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What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.
—Saint Augustine
Time and tide wait for no man.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
—Albert Einstein |
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Time has been compared to a lot of things: a flowing river; a loosed arrow; a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.
It's not any of those things. Well, maybe the latter, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint.
You might have heard that, on the subatomic level, the physicists' equations are time-invariant; that is, they work the same backwards and forwards. This is (mostly) true. It is not the case for macroscopic situations, the ones we're familiar with. Omelets don't make eggs. This doesn't mean time is an illusion; it probably means that it's a bulk or emergent property of complexity. Other things that are emergent properties include solidity and consciousness.
You also might have heard that time is different for different observers (and I'm not referring to time zones here), depending on location, acceleration, velocity, and the effects of gravity. This is also true, though it requires very sensitive equipment to test this in situations we normally encounter. This, too, doesn't mean that time is an illusion. If I'm looking at a skyscraper from 100 yards to the west, and you're looking at it from a mile northeast, and our friend is inside it, we have very different perceptions of it, but only the most dedicated philosopher would say that the skyscraper is an illusion.
This may be a matter of definition. To me, an illusion is something that doesn't persist when you don't believe in it. Time doesn't fit the bill. Sure, you can't touch it, or see it (you can see a clock, but that's not the same thing), but, as with the wind, its effects are visible.
We have instruments that measure time to extremely high precision. Even though it's indeed different for all of us, the way it differs can be calculated, and these instruments have verified the calculations. Nothing that's so accurately measurable could possibly be an illusion.
Some of the pro-illusion arguments note that time can seem to pass faster or slower depending on what we're doing. It seems eternal as a child, and all too fast as an older adult. This, again, doesn't make it an illusion, though our perception of time might be considered such.
I've tackled the fantasy / science fiction trope of time travel in here before. It's been a while, though, and basically, it's unlikely that time travel is even possible (apart from the trivial case of being transported into the future at one second per second). In this way, time is fundamentally different from space.
And yet, space and time are interlinked; time can be considered a fourth dimension. So if you dismiss time as an illusion, then space is also an illusion. This might well be the case, but again, it breaks the common definition of "illusion."
None of the above should be construed as discouraging a writer from crafting time-travel stories. They can be a lot of fun. But I've rarely seen one that handles it consistently.
It's time. |
Some Fantasy to pass the time:
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Last time, in "Predictions" , I talked about prognostication.
Contrary to my prediction, no one commented on it. Goes to show how bad we are at guessing the future.
So that's it for me for February! See you next month. Until then,
DREAM ON!!!
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Fantasy: February 08, 2023 Issue [#11797]
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