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How could we relate to the world around us without the concept of time?
I have often wondered about what life would be like if I could not include the concept of time. It is in EVERYTHING we do, think, talk about, it is a component of life that is completely man made, it seems to me it is the glue that holds everything together? without it... what do we have? how do we explain? where do we stand?
what is NOW?
So, how would you explain " life" without time? the universe without Time? all your thoughts without implementing time?














Wayne Busby 30+
Would it be safe to say then that:
1) The phenomena we call time defines in an inextricable manner the nature and state of all energy or matter.
2) Entities of sufficient insight create and explore measuring systems reflecting their preoccupation with and concepts of the value in a particular moment?
Just looking for some feedback and trying to paraphrase our collaborative interpretation.
Indigo cantor
Alex Ostermann
Ramiro Benavides
The key and trick lies on geometric nature of space-time. But time could be so different from the positive real axis, and more likely to be as a fractal 2-dimensional figure. One possible way for "watching" time is by means of some kind of "fractal gravitational microlens" made of overlapping space-time hyperplanes curved in a way that, for some observers, it would seem the trigonometric circle. Only then it would be possible to contemplate time in all its extension and true nature.
So, we cannot separate time from our daily experience due to we are not able to design a physical device smaller than Planck time whose purpose were to slice this peculiar space-time, a result of a blending of continuous and discrete, two different scales-of-measure dimensions not compatible with our fuzzy, quantum brain. Indeed, time could be the bridge between man and universe. Or maybe brain could be the link between macro and microcosmic worlds.
Peter Maynard
But he just meant that while time exists - it does not apparently "flow" in the way we perceive it to do. As human beings living in 4 dimensional spacetime we are trapped in the eternal present. But this is not how science views time - all our past present and futures are hanging around - somewhere.
http://www.nikhef.nl/pub/services/biblio/bib_KR/sciam14327034.pdf
Indeed the concept of some things happening backwards in time is perfectly OK with theoretical physicists (when dealing with quantum events.)
Here is a quote about this dealing with the way Richard Feynman thought about it and the way his Feynman diagrams (pictorial representations of quantum interactions) work..........
"Feynman used the idea of motion backward in time when he invented his famous diagrams in the late 1940s. Dirac had developed his fully-relativistic quantum theory of the electron in 1928, and discovered that it contained negative energy solutions. These solutions were identified as anti-electrons or positrons. Positrons were observed as predicted in 1932. Following Stückelberg [Stückelberg 1942] and Wheeler, Feynman re-interpreted positrons as electrons moving backward in time [Feynman 1948, 1949a, 1949b, 1965b]"
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Quantum/localepr.html
In other words the math which explains this stuff is based on time reversibility being a part of it and so scientists know that some things work both forward and backwards in time. I gather that without this concept - the numbers do not add up. Its all heavy going and way beyond lay people like me so at some point we just have to accept that we either have to go back to school and complete post doctoral work in quantum physics or just trust that they know what they are talking about - I opt for the latter. :^)
Isaac Zuckerman
Katrina Musick
Vaishnavi Jayakumar
Moreover, is space-time fundamental ? I think it is impossible to dicuss time using Physics as a tool, rather than our mental drive.
Vaishnavi Jayakumar
When a person (or any living being) is born , there are three obvious things which come as a package--the body of the newborn , an abstract thing which kindles life in that body(I would refrain from using the word 'soul') , and a more abstract concept of personalised time.So,I think that it is that very abstract concept of 'time' which sets our life going.It is a permanent adhesive without which there can be no order in this world . It makes life more interesting,because you have something to do every moment,and we prepare ourselves to meet life as it comes by,needless to mention , as 'time' passes .
I suppose this is what our intuition says.
If we look at it not as something abstract but something which requires deeper insight , Physics says that , probably the concept is completely devised for our convenience.Maybe the universe was born without time embedded in it . Maybe it is for our convience that we say " the universe was born billions of years ago " or " 24 hours make one day " and so on.
Unlike what we experience , the laws of Physics are symmetric with time . If we assume a law to be a man , he would be indifferent to what had happened or what happens next , because he does not know anything like-'had happened' or 'will happen'.It is impossilble to define an ' arrow of time ' for the laws of Physics.
But look at the flip side of the coin. There is a certain fabric defined to be space-time.There is a limit upto which the sensible notion of time is valid,the limit defined to be Planck time.Discussing the concept of time beyond this limit becomes meaningless.It is impossible to describe the universe at a time lapse smaller than the planck time.Note that this is a part of Physics.
This completely contadicts the declaration of the non-existence of a clock for Physical laws.It is indeed tough to comment on time using Physics.
Peter Maynard
Clearly better men than me have grappled with this issue. TS Elliot for example in Burnt Norton.
And of course there are the Tralfamadorians in Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse 5"
Tralfamadorians say that human perception of time as linear and flowing with only one moment existing at 'once' is erroneous. (quoting here!). All moments exist concurrently and it is only an illusion if they appear to have any linearity. Tralfamadorians see people not as a single image but as a kind of wormlike manifestation that runs from the past into the future - from cradle to grave.
I have often though something similar - that, at each present moment, all past and future moments are present but the future exists as a kind of set of possibilities. As the quantum wave function collapses, as it were, the many potential futures crystalise into one definite present that creates our history-line. Thus free will and cause and effect both exist in what would otherwise be a deterministic universe.
About 20 years ago I had an experience that drove this home to me. I was sailing on a yatch in a storm when the main sail was accidentally and violently jybed onto me by the helmsman. I felt the boom brush my head and I was stuck by the traveller which flung me down and seriously fractured my arm. Even a half step more and I would have been in its direct line and without question I would have died.
At that instant, even as I flew thru the air I had the most distinct feeling that the universe had split and in the other universe I had been killed. This was such a strong physical feeling I still feel it today,
Anna Hoffmann
It feels, though, that if you want to be treated with respect, not seen as a crazy dreamer, you are supposed to believe in time as a straight line. They say your life starts when the sperm meets the egg and ends when your brain shuts down. I can't believe that, and never will. Which makes me uncomfortable in some situations, but what to do?
Peter Maynard
Ramiro Benavides
I think this experience taught me that there's something wrong with quantum-wave function, because there exists (at least this is the way I read that incident) some location in universe (or multiverse) that has our destiny stored in some kind of hard disk drive and, therefore, when any one of us do something, here and now, it's because that teleological HDD is reading at once any bit of certain information that is reflected in the way everything displays as a process or an event. Let's remember that HDD has a random access to its registers, and the strong implication of this has to do with a very uncommon kind of non-linear time: the CLUSTER INDEXING TIME. That's it. Time would be just a random number associated with any pre-allocated position of the register containing the experience you are about to live in short. So, time could be anything but real positive NUMB3RS.
Vaishnavi Jayakumar
Gbolahan Aderonmu
Patrick Donnelly
So, to answer the question, we could hve a great time (pun intended) without time but we'd be lost
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Thomas Pisarchick 10+
Gerry O'Connor
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Gerry O'Connor
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Yubal Masalker 200+
1: Today’s belief in External Time is similar to the belief in External God. What’s common to both beliefs is the expectation for some extrinsic entity which governs the universe, the life, the phenomena. But as the idea of extrinsic God is in constant retreat for centuries, the natural human tendency is driving us to find a substitution to that idea. So here we have a created a new, very powerful concept of an extrinsic Time running and dominating us and the universe from outside. This extrinsic Time has became a kind of new God for some, not just in their daily life, but also as a concept, as a thought, as an all-around ruling entity.
2. I mentioned above that time is a kind of a scale. So let’s take another scale which is less abstract and easier to grasp. This scale is used by us to measure the space and the changes in it. We call this scale “Distance” and its units are Centimeters, Inches, Meters, Kilometers……. .
But, would anybody say that the distance is not depending on the space ?? It’s obvious that it does. The distance is made of space. The distance is just our mind’s definition to the difference between two points’ locations. This means it’s a scale created by minds to make an order in space, giving the distance units mentioned above. But we all agree that the units themselves are nothing but a space of different sizes which we accept globally as a standard. The units and the distance have no independent existence, because without the space existing, there will not be distance nor units of distance. Now all we have to do is to replace the word Distance with the word Time.
Yubal Masalker 200+
Now I shall make one challenge and two analogies to demonstrate this.
I want to ask those believing in an independent existence of time, to find even one time measurement which does not includes utterly any change – even any change in the time measurement device (watch, atoms, stars, sun….) or mean (like our consciousness). Because if there’s a stand-alone entity of Time, it should not be dependent upon any sort of change.
The Analogies: First, Please keep in mind that I do not mean to offend anyone, particularly with the first one. But I think the analogies will help to see what I think is a wrong pattern of thinking.
CONTINUED on my next comment………..
Nicholas Lukowiak 50+
Now this time is only relative to us, humans. The universe does not concern itself with our acceptance of time because we need to exist in order for that time to exist. A year to us is one planet rotation around our star. Mercury has a shorter year, Jupiter a longer one. This is how we measure time, you are asking if we need it to live life, and yes we do or else things would not get done as orderly. Chaos in order, and order in chaos. Having no structure is chaotic but the order comes naturally in universal ways (we call these laws of nature). Order in structure creates chaos but on a more comprehensive level, kind of. Therefore time creates order in which we can handle chaos. We need it, it is an organizing tool. Indeed we wrap our lives around the usage of time, but this isn't a bad thing by no means it actually proves how advanced we are, to bad we have no other intelligent species to compare ourselves too.
Check out space-time. Time = space (sort of). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime
To explain life without time is easy. Survival. The meaning of life to me can be explained as simply survival.
Example: Ants do not know time, all they know is how to multiply, build and organize; survival. Time doesn't matter, ants understand how to survive and only worry about survival, their lives are no simpler or greater than any other creatures. The result of such survival is proven in numbers. Estimation of one million ants per human. If ants ever mutated into intelligence, we would be in trouble. Sorry getting Science fiction here..
Anyways life will continue on in the universe with or with out structures of time and/or any measurements for that matter.
How to explain my life without time? Impossible. I was born into time, I grew up in this system of measurements. To explain my life without time is to say I am a spec
Alex Sanzo
Christophe Cop 500+
If you are to deny the concept, I wouldn't try and make an appointment with you ;-)
Or would you re-invent a concept that can explain age-ing, the direction of experience, causality, prediction,...
To me, this question is an interesting thought-experiment, but in real life, there has always been a 'before' and 'current'.
even if we humans cease to exist, the universe would keep on unfolding in it's way,
the direction in which it unfolds (from low to high entropy)
You might just as well imagine a fourth spatial dimension perpetual to depth, length and width... or try to imagine a 2-dimensional universe...
In short: I don't see the point...
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Christophe Cop 500+
Time might be relative, that does not mean it doesn't exist (which it clearly does).
and if i assume our concept of time is somewhat earthbound... aren't we earthbound as well?
So for all practical reasons, we can apply time as linear during our lifespan... and it is sufficiently approximative to what scientists use as time in their more detailed theories...
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Talip OZDEMIR
I think the only thing which balances timelessnes is `heart`. A heart's stop working is equal to moment without time.
We should live heart-centered to make our lives to produce somethings which could exist in the time tunnel.
Do you need a starting step? Just look at people(strangers to you) eyes and do some favor to him/her without response/expectations. You'll get your response from the time tunnel endlessly.
bonthala haravind
George Spilkov
It means that one can "participate" in his own birth and death. It would also mean there is one of us for each snapshot we have taken and we would be identical but slightly different looking.
This is not something new. In some TED talks a software that creates space-time worms was used as visualization aid. The difference with the current idea is that it does not have to be a worm - the "next me" could appear anywhere in the space.
And now we could begin to do weird things with the model.
For example, because there is no time we would observe people and things popping in and out of existence anywhere and it may look random to us until we realise, for example, that breaking a nut would cause many broken nuts suddenly to appear each would be the same as the one we just broke but slightly different.
Also all words that imply time relationships would not exist (like next, now, before, waiting, etc.)
katherine chapman
Kimberly Kradel
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Kimberly Kradel
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
katherine chapman
Thomas Pisarchick 10+
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Vasil Rangelov 50+
"Time is an abstract concept created by carbon-based lifeforms to monitor their ongoing decay."
(user name calvinthedestroyer, 1 month ago)
I never would've put it better myself :-D .
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+