Explanation of Time

[PeterJ]

It wouldn't make any difference what science is striving for. I was not putting forward a criticism of science. A scientist has no need to take any notice of metaphysical conjectures. They can just say, so what?

 

They already do. Metaphysics, or an examination of the foundations of analysis, shows that our everyday ideas about time must be incorrect. Physics takes no notice. Why should it? Hermann Weyl was respectable physicist, but his metaphysics is ignored in physics. It is not physics. Materialism can be falsified in logic. So what? What difference does that make in physics?

 

I would agree that as individuals we would be crazy to say "so what?" to the results of metaphysics, But in physics, strictly speaking, we cannot do anything else. Or so physicists usually argue. I don't believe that this is a sensible strategy for acquiring knowledge but I can see the argument. Physics is not metaphysics. We would have to put them both together to sort out the reality of time, and this is not a physicist's job or even their area of expertise. It's surprising that a thread discussing explanations of time was not immediately moved to philosophy.

[swansont]

From what you have said, it follows,

 

If someone says atom/electron/matter/sun/moon/reality is unreal we can always say - so what?

 

IMHO this is not the kind of attitude that science strives for.

 

It is, though, in fact the attitude physics tends to have. Physics is full of calculational devices meant to give us the answer while making no claim about the physical existence of the mechanism.

[studiot]

Following swansont's Popeye challenge,

 

I challenge anyone who believes that only material things are real to use one of these without a real hole in the middle.

 

Edited June 1, 2014 by studiot

[PeterJ]

Ha. Very good! And very Zen.

[Kramer]

-------An example about how “the time works”.
Once, I and my twin Kramer II, make a competition about who will go farther in the same period of time.
We lived in equator and were in antipode spots, as always.
After 60 min. ride I reported that I have ride 360 km.
--Slug! Derided me my twin. -- I ride 471.365 km in only one sec.!
My twin is a lazy “couch potato”, but he is not a liar, he is a joker.
He alluded about “his ride on earth carousel” without moving his but even a meter!-------

I am very disappointed that Fred Champion left field of dispute about reality of time.
My example is about comparison of a linear movement within a circular repetitive movement, and about the relativity of point of references. Here I think stand the illusion of flow of time as real, in psychic of humans.
What really I am puzzled and distrust is about how time work in this second example:

( Energy) E = h / Δt (when Δt à0) = infinite.
Here please give a hand.