Lord Muck oGentry |
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| QUOTE (Vninect @ 16/12/2011, 07:33) Here's a question that's been itching me. Does time move forward?
To say time moves forward, as I've heard several times, is an interesting way of combining space and time. But how can it be true? The first problem is to imagine the space in which time is supposed to move. How do we know which way is forward, there? But even if there is a distinct directionality in that space, the concept of "forward" makes it impractical. Forward is nothing, if not a difference in location. Which means there was a prior location, and there is a subsequent location, which is located in a direction we can call "forward". But prior and subsequent are moments defined by time, which is the subject of the sentence.
I think it's useless to say: "Time is moving forward"! Well, I'm no one's idea of an expert. But you may find this article on Time's Arrow interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_timeIn particular, there's this: QUOTE The thermodynamic arrow of time
Main article: Entropy (arrow of time)
The thermodynamic arrow of time is provided by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says that in an isolated system, entropy tends to increase with time. Entropy can be thought of as a measure of microscopic disorder; thus the Second Law implies that time is asymmetrical with respect to the amount of order in an isolated system: as a system advances through time, it will statistically become more disordered. This asymmetry can be used empirically to distinguish between future and past though measuring entropy does not accurately measure time. Also in an open system entropy can locally decrease with time: living systems decrease their entropy by expenditure of energy at the expense of environmental entropy increase With a wet towel tightly wrapped round my little head, I think I have worked out that this means we can in principle tell whether we are going forwards or backwards. At worst, we know what we mean when we distinguish sooner from later. |
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I've disscused this on UCW. The question is not a matter of time changing, because it does (seem to at least). It is more a question of direction. For example, if we go up we are also going down, left and right. It us only because we view ourselves as going down that we precieve it to be. Simmilarly, if someone is going fowards they are also goinbg backwards. Direction utterly depends on the point of the preciever.