Time is real in that we all experience its passing and we can measure it with a clock. Relativity tells us it is a property of matter (so there would have been no time “before” the big bang).
However, out human experience of time is very subjective – have you ever noticed that holiday days pass faster than school days? And old people will tell you that years go faster than when they were young. But we have instruments to measure time which tell us that that is how we perceive it, not what “really” is.
Regardless of what we call it, the days cycle by (light and dark) and we are aware of the passing of… time.
It exists. We age. We are aware of it. What we call it, how we measure it – these might vary (based on culture or age or perspective) but it is still there.
Certainly things change and we can measure intervals from one instant to the next, so in that sense time certainly exists. If you want to get into some really deep philosophical issues related to time, I recommend you check out From Eternity to Here, a book by physicist Sean Carroll. It might be a bit complicated for you (I don’t think I even understand all of his ideas), but it might be worth reading just to see what some professional scientists think about time.
Time is real in that we all experience its passing and we can measure it with a clock. Relativity tells us it is a property of matter (so there would have been no time “before” the big bang).
However, out human experience of time is very subjective – have you ever noticed that holiday days pass faster than school days? And old people will tell you that years go faster than when they were young. But we have instruments to measure time which tell us that that is how we perceive it, not what “really” is.
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@patoosh: Hello! Great question…
Regardless of what we call it, the days cycle by (light and dark) and we are aware of the passing of… time.
It exists. We age. We are aware of it. What we call it, how we measure it – these might vary (based on culture or age or perspective) but it is still there.
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Certainly things change and we can measure intervals from one instant to the next, so in that sense time certainly exists. If you want to get into some really deep philosophical issues related to time, I recommend you check out From Eternity to Here, a book by physicist Sean Carroll. It might be a bit complicated for you (I don’t think I even understand all of his ideas), but it might be worth reading just to see what some professional scientists think about time.
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