Time is controllable, no?!
Friday, September 30, 2005
Yesterday we turned into the winter timing, which means we are GMT + 2 instead of being GMT +3. When it was 12 p.m., our clocks were set to 11 p.m. An increase of a whole hour!
Which made me think, then time is controllable. The common complaint these days are, we are running out time, we can’t catch up with our deadlines, time is flying without accomplishing what we planned for, etc..
Then why not increase the hours of the day, put an extra hour whenever we want, make the day 25 hours instead of 24?! Is it possible? Yeah sure why not? Isn’t it us who made it 24 hours, then it’s us who could make it 25.
But what is time?!
Checking the wikipedia for a definition of time, I came across the following;
"Attempting to understand time has long been a prime occupation for philosophers and scientists. There are widely divergent views about its meaning, hence it is difficult to provide an uncontroversial and clear definition of time except its physical definition, which dictionaries give as "a non-spatial linear continuum wherein events occur in an apparently irreversible order." This article looks at some of the main philosophical and scientific issues relating to time.
The measurement of time has also occupied scientists and technologists, and was a prime motivation in astronomy. Time is also a matter of significant social importance, having economic value ("time is money") as well as personal value due to an awareness of the limited time in each day and in our lives. Time has long been an important theme for writers, artists and philosophers. Units of time have been agreed upon to quantify the duration of events and the intervals between them. Regularly recurring events and objects with apparently periodic motion have long served as standards for units of time - such as the apparent motion of the sun across the sky, the phases of the moon, the swing of a pendulum.
Philosophy of time:
In ancient thought, Zeno's paradoxes challenged the conception of infinite divisibility, and eventually led to the development of calculus. Parmenides (of whom Zeno was a follower) believed that time, motion, and change were illusions, basing this on a rather interesting argument. More recently, McTaggart held a similar belief.
Newton believed time and space form a container for events, which is as real as the objects it contains. In contrast, Leibniz believed that time and space are a conceptual apparatus describing the interrelations between events.
Leibniz and others thought of time as a fundamental part of an abstract conceptual framework, together with space and number, within which we sequence events, quantify their duration, and compare the motions of objects. In this view, time does not refer to any kind of entity that "flows", that objects "move through", or that is a "container" for events.
The bucket argument proved problematic for Leibniz, and his account fell into disfavour, at least amongst scientists, until the development of Mach's principle. Modern physics views the curvature of spacetime around an object as much a feature of that object as are its mass and volume.
Immanuel Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason, described time as an a priori notion that allows us (together with other a priori notions such as space) to comprehend sense experience. With Kant, neither space nor time are conceived as substances, but rather both are elements of a systematic framework we use to structure our experience. Spatial measurements are used to quantify how far apart objects are, and temporal measurements are used to quantify how far apart events occur.
Nietzsche, inspired by the concept of eternal return in his book Thus Spake Zarathustra, argued that time possesses a circular characteristic. Postulating an infinite past, "all things" must have come to pass therein; the same for an infinite future.
In Existentialism, time is considered fundamental to the question of being, in particular by the philosopher Martin Heidegger."
Another definition that someone I know thought of was;
“I personally believe that time would make absolutely no sense if there were not changing, evolving and constatly moving 'things'. Time exists because things exist as they are. This is how I believe that time is an illusion. I believe that life is what makes time moves. Life also could take us in an unconcious cycle where time is equivalent to fulfilling expectations and production, clock machines, appointments and schedules without realising that 'time' is not just mathematical patterns but 'life' itself.
There would have never been anything like 9pm if there was nothing to make it significant. What I am trying to get to is. When I say .. Hey ! Don't take time for granted ! I am not talking about the years and days .. but I am rather saying " Hey! Save yourself!" ...”
What am I trying to reach here?! I don’t know, it’s just a thought!
Which made me think, then time is controllable. The common complaint these days are, we are running out time, we can’t catch up with our deadlines, time is flying without accomplishing what we planned for, etc..
Then why not increase the hours of the day, put an extra hour whenever we want, make the day 25 hours instead of 24?! Is it possible? Yeah sure why not? Isn’t it us who made it 24 hours, then it’s us who could make it 25.
But what is time?!
Checking the wikipedia for a definition of time, I came across the following;
"Attempting to understand time has long been a prime occupation for philosophers and scientists. There are widely divergent views about its meaning, hence it is difficult to provide an uncontroversial and clear definition of time except its physical definition, which dictionaries give as "a non-spatial linear continuum wherein events occur in an apparently irreversible order." This article looks at some of the main philosophical and scientific issues relating to time.
The measurement of time has also occupied scientists and technologists, and was a prime motivation in astronomy. Time is also a matter of significant social importance, having economic value ("time is money") as well as personal value due to an awareness of the limited time in each day and in our lives. Time has long been an important theme for writers, artists and philosophers. Units of time have been agreed upon to quantify the duration of events and the intervals between them. Regularly recurring events and objects with apparently periodic motion have long served as standards for units of time - such as the apparent motion of the sun across the sky, the phases of the moon, the swing of a pendulum.
Philosophy of time:
In ancient thought, Zeno's paradoxes challenged the conception of infinite divisibility, and eventually led to the development of calculus. Parmenides (of whom Zeno was a follower) believed that time, motion, and change were illusions, basing this on a rather interesting argument. More recently, McTaggart held a similar belief.
Newton believed time and space form a container for events, which is as real as the objects it contains. In contrast, Leibniz believed that time and space are a conceptual apparatus describing the interrelations between events.
Leibniz and others thought of time as a fundamental part of an abstract conceptual framework, together with space and number, within which we sequence events, quantify their duration, and compare the motions of objects. In this view, time does not refer to any kind of entity that "flows", that objects "move through", or that is a "container" for events.
The bucket argument proved problematic for Leibniz, and his account fell into disfavour, at least amongst scientists, until the development of Mach's principle. Modern physics views the curvature of spacetime around an object as much a feature of that object as are its mass and volume.
Immanuel Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason, described time as an a priori notion that allows us (together with other a priori notions such as space) to comprehend sense experience. With Kant, neither space nor time are conceived as substances, but rather both are elements of a systematic framework we use to structure our experience. Spatial measurements are used to quantify how far apart objects are, and temporal measurements are used to quantify how far apart events occur.
Nietzsche, inspired by the concept of eternal return in his book Thus Spake Zarathustra, argued that time possesses a circular characteristic. Postulating an infinite past, "all things" must have come to pass therein; the same for an infinite future.
In Existentialism, time is considered fundamental to the question of being, in particular by the philosopher Martin Heidegger."
Another definition that someone I know thought of was;
“I personally believe that time would make absolutely no sense if there were not changing, evolving and constatly moving 'things'. Time exists because things exist as they are. This is how I believe that time is an illusion. I believe that life is what makes time moves. Life also could take us in an unconcious cycle where time is equivalent to fulfilling expectations and production, clock machines, appointments and schedules without realising that 'time' is not just mathematical patterns but 'life' itself.
There would have never been anything like 9pm if there was nothing to make it significant. What I am trying to get to is. When I say .. Hey ! Don't take time for granted ! I am not talking about the years and days .. but I am rather saying " Hey! Save yourself!" ...”
What am I trying to reach here?! I don’t know, it’s just a thought!
posted by MoonLightShadow at 1:18 PM, | 
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Time is an illusion. Lunch time, doubly so.