Timeless: the Truth About Time
Timeless: The Truth About Time
The conception of time is seemingly self-evident. Tick, tock. A minute consists of sixty seconds, an hour of sixty minutes, a day of twenty-four hours, and a year of 365 days. It is quite rare that the fundamental nature of time itself is ever even brought into questioning. What is time? What do we mean when we say time? Is time even real? These questions have all been contested and an answer has been long sought. It rarely occurs to us about how little we know about time, yet, time is a factor is almost every part of our lives; everything we do revolves around time. Perhaps examining the philosophical implications of what we call ‘time’ will help us relate to what time actually means, if it means anything at all. Time has always been a main concern of many different subjects, but defining the term in a non-controversial fashion that can be applied to all fields of study has regularly eluded even the greatest of scholars.
Defining what time is might guide us in the right direction by helping us understand how time is viewed in our day-to-day activities and how it affects us. When we talk about time, the first thing that comes to mind is the use of time as a unit of measurement. Time is used to sequence events; by identifying now as the present, we can provide a definitive before and after to the present, commonly known as the past and the future. Time can also be used to compare the duration of an event or the intervals between two events; in which time is once again used as a tool used to measure change. These definitions are quite simple to understand and have been around for centuries; however, it has only been quite recent in human history that we understand time as a measurement to quantify rates of change such as the motion of objects.
Time can be understood as a fundamental structure to human empirical knowledge; as a point of reference, time revolutionized our understanding of when certain events occur or when we can
The conception of time is seemingly self-evident. Tick, tock. A minute consists of sixty seconds, an hour of sixty minutes, a day of twenty-four hours, and a year of 365 days. It is quite rare that the fundamental nature of time itself is ever even brought into questioning. What is time? What do we mean when we say time? Is time even real? These questions have all been contested and an answer has been long sought. It rarely occurs to us about how little we know about time, yet, time is a factor is almost every part of our lives; everything we do revolves around time. Perhaps examining the philosophical implications of what we call ‘time’ will help us relate to what time actually means, if it means anything at all. Time has always been a main concern of many different subjects, but defining the term in a non-controversial fashion that can be applied to all fields of study has regularly eluded even the greatest of scholars.
Defining what time is might guide us in the right direction by helping us understand how time is viewed in our day-to-day activities and how it affects us. When we talk about time, the first thing that comes to mind is the use of time as a unit of measurement. Time is used to sequence events; by identifying now as the present, we can provide a definitive before and after to the present, commonly known as the past and the future. Time can also be used to compare the duration of an event or the intervals between two events; in which time is once again used as a tool used to measure change. These definitions are quite simple to understand and have been around for centuries; however, it has only been quite recent in human history that we understand time as a measurement to quantify rates of change such as the motion of objects.
Time can be understood as a fundamental structure to human empirical knowledge; as a point of reference, time revolutionized our understanding of when certain events occur or when we can
Cited: Kant’s Views on Space and Time. Andrew Janiak. September, 2009. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. May, 2012. <http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-spacetime/> Kant on Time. Diana Mertz Hsieh. September, 2004. May, 2012. <http://www.dianahsieh.com/docs/kot.pdf> Leibniz’s Influence on Kant. Catherine Wilson. June 2008. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. May, 2012. <http: plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-leibniz/> Newton’s Views on Space, Time, and Motion. Robert Rynasiewicz. August, 2011. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. May, 2012. <http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-stm/> Yourgrau, Palle. A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy Of Godel And Einstein. Cambridge. Basic Books. 2005.