Kiwi Time Genius

[kandrathe]

Perhaps you could say that time exists only as an intangible unit of measurement.

Our perceptions tell us that time exists as we observe motion. Without it how would any matter be able to change state? So tangible, yes, in our perception and understanding of reality.

What Lynds is trying to say is that there is no moment in time in which you can fix any object. Zeno's paradox is based on the fallacy that there was a fixed point in time and space where you would be half way to your destination. It is fallacious in its understanding of the particle, a position in space AND of its understanding of time. Your heart continues to beat, and in fact the electrons swirling around the carbon atoms within your body continue to move, and whatever sub-atomic processes are driving them continue. Meanwhile you are traveling on the Earth which is in constant motion, around a sun, within a galaxy, and a universe etc. which are all in constant motion. Only in your perception of a starting point/time and ending point/time could you consider a point/time that is half way in which you would progress through. The motion of an individual through space and time is better understood as a disturbance of particles through some quantum soup. Zeno's paradox and other such puzzles are purely philosophical masturbation that has nothing to do with reality. But, it was insightful for Zeno's day in understanding the infinite divisibility of their known reality.

But according to Lynds, if you consider time as a continuum and add notions of relativity, in that time is elastic and subject to distortion by gravity and velocity, then even measurments (micro or macro) in very controlled circumstances are subject to perturbances and error. It could be theorized that in some ways their is no difference between space and time in so far as relativity is concerned, and so Heisenberg might also apply to time and space in fixing a particles position or velocity. The probabilities described by Heisenberg are the precondition of the Uncertainty Principle and not a result of it. But, then again, time seems to be a different thing to us as we are unable to move through it as we are with space. Our observations of things like the Second Law of Thermodynamics indicate that entropy has some time-assymmetrical nature. A cup of coffee cools over time, but there is no reason in classical mechanics that would prevent the reverse from occuring.

So I think at best then, maths become a way or a tool to approximate the expected outcome, but may not be the "answer" to any cosmological truth. It is very hard to shake off a lifetime of experience in what our perceptions tell us are "gravity", "space", or "time".

We seem to be very good at creating black box solutions to vexing questions concerning the cosmological, or sub-atomic scales. Quantum Mechanics became neccesary to describe why electrons do not go crashing into their neutrons within milliseconds as classical physics dictates. I for one, am somewhat jaded now in my belief of these solutions, as it seems they only describe limited problem domains and are constantly being debunked or reworked to accomodate new observations. But, then again, its all we have.