What is Time? | General Physics Discussion

[Drachir]

moving finger, your last sentence above

I do not need to be able to see a sunset in order to understand what a sunset is.

contradicts your second sentence above

This argument leads to the conclusion that a blind person could never understand the meaning of the word "moon"

All of our words ultimately lead back to things that we can sense. Langauge begins when we recognize the correlation of a symbol (spoken word, printed word, or language sign) with something that we can sense.

Your understanding of an unseen sunset is only possible because we define things we cannot sense in terms of what we can sense.

We cannot sense time. Anderson has defined it in terms of the positions and the changes of positions of things that we can sense.

 

[moving finger]

moving finger, your last sentence above contradicts your second sentence above.

That's because the second sentence is not supposed to agree with the first sentence - rather it follows logically from the argument in YOUR earlier post, which argument I believe is false (hence my second sentence would also be false - therefore no reason why it should agree with my first sentence).

All of our words ultimately lead back to things that we can sense. Langauge begins when we recognize the correlation of a symbol (spoken word, printed word, or language sign) with something that we can sense.

I agree that humans develop their language in conjunction with sensory input (sensory input is how we normally learn a language in practice), but I do not agree that sensory input is a necessary pre-requisite for the in-principle acquisition of knowledge of a language.

 

[Drachir]

moving finger, I referred to your second and last sentence.

 

[petm1]

I can give you what I think time is exactly, it is only one dimension that is smooth, curved, has a intrinsic motion of dilation, and is always measured as a constant locally. Planck named it the smallest common denominator of reality, and I think we measure it relative to ourselves, starting at one Planck’s time after the big bang.

 

[Moridin]

Time is what you read of a clock.

 

[petm1]

I say that time is what clocks measure, and that is all it is.

Time is what you read of a clock.

A atomic clock measures the intrinsic motion of a cesium 133-isotope, a light clock measures the intrinsic motion of a photon between mirrors, so if time is what a clock measures or what you read of a clock, does it mean that time is intrinsic motion? Can I think of a cesium 133-isotope as a little bundle of time? Can I think of a photon as a little bundle of time? If I think like this doesn’t it seem to make time the anther, with everything that exists with intrinsic motion being the motion of time?

 

[Rade]

with everything that exists with intrinsic motion being the motion of time
Time is not motion--time is the MEASURE of motion and of being moved, time is the "number of motion". Time is a type of number. Time is what is counted, not that which with we count [Aristotle, Physica, Book IV]

 

[moving finger]

moving finger, I referred to your second and last sentence.

sorry, my typo. What I should have said was:

That's because the second sentence is not supposed to agree with the last sentence - rather the second sentence follows logically from the argument in YOUR earlier post, which argument I believe is false (hence my second sentence would also be false - therefore no reason why it should agree with my last sentence).

 

[Shooting Star]

Time is what you read of a clock.

Does this sound familiar to anybody who has read the full thread? The clock hand has turned a full circle...

 

[John Richard]

Could it be that time is two things?

Why can't time be both the screen and the moving images?

Without the images the screen of time is blank, and can't be represented to the senses

Without the screen there is nothing on which to show the moving pictures?

Perhaps the two things cannot be separated!

Like the thread, thought I'd muscle in