Time: Is it linear?

clever :wink:

:beam:

*Originally posted by senocular *
**1) Time does exist because we have defined it too. Our perception of existence is defined by our perceptions of existence. A dog exists. Why? Because we say it does. Time exists. Why? Because we say it does. That phenomenon we percieve as ‘time’ in our every day life understood as well as it is defined as is our definition of ‘existance’ itself. Time is not as plastic as a dog, but its existance in conception such as the existance of my need to go to the bathroom is real.
**

Yes, I agree partially. Our concept of time is understood and recognized as time and linear, because that is what we defined it to be. However, when we ‘created’ the term “time”, we were trying to label somthing that honestly I feel no human has the right to claim ultimate understanding of. But aside from that, we were trying to define something that is in fact, further then our realm of being able to “create by defnition” (heehee!! look phil, i made a golginition!). So although your theory could very well be true, time is something that exists beyond the scope of human influence. Like, ok, if the human race were to be obliterated off the face of the earth, would time still pass? Would the effects of the passage of time still govorn earth and animals and space? This is almost a whole new can of worms, but is our entire existence in fact created by the collective consciousness of the human species? History before mankind could in fact be a manifestation of our need for understanding of our existence; who we are, and why we are here. Basically, time exists in the physical world, no matter what form it takes, but not in the metaphysical. There is no time for the spirit, and since I think that the physical world is all illusion anyhow, (this could take a theological turn, and I think we are striving to keep this scientific, so I will not go into depth about this), then I am certainly open to the possibility that time could be just something that is created and govorned by human will.
Your post reminded me of a true story I once heard. A physics professor was once giving a final exam to his class. He stood up, placed a chair in front of the room, and said, "For the final paper, you must prove to me that this chair does not exist. You have two hours. Begin. " The class started scribbling away, and most of took most of the two hours to finish their papers. One kid however, simply sat and thought for a few minutes, and then scribbled something on his paper, handed it in, and then walked out of the room. Later, when the professor was grading the papers, he sifted through the pile of long windy theorums and pages of proofs this and that… and then he came to that kid’s paper who had taken but a few minutes. You know what was written on that paper?
“What chair”
That student got an A.

… more to come from the golgi gallery :wink:

*Originally posted by senocular *
**2) Your goings on about time (with loverly diagrams ;)) and misguided analogies did more for proving that time is linear than not. Time is not coffee; it cannot be compared to coffee. The forces involved in governing coffee and those within time are completely different entities. Coffee doesnt even cool linearly. Time, on the other hand, is probably the epitome of linearity because its definition defines it as being so. **

I heartily object. My analogies were perfectly adequate. IMHO, you missed the point of my coffee adventure. I was not saying that time can be compared to coffee, I was saying that the behavior of coffee in time/[the “creation by definition” of time ( :wink: )] shows that the reversal of linear time would not be possible because the action of the molecules of the coffee, in acting in accordance to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, could never be reversed. You could use anything as an example of this, coffee, a bouncing ball, a rock rolling off a cliff, even going to the bathroom. Any part of physical existence contains energy, and the 2nd law states that energy always diffuses. And when you take the equations that prove the law, and plug in a -time variable in place of the time variable, it is unsolveable. Basically, it doesn’t work anymore. Now of course, you can say that the laws of thermodynamics do not apply in the reversal of time, but then you would also have to say that niether do any of the other scientific laws that have been proven true and Ultimate. :slight_smile: And if that was the case, then none of your theories would have much more substance then mine. :P;):beam:

ok… I’m back online for tonight so I’ll try to read though these replies. I’m sure I’ll have an opinion (as if that’s in question) by morning. :slight_smile:

Phil~ interesting speculation and one that not a lot of people would have thought of. I’m still not sure that there is a way of moving “backwards” in space, as all movement as we know it, is from one point TO another. Even in reverse it’s another point TO here. (heehee) However I’m certainly not above redefining reality to entertain new possibilities. You know me. I ask the questions to make you think, not because I believe in any particular reality over another. Like I said interesting. I’ll speculate on this a bit.
I don’t really know why you say that “time was never meant to exist” BUT, let’s leave that alone. That sounds like one of those things that would start an argument. I really am having a lot of fun with this thread. J
Gogli ~

Ok, first let me respond to your first post David, (sorry for the delay, I have not been on Kirupa much lately)
No problems there dear. Just understand that I’m in the same boat and may not get back to a post for several days (sometimes bordering on a week J ).
Let me say right off the bat that you should be careful with me, but feel free to speculate on things. I just want everyone very clear about what they are speculating upon, and what they are stating as fact. My definitions for fact come from my science background… but they do differ somewhat from the perceived notion of a fact.

A theory is a postulate that is not proven false, for which there is an experiment that can produce a false response.

A fact is “knowledge or information based on real occurrences”.

Now postulates: I love postulates. To postulate on something is the only way that anyone EVER develops a theory. I’m even a fan of postulating on the unknowable. Of pushing the boundaries of the box, stepping outside it, or cutting it’s walls to ribbons. At the end of the day however, I always step back to the ground. I always choose the knowable in the end, over the unknowable. To live in the unknowable, is to accept anything. To chose only the knowable is to accept that which is fact, over that which is not fact. (mind you I do not say ‘fiction’ here because fiction is not the opposite of fact)

Ok, then, on with the show. There are lots of points to cover and so little time.

You challenged me to prove that time exists. I already have. Time is the defined existence of two points in space modified by things like physical objects, their velocity, size and mass. Time exists regardless of the perception of time because matter and energy in motion exist regardless of perception.

Senocular makes some good points. Things often only exist because we have defined them. It makes them no less valid. Since man came up with the concept of “x”, the variable, he has created representations to help him utilize the world.

More from gogli ~

Take a cup of coffee. It cools forward, in the direction of the future, and gets hotter in the reverse, into the past. However, the behavior of heat is, unlike mechanics, unreversable in time. This characterizes the second law of thermodynamics that states “Energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused and spread out.” No matter how you try, there is no way to scientifically prove that the movement of energy is reversable, in fact, you always come back to the point that it is not. Which esentially means that the fact that the coffee can cool at all is astounding. Because, according to the laws of mechanics, each of the particles’ movements would be reversible in time. This shows a striking contradiction in two well knows sciences that we have PROVEN to be true.

How does this show contradiction? Cooling is an effect of particles dispersing which you admit is the basis of the second law of thermodynamics. In what way does this “essentially mean that the fact that the coffee can cool at all is astounding”? What do you mean they “would be reversible in time”?

This at the end, is basically your sum-up of the theory

First, the space that exists between the two points is non-existant, I only put it there to illustrate something, which I will describe in a bit. Now if you take these two points, they are infinitely close to eachother, and do NOT stretch into eternity, for then, you would have to have more points inbetween them. So those two points do NOT display linearity. So we have two points, side by side, and infinitely close to one another. Here is why I put this space in. To show you WHY they are infintely close… You can put them as close to eachother as you want visually, but then, as you zoom in, you would have to again reposition them to make them closer. So anyways, The whole of time, past, present, and future, now exist in these two points. (We can chose to disregard any other past/future points that follow the initial point because they are not relevant. The reason they are not relevant is simple. Time can be seen existing in two points, so why add more? Even if they are truely there, they do not help in any way to make time more linear, for as we discovered earlier, the past/future line is not a line.)
So if we have now seen that the whole of time is displayed in merely two points, we also can see the whole POINT (yes, pun intended) of this essay; TIME IS NOT LINEAR. Because two points, two SINGLE points, can NOT make a line. ONLY the successive network of an infinite amount of points can do that.

It sounds to me like you are correct, but you are not 100% sure how to explain it. Your postulate is not new however. You state that the popular theory is “linear time”, but think on this.

If I were to guess what the answer to “Excuse me sir/madam, can you tell me, do you believe that time is linear?” was among the average populous I would get one of the following answers.

  1. “who cares.”
  2. “Of course time is linear. My watch says it’s 3 now, it was 2 an hour ago, time goes on.”
  3. “Time is like a ranbow man, cause I felt it in a smell.”
  4. “Modern physics has basically ruled time is like a ball of string, all knotted in an infinitely small space. Though it flows, it touches itself at all points in time, which are of course infinite. It is both linear and non-linear.”

Of course I’m just making these up, but they represent something. The first is the person who simply doesn’t care about such things. Time is whatever it is, as long as his watch works. Number two is the confused person who simply believes what he sees and that’s enough for him. He may think on the subject, but he doesn’t read up on it.
Number three: No, I’m not trying to make fun of you Gogli, it just turns into that. I have had my own convincing “feelings” about things which of course shape my view of reality. Feelings are important, just don’t be blinded by them. Note I am not saying you are, just that you and I fit in with a segment of the population that will always be ridiculed, and set into the persona of the silly or flighty. The prickishness of that statement is more to desensitize you than anything else. J
Number four is the important one. The fact is Gogli that you are correct as far as I’ve read, and spoken with, professionals in the arena of physics. Time does in fact overlap itself.
There is of course a problem with this knowledge, as Senocular points out. Is it practically applicable for you in some way? I tend to think not. There are some things that lead me to believe, some entities sometimes have the perception of linear time removed from them. Perhaps you might be one of those people. However, the numbers are very small if any exist at all. Since there is not a definitive proof yet, that we can shed the illusion of linear time, it occupies less of my time these days. If someone can come up with a proof, I’ll be first to try out such experiments, but I doubt that we will soon.

So anyway, to get to the point. You said that linear time was the popular opinion. I think that only holds true because the average person believes what they see, and because linear time is what they MUST have in order to perceive their universe. Only a serious scientist need concern himself with the non-linear nature of time.

I think that something very interesting to attempt to conceive is the idea that time touches itself at all points and yet, “So time itself is linear given any one timeline though infinite timelines exist for each and every possibility … ‘possible’ within that timeline.” Also may hold true. Try to grasp all those threads in your head at once. J Still, not practical, but fun to speculate upon.

Gogli writes in reply to Senocular

Yes, I agree partially. Our concept of time is understood and recognized as time and linear, because that is what we defined it to be. However, when we ‘created’ the term “time”, we were trying to label somthing that honestly I feel no human has the right to claim ultimate understanding of. But aside from that, we were trying to define something that is in fact, further then our realm of being able to “create by defnition”

What “right” are you referring to. We have the right to define anything we feel like. Secondly, Who is claiming ultimate understanding? No scientist worth his salt would make any such claim. Likewise defining something does not entail making such a claim. Lastly, we were “creating” by “definition”. We were “defining” by “definition”. The fact that the definition of the word time is what it is, does not mean that we made up time. Time exists, again, regardless of our perception of it. You can choose to hope that this is not the case, but everything in evidence points towards that conclusion, and nothing that I’ve ever seen points away from it.

And then we get to the crux of the problem. (and I really do think it’s a problem.)

There is no time for the spirit, and since I think that the physical world is all illusion anyhow, (this could take a theological turn, and I think we are striving to keep this scientific, so I will not go into depth about this), then I am certainly open to the possibility that time could be just something that is created and govorned by human will.

So, the whole of your theorizing is based upon something that is neither entirely evident, or which can be experimented upon. You cannot hope to have a scientific theory that requires such a precursor, and so we cannot possibly keep the conversation scientific. The thread starter is moving from a non-scientific position to begin with. See the problem.
It is possible that time, space, mind, energy, and dimension are all just illusions. This is the basis for my faith in the Universe. It cannot however be the basis for my understanding of the Universe. Understanding comes from experimentation. If you make theory from faith, you are not doing anything scientific, just imaginative.
Then you reply to Senocular’s second point about the coffee being a poor analogy.

I heartily object. My analogies were perfectly adequate. IMHO, you missed the point of my coffee adventure. . . . . you can say that the laws of thermodynamics do not apply in the reversal of time, but then you would also have to say that neither do any of the other scientific laws that have been proven true and Ultimate. And if that was the case, then none of your theories would have much more substance then mine.

What you’re saying here, as far as I can tell is double talk. If –time invalidates the second law of energy, how does –time invalidate any other laws? AND, how would the invalidation of these other laws, in any way invalidate a theory that is designed to have positive numbers? Lastly, what other laws are you specifically saying are invalidated by this –time application upon their mathmatics?

You’ll have to explain this more clearly if you want to be convincing. I don’t agree with Senocular that it’s a bad analogy necessarily, but so far it doesn’t look like a great one. J

Well this is all I have for now. I suppose that it’s far too much anyway. Most of you are probably asleep by now. Nighty night. J