/lit/ - Literature

I'm thinking about Time. Or rather, the plausible inexistence of this concept.

What we are really monitoring when we measure time is the relative rates of motion between two physical objects, or rather, between the rate of motion of one object or system of objects and the observer.

The German physicist Ernst Mach had some interesting thoughts on this topic. Unlike many physicists, Mach was a phenomenalist. He believed that what physics studies is not the physical objects themselves, but our own perceptions of their relationships and properties. Certainly relativity theory only makes sense with respect to constant assumptions about the observer and their perception of the physical system.

Could time be like this? Certainly Kant believe it was so. Some physicists even suggest that cosmological models can be retained without any other changes if you substitute the dimension of time with another dimension of space.

While common sense tells us that the cosmos is strictly defined by three space coordinates (x y z) and one dimension of time, it's also possible to have a 4 dimensional spatial universe where in addition to the x y z coordinates there is another spatial variable where each "block" or time slice of xyz coordinates for each object in classical space is adjacent to all other time slices. There they reside in timelessness, like frozen snapshots that neither come to pass, have passed, or are present, but merely are.

Given the above observation that time reduces to relative motion, it would simplify physics if it were no longer considered a physically real quantity. Rather it's a way for us to track the rate of change between different physical systems.

It also eases the mind somewhat to know everything is carved out in stone; that you are neither running out of, wasting, or spending precious time. You merely are, just like everything else merely is.