h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm also asking at SEx, just to get a different set of answers. Something more than yes or no would be good.

Ah. I was going to go for 'yes'

Time exists in the same way that three-dimensional space exists and you can't have one without the other, apart from in thought experiments about what it would be like if you could.

You'll get something much cleverer and more persuasive on SEx, I'm sure

Given that this is The Forum though, what do you mean by 'exists' and how does it relate to the non-existence of God/loony restrictions on Union Jack underpants/the West Lothian question?

Time is what stops everything happening at once.

Ok, now that I've stopped laughing at Trin, I'll add a bit.

Many cultures have different experiences, concepts and explanations of time. Are any more true than others?

Does a minute exist, or is it something we made up?

A minute was just something made up. A handy division of time.
And no, every culture´s ideas are not equally valid.

>>Does a minute exist, or is it something we made up<<

the time it represents existed, but we made up the label and the size of it.


now i have one:

If a moment occurs in the forest with no one around, does time pass?

<>

Oddly enough I was going to go for 'no', for the same reasons that Trin gave for answering 'yes'

Seriously, the question 'what do you mean by *exist*?' is central here. My preferred definition is that something exists if it has an effect (or "to exist is to be a cause").

Minutes are social conventions of measurement, not actual things.

Different cultures conceptualise time differently, but *all* cultures have temporal concepts.

Noggin

>>And no, every culture´s ideas are not equally valid<<

Which ones are more valid then, and which less?

" *all* cultures have temporal concepts."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_language

"Benjamin Lee Whorf, a well-known linguist, used the Hopi language to exemplify his argument that one's world-view is affected by one's language and vice-versa. Among Whorf's most astounding claims was that Hopi had “no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions or that refer directly to what we call “time”.”[1] However, other linguists and philosophers are skeptical of Whorf's argument, and his findings on Hopi have been disputed or rejected."

Yes, and I suppose you have to define what 'time' means eg a science definition or a popular one.

SoRB, I had something like that in the back of my mind too, but couldn't be bothered looking it up. I think not just the Hopi, but other cultures too.

There are some units of time that would be more or less universal though.

Days might vary according to latitude, but you'd still have them in one form or another and lunar cycles and years would apply across the planet.

Aren't those both popular and scientific? Popular in that all cultures would have them and be subject to them as units of time, prior to understanding exactly why they exist, scientific in that the earth orbits the sun and spins on its axis in a given amount of time?

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is generally regarded as severely overstated, particularly as regards empirical concepts of the physical world. I certainly find it hard to believe that there could be a successful human culture that was *entirely* unable to draw a distinction between it just happened and it's just about to happen, however differently this might be expressed. Or perhaps for the Hopi everything does happen at once?

Considering the Hopi are supposed to have made some amazng prophecies, it would seem odd if they have no concept of time. Of course some might argue that means they experience time non-linearly.

"Supposed" is probably the operative word. But also see the discusion on reverse time on the other thread.

Linear experience is an/the essential component of perception of time. If it wasn't experienced this way....

>>
Aren't those both popular and scientific? Popular in that all cultures would have them and be subject to them as units of time, prior to understanding exactly why they exist, scientific in that the earth orbits the sun and spins on its axis in a given amount of time?
<<

I would say 'scientific' in that one can measure the earth's orbit or spin, not that the earth HAS an orbit or spin. But that isn't necessary in order to experience a 'day' or a 'year'.


>>There are some units of time that would be more or less universal though. >>

If I asked you how long is a year, would you say 365 days (give or take a day every so often)? But if you relied on eye observations of the sun in relation to objects on the earth to measure a year (eg stonehenge), then you might say a year is each time the sun sets there, then a year has passed.

And if you relied on eye observations of constellations, then you might say that when I can see that set of stars rising above the horizon again then a year has passed, but that might be more than 365 days (say you had a cloudy week that month and couldn't see the stars, or the moon was full at the time that particular year).

So, even though now we can say that a year is a set thing, because we can measure it much more accurately, isn't it just that we are saying a year (time unit) is one thing because we experience it in a certain way based on how we measure it, whereas someone else experiences it differently?

>>
Linear experience is an/the essential component of perception of time. If it wasn't experienced this way.... <<



Can you finish that sentence Noggin?

Because many cultures certainly have more experiences of time than just linear, and some say that linear time (as least as we practice it in the West) is a relatively recent invention. So if one didn't experience linearity, then would one not experience time?

I think that linear time is definitely a cultural construct, not necessarily a universally dominant one.

People who meditate alot talk about experiencing timelessness.

Kea: the ideas that are more valid are the ones that fit reality, and can be independently tested.

Well, experiencing timelessness is probably not that odd. Some things in life feel like they take an eternity, others like they go by very fast. But people don´t tend to get glimpses into the future or anything, as I imagine they would if time was non-linear for them.

>>I would say 'scientific' in that one can measure the earth's orbit or spin, not that the earth HAS an orbit or spin. But that isn't necessary in order to experience a 'day' or a 'year'.<<

By 'scientific' there, I meant something like universally verifiable, not liable to alteration in accordance with who's doing the perceiving. It's light in the day and it's dark at night and regardless of which culture is observing the fact, that seems to me to be as close to a universal unit of time as there is.

(Obviously the closer you get to the poles, the longer the nights and days at particular times of the year - but even in cultures based there, there still are days and nights, gradations of lightness and darkness and these go through the same basic cycle no matter where or who you are).

Same things go for seasons. Again, where you are on the planet is going to affect the severity of seasonal change, but that too is a universal phenomenon and it repeats in a cycle which has exactly the same duration no matter where you are.

>>So, even though now we can say that a year is a set thing, because we can measure it much more accurately, isn't it just that we are saying a year (time unit) is one thing because we experience it in a certain way based on how we measure it, whereas someone else experiences it differently?<<

Experiences it differently, certainly, but not to the extent that any culture I can think of can do away with certain basic cycles which have an extent fixed by physical facts (orbits, spins and so on) ande will be the same regardless - in other words, your astronomer, if he or she is out by a few days, is going to notice what I think you could call their 'error' in the long run. Farmers need to know when to sow, hunters when the seasonal migrations are taking place, etc. - different cultures will interpret these things differently, but they're still all subject to analogous cyclical movements... which all take exactly the same time to complete those cycles.

I don't know that this is a cultural issue, when it gets down to a certain level. Homo sapiens is heavily dependent on vision, for instance - are there any nocturnal cultures? - so the rhythm of day and night is experienced universally on a level beneath any cultural differences.

I´m not sure I would claim seasons are any kind of constant cycle. I´m sure there are places on earth where you cannot divide things into four seasons.