JCN,
A large part of the problem is our mental functioning needs to integrate all the various aspects of reality into a larger whole, in order to integrate our sense of identity, both individually and collectively. A very good example is the calendar. Months no longer correlate to cycles of the moon because we add 2 or 3 days to most of them, in order to match the solar cycle of the year. Otherwise it would make it much more difficult to calculate when holidays would fall and the constant juggling would make them less meaningful. Similarly the year is not exactly 365 days long, so we add a leap day every four years, as well as the occasional leap minutes and seconds. In a way, it's like comparing cesium atoms and pendulums to find some universal measure of time. The reality is just a bunch of things moving around, many with very regular periods.
Marcel,
It is a question as to whether time emerges from the motion, or there is this dimension that keeps everything from happening at once. The question though, is what are the physical attributes of this dimension? Do the past and future exist out there somewhere on that fourth dimension and it's just our subjective perspective which makes this particular moment seem consequential? Or is there only physical existence and as things move about, it changes the configuration, such that past and future do not exist, because the very same energy which would manifest them, is currently manifesting its current configuration?
Does time exist without motion? Just waiting there for some quantum fluctuation to occur, in order to give it duration? Or does the fluctuation define itself by the terms of both duration and level of disturbance, ie. the scalar measure we call temperature? Wouldn't it be equally logical to assume there must be some scale against which we measure the energy generated, or do we only have other actions against which to measure it?
We do have absolute zero, the absence of any activity and it does seem, as we look out across the universe, that there are only definite levels of energy and temperature before the collected heat radiates away and things just can't get any hotter. So could there be a universal thermal scale which regulates how hot things can get, or is it a completely physical function of the properties of mass, as to how hot they can get before the heat simply burns itself away?
Same for time. Is there some universal duration or dimension of time, or is it just a bunch of energy, coalescing into mass and radiating back out again and its only these processes playing themselves out that creates the effect of time?
As I keep pointing out, when we think of time as going past to future, it does seem like a spatial dimension, along which we move from one event to the next. On the other hand, if we consider ourselves as occupants of the present and it's alot of things moving around and changing the scenery, it seems much more like thermal activity, like molecules of water moving around in a jar. There are no past or future copies of that jar strung along a fourth dimension, like pages in a book, because the same water is still there, just in a different configuration. It is the different configurations which come into being and then are replaced, thus moving from being the future to being the past. The earth doesn't need a fourth dimension to get from yesterday to tomorrow, because tomorrow becomes yesterday as a consequence of the rotation of the earth. It is not the present that moves, but the events.
