terms of the movie analogy it would be as though a cartoonist had drawn a sequence of pictures of me leading up to frame n and then had for some reason refrained from drawing me in the next frame and had rewound the film a mile or so and had drawn in a brief sequence in which I appeared, blundered into the ducal presence, and was killed on the assumption that I was an assassin.

From the standpoint of the cartoon characters, events occur in temporal sequence. From the standpoint of the projectionist, it's all in the can when Disney gets through with his work. What difference does it make?

One of the main things that seems to be in question is whether there is a standpoint outside of the temporal sequence where events at time a and time b could be seen in an encompassing vision. If you take the standpoint of Aquinas, then there is. God is outside of time. He is the creator of the movie. He is the projectionist of the movie and can choose to view the strip of film spread across his desk or projected frame by frame. If you take another standpoint, then protons, neutrons, electrons, etc. are not in a constant relationship with each other, but in ever-changing relationships. The proton may be everlasting, or nearly so, but it is not "frozen" and neither are the electrons that happen to fall into its sphere of attraction. If the proton moves in space it is not to be found between a bunch of marker entities we have our eyes on, and it it moves in time then it is not to be found as a copy of itself. There is only one photon, and it moves in space and in time. So if you could "go back," then what would that mean? If time is a "thing" (as some people believe that space is in some sense a "thing" with its own nature and characteristics) then would one find anything "there" if one went back in time?

If I am a thing in time because I am an evolving series of events, then for me to go back in time to my youth would involve violating the laws of entropy somehow (or using a huge amount of energy and an infallible memory of how I got to my present state) to force things step by step back through the series of changes that brought them to their present state. So at great and improbable cost I might be forced to return to a newborn child. But would doing so have returned my mother to live, and would it have reverted her to the state of her early middle age when she could provide a womb to pop the newborn baby back into? The more of the Universe that one wanted to revert to its past state, the more impossible the energy costs. Entropy involves the probabilities of things like a just-splattered egg reversing its splatter, reforming its shell, and jumping back into the egg carton. If one event has a fifty-fifty probability, and another event has the same probability, the probability of getting both at once = .5 * .5 = .25. The probability of getting Humpty-Dumpty to spontaneously reform is rather lower than .25.

To me, the real question is not whether one could find a standpoint out of time from which one could, as it were, see the movie in the can. The question is what is the nature of the connections among the frames of the movie. Frame one shows a steel bearing teetering on the edge of a table. Frame 10,000 shows the steel bearing striking a steel plate one the floor. Frame 20,00 shows the steel bearing somewhere pretty near where it started out. Is the causal relationship between the steel bearing's position in frame 10,000 and in frame 20,000 absolute?

If Laplace was right, all the causal relationships are absolute. There is no slop in the system. So whatever was going on in frame one of the movie will determine what happens in the frame at the end of the movie. There would be no need to store the entire movie in the universal hard drive. One could just store the initial conditions and the laws of the system, and anybody who wanted to view something from the middle of the movie could just have the universal computer generate the scene.

If quantum mechanics is right, or if free will is a reality, the initial conditions and the laws do not dictate the end of the movie. So the cosmic movie maker would be able to set up the beginning conditions and make many movies by running the same experiment over and over again, and filming it each time. Each film would have a different outcome. Some might become best sellers. Some might go dark after the first billion billion frames. The cosmic projectionist could see the movies "in the can," but he couldn't know what the movies show without scanning them either in panoramic vision or frame by frame or projected on a screen.

I think this stuff is too highly speculative to make a good part of the article. Perhaps an accurate summary and a citation to Greene might be made. But I'm pretty sure that he is reporting the work of other people even if he has his own thoughts on the matter, so it might be lots of work to see how this idea developed. Maybe it would turn out to be so complicated that it would have to go into a different article.P0M (talk) 01:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I think OP is refering to the concept of "block universe" (see Eternalism (philosophy of time) and external references therein). -- JocK (talk) 09:11, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I see, what I was talking is eternalism (@Patrick: time as a moving quantity does not exist, not the time itself). The problem with eternalism is, that in Greene's book this is not a philosophical term, but a scientific. Greene also talks about what simultaneous events are, with regard to the speed and direction of the observer. IIRC he derives the existence of the whole spacetime as a "block universe", as you say, from this and such considerations. There is no philosophy there, just calculations using the verified equasions of relativity. NikNovi (talk) 14:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

It would be helpful to have the book and page citations for Greene.

Somewhere (probably in both of Greene's books on my shelves) he goes into the argument about whether space exists, i.e., whether space is "just a relationship" (as Leibniz would have it). The crux question was whether, in an otherwise empty universe, water in a rotating barrel would "crawl up the sides," or whether in the absence of any other masses in that universe rotating the barrel would not have any influence on the contents. (Or something like that. Obviously there are problems with how one would rotate a barrel and how one would know whether one was getting the job done if one tried to rotate it.) The conclusion was apparently that rotation would have results that could be noticed, and from that it was reasoned that space must not simply be an absence.

The equivalent question would be whether time has any such "existence" apart from the relationships among clockish things.

Since there is already an article, it looks like the best course would be to summarize the article here and link to it. P0M (talk) 18:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I am reading the articles that JocK recommended (external links on the Eternalism page). Paul Davies's article That Mysterious Flow would probably be a good starting point. Now I am reading Petkov's article Is There an Alternative to the Block Universe View? About Greene: I don't have a copy at hand right now. I think the topic is covered somewhere after those early philosophers you mention (Leibnitz, Newton, Mach) and their speculations, and of course after he introduces relativity. You will see the diagrams of the "block universe" there, represented as bread loaves, where space part of the spacetime is 2D, and the third dimension represents time part of the spacetime. But don't know which chapter would that be... And of course there are no calculations in Greene as it is a general-public book, if those would be included some more technical source should be found. NikNovi (talk) 20:48, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Time Cube

The current article states "Among philosophers, there are two distinct viewpoints on time" when there is a third, legitimate viewpoint on time held by philosophers, namely Time cube. This merits a mention. I agree that it should not take up a lot of the article, but it should be mentioned as a viewpoint on time. Time keeps on slippin (talk) 22:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Time Cube is a highly individualized opinion, with no serious acceptance in the wider philosophic community. The article Time is both a Vital and a Core article according to the Wikipeida 1.0 Editorial Team, and there will be no room in it for such an extreme minority opinion. —Yamara ✉ 02:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

For all people talk about how "out there" Time Cube is, I have not heard anyone able to disprove it. Typically, people resort to ad hominen attachs and call Dr. Ray a crank. He has even offered a cash prize for anyone who can disprove it and has spoken at respected educational institutions. Copernicus, Brahe, Gallileo were all considered cranks in their time and their ideas were dismissed. Denial of time cube appears to be primarily based on the idea that -1 x -1 = 1, WHICH IS STUPID! Time keeps on slippin (talk) 02:23, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Extreme claims such as Time Cube require extreme evidence. Since the majority of the time cube "work" is either indecipherable or a very clear misunderstanding of what mathematics is (a great example of this is your statement "Denial of time cube appears to be primarily based on the idea that -1 x -1 = 1, WHICH IS STUPID!") there is no need for explicit rebuttal for editors to decide that there is no place for the Time Cube theory in this article. It is so inept as to require no further consideration. There are places where the Time Cube work can be mentioned: Uncyclopedia and "Dr." Ray's websites are examples. Wikipedia in general (with the exception of the Time Cube article) and this article in particular are not places where this material can appear. If you could provide multiple independent, reliable, published sources that describe Time Cube as a mainstream theory of time, we can include it. Otherwise definitely not. Continued addition of this material without such sources is a clear violation of our policy on maintaining a neutral point of view. Thanks, Gwernol 02:40, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree. P0M (talk) 07:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Those interested in Time Cube vandalry can check out this 92k archive of an assault on the Greenwich Mean Time article.

I am also taking this as a cue to start a fresh talk page... —Yamara ✉ 08:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)