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Is time a measurable period?
How do we measure time?
How does time work?
What is time & why is it important?
What does time mean in English?
What is a time standard?
A time standard is a specification for measuring time: assigning a number or calendar date to an instant (point in time), quantifying the duration of a time interval, and establishing a chronology (ordering of events). In modern times, several time specifications have been officially recognized as standards, where formerly they were matters of ...
Aug 26, 2022 · Time works by measuring periods between the past, present and future. But that's a simple, albeit vague answer to an incredibly complex topic. Time is all around us and is the...
Jun 7, 2024 · Get the scientific definition of what is time and learn what science has to say about the beginning and end of time, time travel, and time dilation.
- Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D.
A short look at the nature of time, touching on deep time, time travel, and the history of timekeeping.
- Overview
- Nature and definition of time
time, a measured or measurable period, a continuum that lacks spatial dimensions. Time is of philosophical interest and is also the subject of mathematical and scientific investigation.
Time appears to be more puzzling than space because it seems to flow or pass or else people seem to advance through it. But the passage or advance seems to be unintelligible. The question of how many seconds per second time flows (or one advances through it) is obviously an absurd one, for it suggests that the flow or advance comprises a rate of change with respect to something else—to a sort of hypertime. But if this hypertime itself flows, then a hyper-hypertime is required, and so on, ad infinitum. Again, if the world is thought of as spread out in space-time, it might be asked whether human consciousness advances up a timelike direction of this world and, if so, how fast; whether future events pop into existence as the “now” reaches them or are there all along; and how such changes in space-time can be represented, since time is already within the picture. (Ordinary change can, of course, be represented in a space-time picture: for example, a particle at rest is represented by a straight line and an oscillating particle by a wavy line.)
In the face of these difficulties, philosophers tend to divide into two sorts: the “process philosophers” and the “philosophers of the manifold.” Process philosophers—such as Alfred North Whitehead, an Anglo-American mathematician, scientist. and metaphysician who died in 1947—hold that the flow of time (or human advance through it) is an important metaphysical fact. Like the French intuitionist Henri Bergson, they may hold that this flow can be grasped only by nonrational intuition. Bergson even held that the scientific concept of time as a dimension actually misrepresents reality. Philosophers of the manifold hold that the flow of time or human advance through time is an illusion. They argue, for example, that words such as past, future, and now, as well as the tenses of verbs, are indexical expressions that refer to the act of their own utterance. Hence, the alleged change of an event from being future to being past is an illusion. To say that the event is future is to assert that it is later than this utterance. Then later yet, when one says that it is in the past, he or she asserts that it is earlier than that other utterance. Past and future are not real predicates of events in this view; and change in respect of them is not a genuine change.
Again, although process philosophers think of the future as somehow open or indeterminate, whereas the past is unchangeable, fixed, determinate, philosophers of the manifold hold that it is as much nonsense to talk of changing the future as it is to talk of changing the past. If a person decides to point left rather than to point right, then pointing left is what the future was. Moreover, this thesis of the determinateness of the future, they argue, must not be confused with determinism, the theory that there are laws whereby later states of the universe may be deduced from earlier states (or vice versa). The philosophy of the manifold is neutral about this issue. Future events may well exist and yet not be connected in a sufficiently lawlike way with earlier ones.
Britannica Quiz
Physics and Natural Law
One of the features of time that puzzled the Neoplatonist philosopher Augustine of Hippo, in the 5th century ce, was the difficulty of defining it. In one current of 20th-century philosophy of language, however (that influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein), no mystery was seen in this task. Learning to handle the word time involves a multiplicity of verbal skills, including the ability to handle such connected words as earlier, later, now, second, and hour. These verbal skills have to be picked up in very complex ways (partly by ostension), and it is not surprising that the meaning of the word time cannot be distilled into a neat verbal definition. (It is not, for example, an abbreviating word like bachelor.)
Aug 16, 2024 · Time is probably the most measured quantity on Earth. It tells us when to wake and when to sleep; when to eat, work and play; when buses, trains and planes will depart and arrive. It helps organize and coordinate our lives.
Time is a measure of non-stop, consistent change in our surroundings, usually from a specific viewpoint. While the concept of time is self-evident and intuitive – the steady passing of events before our eyes; the orbit of the Moon around our planet – describing its fundamental nature is much harder.
