Videos from our Setting Time Aright conference are gradually filtering online, courtesy of the Foundational Questions Institute. Perhaps the very first question that should be asked, of course, is whether the subject of the conference actually exists. So we recruited two well-known partisans on this issue to hash things out. Tim Maudlin is a philosopher of science who has argued forcefully that time is real — and furthermore that the arrow of time is an intrinsic part of reality, not just a byproduct of the low-entropy Big Bang. (Crazy talk.) Julian Barbour is a physicist who is well known for arguing that time doesn’t really exist, we can happily eliminate it from all of our equations of physics. (Even crazier.)
So we asked them to go at it, with a twist: here Tim defends the proposition that time doesn’t exist, while Julian argues that it is real. I was not the only one to conclude that these guys were just as good at arguing this side as the one they actually believed.
Well worth watching — both talks are quite brilliant, in very different ways.
I think the problem is that we intuitively think of time as the present “moving” from past to future and try to model it as some form of vector, or flow. The physical process is a changing configuration of what exists. It’s the future becoming the past. The present doesn’t move, but the ephemeral events which come and go. That way, it’s an effect of motion, similar to temperature. Rate of change, level of activity. This way, there can be both variable clock rates and a real dynamic present.
How wonderful! Thankyou for sharing this.
Ronald McCoy
Pingback: A Cornucopia of Time Talks | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine
I see a problem in the “best matching of configuration spaces” idea, it assumes a measure where one cannot exist (assuming analysity of the functions on the configuration spaces). Additionally, the computation of “best matching”, even on a discrete configuration space, is an NP-Complete problem. What is doing the computation such that solutions obtain? One cannot assume the solution to simply exist prior to the possible implementation of the computation of it and yet have causal efficacy!
I have written an entire book draft on the subject of time, or rather Timelessness, (‘A Brief History of Timelessness’) some of which you can see on my website (along with 4-5 videos of talks I have given).
My opinion, which I think can be shown to be logically complete, is that rather than ask the leading questions ‘Does Time exist?’, or even ‘What is Time?’, we should first ask ‘What do we actually directly observe?’ in the world around us, and then see what we discover.
It seems to me that what we actually directly observe,in simple terms, is that objects can exist, and these objects can move, and interact.
If we then ask ‘are objects just existing, moving and interacting enough to explain ALL that we (mistakenly) attribute to the existence of an extra, and mysterious thing called Time?’ I believe the answer is a very definite yes!
In particular ‘things just existing and interacting’ is enough to the changing and accumulating contents of our minds (our memories), and the clearly evolved state of objects in the world around us (tree growth rings,fossils etc). Critically while we assume these things prove the ‘existence’ of ‘The Past’, they can be shown to only actually prove that matter can exist and interact ‘now’ so to speak.
If you read Einstein’s Relativity (Routledge classics) meticulously you can see he at no point actually proves the existence of a ‘Future’ or of ‘The past’ or of a thing called Time flowing between them.
Einstein’s first mention of Time (section 3) is ‘The purpose of mechanics is to describe how bodies change their position in space with Time’. In fact in mechanics we might compare the motion of one moving object (eg a falling stone) with another moving object, eg a steadily rotating hand on a numbered dial. Both these things prove that objects can exist, move, and be compared to each other. But neither prove that as things move another thing called ‘Time’ also exists and flow from a ‘future’, ‘through’ the Present and into a ‘past’ – or that ‘durations’ or ‘intervals’ of ‘time’ exist in anyway.
Einstein’s use of the word clock is unintentionally misleading because motorised rotating hands called clocks ‘suggest’ the existence and flow of a thing called time, but don’t prove it.
Time Dilation – In Special Relativity Einstein does prove that moving objects will run slower than our intuition might suggest – but he does not prove that there is a thing called time – which is slowed – and that the slowing of ‘time’ makes ‘clocks’ etc run slow.
https://sites.google.com/site/abriefhistoryoftimelessness/special-relativity/young-looking-cosmonauts
eg Einstein does not show that a photon trapped and oscillating between two mirrors (a light ‘clock’) heads into or proves the existence of a ‘temporal’ future, or leaves a ‘Temporal’ past behind as it moves, or reveals the ‘passage’ of time.
So, in my opinion, everything is just as it is constantly directly observed to be. Things exist and move ‘now’ and there is no ‘temporal past’ created anywhere, by any ‘thing’ or ‘stored’ or ‘existing anywhere. (‘Events’ are constantly happening, but they are ‘just’ happening and don’t ‘happen in time’ etc)
(IMO) Mr Barbour’s ideas may stem from assuming time exists in some way, while also logical realising (IMO correctly) that it does not, and then trying to prove timelessness in terms of time.
Therefore, amazing and complex as the universe clearly is, it seems to me the idea of ‘Time’ existing other than as a useful tool or notion can be systematically proven to be unfounded. So therefore the universe is ‘Timeless’ (to use a redundant word).
This may seem to simplistic to be true – but that may well be how Einstein’s ‘Persistent illusion’ hides in plane sight.
(Happy to answer any questions)
Matthew Marsden
London
(www.Timelessness.co.uk)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58OrLRu8wp4
sorry – missed word – para 5
“In particular ‘things just existing and interacting’ is enough to the changing and accumulating contents of our minds ”
should be
“In particular ‘things just existing and interacting’ is enough to EXPLAIN the changing and accumulating contents of our minds ”
mm
Time is not linear. We just live it that way ‘here’, and ‘now’…
Wise words Steve,
I wrote a piece on just that, essentially saying
If as events happen they are ‘recorded’ (‘stored’ or how ever we might phrase it) in a ‘temporal past’ – then- ‘as events happen, an order IS created and stored’.
But,
If as events happen, they are not recorded in any (temporal) way , anywhere, then that temporal record is not created and does not ‘actually’ exist. And if there ‘is’ no temporal order, then there is no temporal order.
(Here’s a talk I did on it)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7nhrlWOTcQ