Is time real or relative?

Real

All of Reality as we perceive it is Relative Awareness and ambiguous Time, one of the three essential prerequisites for that perception, is no exception: Time is Concrete & Abstract; Practical & Relative; Finite & Infinite.

But, despite its elusive and intricate nature, Time is very Real and a simple look at its appearances in our lives will give us solid information for our understanding.

TIME'S FORM
For millennia from 3500 B.C.E., precision time was the hour, the rotating shadows on Sundials calibrating the shifting vector of our Sun's rays. With the advent of systematic astronomical observations and crude clocks, hours, minutes and even seconds became divisions of passing Time for us as well.

Even with the scientific contributions of Galileo and Newton, prior to the Twentieth Century, the view of Scientific Time was still what could be called Practical Time: Time was still basically defined as a Function in relation to the periodic occurrences of physical phenomenon as we directly perceive it.

In our immediate environment here on Earth, we individually perceive motion around our relatively stationary Position within the three-dimensional geometry enveloping us. This "Finite Euclidean Space" [i] is where our "Mind" models Phenomenal Reality with the pace we call Time: our fourth dimension here. [ii]

This is roughly the phenomenal World Isaac Newton observed functioning within his Absolute Time and Space [iii], the World we live and survive in where .

"Time is the measure of change"
~ Aristotle

. in our direct experience of Reality.

A good mechanical demonstration of this "Time" of ours can be found within our modern "Atomic Clock" [iv]. Atomic clocks pace our steady World Time by measuring the precise microwave signal emitted by the atom's electrons as they change energy levels: they are our ultimate earthly time-keeper.

Our outward mechanical representation of Time is a reflection of our conceptual and psychological Time. This is demonstrated with the divisions of our forward moving Analytical Thinking in conjunction with our sequentially presented memory during the "Time" of our life here.
But even before this manifestation of "Psychological Time", a deeper primary division of Realities' presentation to us is explored in the study of "Phenomenology" [v], a philosophical direction that examines the hidden depths of our "Human Mind". Within our labyrinth matrix of cognitions and perceptions lie the primary divisions of Realities emergence: the divisions of "Conscious Time" [vi].

We can glean a general understanding of this "Conscious Time" of ours with the phrase: "Moment to Moment"; beginning with:

". the specious present, the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible."

~ William James (1842-1910); Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University
"Time" is a very Real experience for us. But how did we lose sight of this "Time" of ours to the point where people debate whether it even exists?

Have we confused "Our Time" with "Space-Time"?

SPACE-TIME
With the emerging 20th century came Albert Einstein's' "Special and General Theories of Relativity" that extended our Scientific perceptions to the edges of the known Universe and in so doing extended our concepts of Time into an exotic new environment. Now flowing through previously unrealized depths of Space, Time has shed the simple and independent character of our "Proper" Earth Time as it entwines itself dynamically with Matter and the curving "non-Euclidian" [vii] geometry of "Spacetime".

Stretching and compressing through "Spacetime", a now dependent Time here weaves itself through curves of Gravity in a flattened Universe of Position-less Space where our visions of "Reality" travel at the speed of Light.

In this space-age Reality of multiple Dimensional Theories where black holes gobble Star systems and Electrons vanish in annihilation, Time is also vanishing: but where is it going?

Our familiar "Time" is disappearing into a "Mathematical Model" of Reality that signals our scientific Mind shifting beyond our sensible World; a shift from the ""Proper Time" of "Newtonian Mechanics" into the relatively "Timeless" World of "Quantum Mechanics" and the "Spacetime" of Astrophysics.

With the emerging 20th century, advancing technology gave us, literally, out of this World "Perceptual Extensions" [viii] that our previous concepts through "Newtonian or Classical Mechanics" no longer described or explained. Divorced from the World we experience, the Special and General Theories of Relativity none the less extend our conceptual understanding into this new view of Reality as it functions at the Macrocosmic level while Quantum Physics extends our view down into the Micro-Cosmic realm of the Subatomic.

These conceptual and perceptual extensions are so extraordinary that our sensory interaction with the modern technology that extends our Minds into these Worlds is itself a fascinating area of study. [ix]

Fascinating "Space-Time" is also spectacular.

While we physically propel ourselves into the Cosmos at the incredible speed of [approx.] 11,200 m/s (meters-second), the required velocity for a space shuttle to escape the gravitational force of our "Planet Earth"; in the mathematical "Super-World" of "Space-Time" such speed is a snail's pace. "Space-Time" is the realm of "Light-Speed": 299,792.458 m/s, of which the space shuttles speed is only 0.004%.

But while "Space-Time" is spectacular, it's vacillating, "Tense-less" Time within non-Euclidean geometry is not the geometry and "Time" we walk through and experience.

And it never will be.
While Man's Mind peers down into realms of sub-atomic levels and again out into the Universe at the speed of light where "Time" assumes a surrealistic appearance; for us physically and psychologically, "Time" is a direct and very real experience: it is the motion of life in, around and of us here on "Planet Earth".

[i]Euclidean space n: a space in which Euclid's axioms and definitions (as of straight and parallel lines and angles of plane triangles) apply.
Euclidean geometry n: 1: geometry based on Euclid's axioms
2: the geometry of a Euclidean space
Finite adj: 1a: having a limited nature or existence
2: completely determinable in theory or in fact by counting, measurement or thought.

[ii] From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10thedition
Time n: 1a: the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists
or continues: DURATION
1b: a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future.
6: season (very hot for this ~ of year).
8a: a moment, hour, day, or year as indicated by a clock or calendar (what ~ is it?).
10: finite as contrasted with infinite duration.

[iii] WK "SCHOLIUM ON ABSOLUTE SPACE AND TIME" public domain @ http://www.mnstate.e du/gracyk/courses/we b%20publishing/Newto nScholium.htm

"The concepts of space and time were separate in physical theory prior to the advent of special relativity theory, which connected the two and showed both to be dependent upon the observer's state of motion. In Einstein's theories, the ideas of absolute time and space were superseded by the notion of spacetime in special relativity, and by dynamically curved spacetime in general relativity."

Absolute time and space

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Absolute time and space." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 22 Jan 2009, 14:15 UTC. 11 Apr 2009 <http://en.wikipedia. org/w/index.php?titl e=Absolute_time_and_ space&oldid=265703188>.

From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10thedition

Absolute space n (ca. 1889): space 4b
Space n: 4b: physical space independent of what occupies it called also absolute space

[iv] Atomic clocks give us phenomenal Time by measuring the precise microwave signal emitted by the atom's electrons as they change energy levels: they are accurate to one second in approximately thirty (30) million years [iv](4)and are our ultimate earthly time-keeper.

[v] THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF INTERNAL TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS

By: David L. Thompson

I. INTRODUCTION: METHOD OF PHENOMENOLOGY

"Edmund Husserl, at the turn of our century, set himself the goal of establishing a rigorous science, that is a body of knowledge that is not based on any presuppositions."
II. REDUCTION FROM DOGMAS

"First we need to suspend philosophical interpretations of time: time as cyclic or linear; time as maya or illusion, time as emanation from the One.

Secondly, we must suspend scientific theories of time. Many assume that time is what is measured by clocks, that it goes on objectively at the same rate whether observed or not. Newton thought of time as an absolute quantity, a measurable attribute of God's sensorium. Einstein says that time is a fourth dimension, mathematically similar to the other three, but relative in its quantity to the velocity of observers. Hawkins says that time starts with the big bang and was hugely accelerated during the first seconds of the universe. The phenomenologist, without denying any of these theories of cosmic, external or objective time, suspends belief in them in order to be able to achieve a pure description of how time is actually given to us in our experience."

http://www.ucs.mun.c a/~davidt/TimeHsrl.h tml

[vi] Contemporary psychology also examines "Time Consciousness".
The Time of Consciousness and Vice Versa*1

References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.
Frank H. Durgina and Saul Sternbergb
Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.a Department of Psychology, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
b Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Abstract
The temporal granularity of consciousness may be far less fine than the real-time information processing mechanisms that underlie our sensitivity to small temporal differences. It is suggested that conscious time perception, like space perception, is subject to errors that belie a unitary underlying representation. E. R. Clay's (The Alternative: A Study in Psychology, 1882) concept of the "specious present," an extended moment represented in consciousness, is suggested as an alternative to the more common notion of instantaneous experience that underlies much reasoning based on the "time of arrival" in consciousness.

http://www.sciencedi rect.com/science?_ob =ArticleURL&_udi=B6WD0-46HWN0V-F&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=348105c43eba5051 000ae53f70e79202

[vii]Non-Euclidean geometry
Importance
"The development of non-Euclidean geometries proved very important to physics in the 20th century. Einstein's general relativity describes space as generally flat (i.e., Euclidean), but elliptically curved (i.e., non-Euclidean) in regions near where matter is present. This kind of geometry, where the curvature changes from point to point, is called Riemannian geometry."
"Non-Euclidean geometry." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 1 Mar 2009, 17:06 UTC. 12 Apr 2009 <http://en.wikipedia. org/w/index.php?titl e=Non-Euclidean_geom etry&oldid=274178322>.

[viii] Perception: "In philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information."

Perception
"Perception." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 9 Apr 2009, 08:03 UTC. 12 Apr 2009 <http://en.wikipedia. org/w/index.php?titl e=Perception&oldid=282726487>.

[ix] "It is a commonplace that humans use technologies to extend our ability to see, remember, calculate and reason. Science has always depended on such tools. I am interested in the interaction of ordinary human modes of perception with the technologies that enhance the modes of perception of empirical science. This dynamic has three features important to a developed philosophy of experimentation. First, there is a shift from ordinary human perception, construed in terms of contemporary common sense notions, to the real (or super-real) objects of scientific investigation such as the primary qualities of Galileo and Newton. This first shift is often described as abstracting from the sensory sources of perceptual experience to mathematical properties that are beyond the reach of unmediated human sense perception. "

WK Varying the Cognitive Span: experimentation, visualization and computation

Professor David Gooding

Science Studies Centre
Department of Psychology, University of Bath

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