If time is infinite on all ends of the spectrum(s)… how do we know that time exists and is not a mere perception of man?
Links, tutorials and articles are all welcome…
Thanks!
Update:
Jake: Exactly…
Update 2:
Eric: I luv ya, man… but your link states: “measuring entropy does not accurately measure time. There is also the complication that, locally, entropy can decrease with time.”
So how do we know time exists when it’s measure in inconsistent and dependent on perception?
Update 3:
Hans: Thank you!
Update 4:
Eric: To your edit… what of objective reality is not subjective experience? (I’m just playing with ideas here… lol).
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To answer a question with a question, how can we know that anything is not merely the universal perception of our species, and not a truth in the physical world?
Two of the traditional responses:
* It doesn’t really matter; if it impossible for us to make an observation which contradicts our view of time, and it is useful in that it is part of a system which makes accurate predictions about future observations, that’s all we can ask. To require a theory to be true in ways which can not possibly have an impact on our observations is a level of metaphysical doubt akin to asking if we are brains in jars. Yes, we can not rule that out as a possibility, but if the our perceptions act rationally, does it really matter? (Put more mildly, we can only hope to have a theory which accurately accounts for our perceptions; not absolute reality.)
* Of course, we can say we don’t think (though are not absolutely certain) that we’re not brains in jars. In some sense, occham’s razor applies here and we can say it is simpler to think our rationally behaving perceptions match a rational world, rather than being somehow consistently misleading our perceptions.
There are, of course, some people who say we can’t know. There’s a significant literature on the philosophy of time. There are folks who doubt its existence, or claim it is not as science describes it, etc. I am not of any of these schools, however, so I may not understand them fully (or at least they would claim that).
Entropy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(arrow_of_tim…
Hawking has an excellent section on this subject in “A Brief History of Time”.
Edit: The general principle holds on the cosmic scale. Entropy is still an observable phenomena that operates of off known principles that are grounded in objective reality, not subjective perception.
This is just speculation and more philosophical than scientific but I’m slowly starting to think that there’s no such thing as time. That time is just a form of measurement like in those various dX/dt formulas.
Similar to what a meter is. Or meter^3. Just like how you can’t go up to a guy and ask him to show you a physical “meter” because its a form of measurement but he can show you what a meter measures, time might be the same. You can’t literally show time but you can show what it measures.
Source(s): Speculation…