From: exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: invention of time
Date: 20 Aug 92 18:53:55 GMT
Organization: Ericsson Network Systems, Inc.

In article <snodgras.714201251@crash> snodgras@crash.cts.com (John Snodgrass) writes:
>From: snodgras@crash.cts.com (John Snodgrass)
>Subject: invention of time
>Date: 19 Aug 92 05:14:11 GMT


>      One of the most profound (and absurd) assumptions of the new
>physics is the existence of time _as real_. Einstein was aware of the
>tenuous nature of this assumption, as he made clear in his statement
>that 'time is what clocks measure'. In fact, clocks don't 'measure'
>anything, they are just physical systems which we judge to be more or
>less periodic by comparing them with other periodic systems. But if we
>take five atomic clocks and synchronize them (itself only approximate)
>we will find that they do not remain synchronized. Now, if one clock
>is very much off from the others, we will say this clock is wrong, and
>yet that may be the only one (if we had an even _more_ accurate clock)
>which is right. The point is, we have no way to tell, no matter how
>accurate our clocks are -- and, in fact, evidence shows us that no motion
>is likely to be _perfectly periodic_: so where do we get this concept of
>absolute time?

>      Where we get it is from mathematical description. The measurement
>of motion is obviously important, and so the variable of time (as measured
>by a clock) enters into many useful equations. With Einstein, however,
>we get time elevated beyond a representative of a clock reading to a
>universal, along with space, to become spacetime. This happened subtley,
>as the origins of the 't' variable were forgotten, and the abstract notion
>disconnected from reality, then turned around and used to _project a reality
>onto the world_! This, in fact, is the story of the new physics, in a
>nutshell. Mathematical constructs reified. Geometry projected onto the world
>as a non-physical cause of physical events. And time, in this absolute
>'fourth dimension' sense, comes into being.

>      With our entire cosmology wrapped around it, it is amazing to realize
>that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for the existence of time.
>(Space in the geometrical sense is the same way.) This makes such notions
>as 'time dilation' even more absurd, since they are predicated on something
>else which itself has not been demonstrated. Of course, this doesn't stop
>anyone from believing in it. Human beings are far more used to believing
>in what they are told, and repeating it mindlessly, than in the skeptical,
>questioning approach to forming a view of the world. That's why the world
>of physics is dominated by relativists: the urge to believe, even in the
>most absurd, groundless notions, far outweighs the urge to place even the
>simplest analysis, as I demonstrated above, onto the objects of one's belief.

>      John E. Snodgrass
>      -----------------
>      snodgras@crash.cts.com

Compare 'Time does not exist' with 'My right hand does not exist'.  It seems 
to me that--this is a technical philosophy thread isn't it?--arguments 
about the unreality time derive whatever plausibility they might be thought 
to possess by trading on a confusion between mathematical time and what A.
C. Ewing calls 'the time of our psychological life'.  When the new trendys 
in physics say that time is unreal I suspect that what they have in mind is 
the idea that time is causally inefficacious; which is, I think, roughly 
the same idea of many philosophers of science who say that nomologicals 
contain no temporal words essentially).  But I would agree with Moore that 
to say flatly that time does not exist is absurd, like saying 'My right hand 
does not exist' is absurd, unless some backround context is assumed 
that assigns it a sense. 

I don't know exactly what account of time the new physics requires. But if 
it controvenes the idea of time as the dimension of change exemplified by 
the ordering-relations of precedence, succession, and simultaneity in the 
three modes of past, present, and future, I should personally be at a loss 
to make any sense of it.  Protests that something very different from this 
account is true of the world as we experience it would, to my mind, just be 
misunderstanding. 
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