Search
Search
The mistake at the heart of the physics of time
The mistake at the heart of the physics of time

Date

source

share

“What is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it… I do not know”, famously quipped Saint Augustine. Our modern understanding of time is more scientific than ever, and many of . . .

“What is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it… I do not know”, famously quipped Saint Augustine. Our modern understanding of time is more scientific than ever, and many of us likely do now think we know how to explain time. While impressively the Swiss atomic clock has a range of uncertainty of 1 second in 30 million years. But the time of physics is not real time. Time is not a mathematical abstraction, there is no line of time, and the present is not some indivisible zero-point on it.   Time is mathematical abstraction From sundials and water clocks to hour glasses and weight-driven mechanical clocks, timekeeping devices have a long and fascinating history, driven mostly by an unrelenting quest for better precision. Nevertheless, we should remember that the usefulness of any timekeeping device depends on our gathering information through our senses, usually b…

Read the full article which is published on IAI TV (external link)

More
articles

More
news

What is Disagreement?

What is Disagreement?

This is Part 1 of a 4-part series on the academic, and specifically philosophical study of disagreement. In this series...

Hume on Religion

Hume on Religion

[Revised entry by Paul Russell and Anders Kraal on November 15, 2024. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] David Hume’s various...