Science And Metaphysics

[Khandro]

I read from, 'Sämtliche Werke und Briefe in Vier Bänden', a biography of the Berlin German woman poet; Mascha Kaléko, that in 1952 she sent one of her poems to Albert Einstein, the opening line was; "Time stands still. It is us who are passing away".
Einstein replied: "I think your poem is very beautiful and rich in meaning. It touches upon a deep metaphysical problem that has become relevant through physics".
What do you think he meant by that?

[naomi24]

That time doesn't exist but is only a human perception ..... perhaps?

This could be another long haul. Shall I get the popcorn?

[jim360]

Could be all sorts of things, but there's a lot to sort out about time. In one set of theories, time is just a (weird) dimension like space, but in thermodynamics, time has a fixed direction (as in you can distinguished forwards from backwards). There are problems of that sort still to be resolved, matching it all together. I expect it's the same problem as that he was talking about.

Alternatively it could be the idea that all of space and time are in some sense fixed, and we are moving along world lines in that spacetime. Sixty years ago perhaps such a picture would be troubling, because it can imply that everything "has already happened" in a certain sense. I'm not sure it's quite so troubling now, or at least we are more used to it.

Anyway, there are a number of things he could have meant. How much of a serious problem they are depends on your point of view, but a lot has changed since he was writing.

[jomifl]

Time is relative, that's why we have grandfather clocks.

[bibblebub]

relativity - the rate at which time is seen to pass depends on the speed of the observer's frame of reference

[naomi24]

Haaa! ^^

[naomi24]

Sorry, I was laughing at Jom.

[bibblebub]

yes i realise that even though it's a bit sexist - what's wrong with grandmother clocks?

[jake-the-peg]

I suspect that if you ask most physicists what would be on their Christmas list high up would be a deep and complete understanding of the nature of time.

It is at the heart of so many of the biggest questions

Einstein's work of course was the first to show that our 'common-sense' idea of what time is and how it works is deeply flawed

[Khandro]

When I read those words, it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps there is no "time", just us and everything else, metamorphosing into something else.

[jake-the-peg]

Khandro

One of the problems of considering time is that it is completly embedded into the English language.

You use a verb and you make implications

How can something be metamorphosing with no time? the very word implies time

[Khandro]

Yes jake, a bad choice of word; what about 'becoming'?

[naomi24]

Becoming what?

[jim360]

I expect that most of the problems with philosophy of science come from trying to translate mathematically clear ideas into more everyday language. On the page everything is reasonably straightforward -- but "time" on the page, and what we perceive as time, are very far removed from each other and there's no easy way to bridge the gap.

Another source of difficulty is that we aren't finished yet in understanding the Universe. If we were, a lot of the questions we have might turn out to have been associated with just our incomplete models. Then again, we surely will never be finished with Science, there will always be something more to do! But it's like the conceptual problems the Greeks had with the nature of infinity. They were real problems and serious ones, but they can be resolved now easily enough through the use of calculus and our understanding of limits. Perhaps the same will be true of time, in the end.

[jomifl]

Would time not exist if nothing happened.? As entropy increases does time slow down? With no energy left to make things happen, would time stop?

[jomifl]

Khandro, I think it was Einstein's way of saying 'thankyou'.

[Old_Geezer]

Well I'm rather becoming. Maybe I'm Father Time !

[jomifl]

How would we know if time varies in it's pace, we would need some sort of yardstick outside the currently known universe but we have no idea where that might be, or even if it exists.

[jim360]

Depends what time you are talking about there jomifl -- time is known to vary in its pace depending on where you are, we've already measured that.

[jomifl]

Jim, my point was that time may be internally(to the universe) be consistent but we have no way of knowing if it would be consistent relative to anything outside (if that is possible) the known universe. Ie. is time all pervasive or just local

[jim360]

Well it's not consistent even inside the Universe so...