If as events happen they are ‘recorded’ (‘stored’ or how ever we might phrase it) in a ‘temporal past’ – then- ‘as events happen, an order IS created and stored’.

But,

If as events happen, they are not recorded in any (temporal) way , anywhere, then that temporal record is not created and does not ‘actually’ exist. And if there ‘is’ no temporal order, then there is no temporal order.

(Here’s a talk I did on it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7nhrlWOTcQ

“In particular ‘things just existing and interacting’ is enough to the changing and accumulating contents of our minds ”

should be

“In particular ‘things just existing and interacting’ is enough to EXPLAIN the changing and accumulating contents of our minds ”
mm

My opinion, which I think can be shown to be logically complete, is that rather than ask the leading questions ‘Does Time exist?’, or even ‘What is Time?’, we should first ask ‘What do we actually directly observe?’ in the world around us, and then see what we discover.

It seems to me that what we actually directly observe,in simple terms, is that objects can exist, and these objects can move, and interact.

If we then ask ‘are objects just existing, moving and interacting enough to explain ALL that we (mistakenly) attribute to the existence of an extra, and mysterious thing called Time?’ I believe the answer is a very definite yes!

In particular ‘things just existing and interacting’ is enough to the changing and accumulating contents of our minds (our memories), and the clearly evolved state of objects in the world around us (tree growth rings,fossils etc). Critically while we assume these things prove the ‘existence’ of ‘The Past’, they can be shown to only actually prove that matter can exist and interact ‘now’ so to speak.

If you read Einstein’s Relativity (Routledge classics) meticulously you can see he at no point actually proves the existence of a ‘Future’ or of ‘The past’ or of a thing called Time flowing between them.

Einstein’s first mention of Time (section 3) is ‘The purpose of mechanics is to describe how bodies change their position in space with Time’. In fact in mechanics we might compare the motion of one moving object (eg a falling stone) with another moving object, eg a steadily rotating hand on a numbered dial. Both these things prove that objects can exist, move, and be compared to each other. But neither prove that as things move another thing called ‘Time’ also exists and flow from a ‘future’, ‘through’ the Present and into a ‘past’ – or that ‘durations’ or ‘intervals’ of ‘time’ exist in anyway.

Einstein’s use of the word clock is unintentionally misleading because motorised rotating hands called clocks ‘suggest’ the existence and flow of a thing called time, but don’t prove it.

Time Dilation – In Special Relativity Einstein does prove that moving objects will run slower than our intuition might suggest – but he does not prove that there is a thing called time – which is slowed – and that the slowing of ‘time’ makes ‘clocks’ etc run slow.
https://sites.google.com/site/abriefhistoryoftimelessness/special-relativity/young-looking-cosmonauts

eg Einstein does not show that a photon trapped and oscillating between two mirrors (a light ‘clock’) heads into or proves the existence of a ‘temporal’ future, or leaves a ‘Temporal’ past behind as it moves, or reveals the ‘passage’ of time.

So, in my opinion, everything is just as it is constantly directly observed to be. Things exist and move ‘now’ and there is no ‘temporal past’ created anywhere, by any ‘thing’ or ‘stored’ or ‘existing anywhere. (‘Events’ are constantly happening, but they are ‘just’ happening and don’t ‘happen in time’ etc)

(IMO) Mr Barbour’s ideas may stem from assuming time exists in some way, while also logical realising (IMO correctly) that it does not, and then trying to prove timelessness in terms of time.

Therefore, amazing and complex as the universe clearly is, it seems to me the idea of ‘Time’ existing other than as a useful tool or notion can be systematically proven to be unfounded. So therefore the universe is ‘Timeless’ (to use a redundant word).
This may seem to simplistic to be true – but that may well be how Einstein’s ‘Persistent illusion’ hides in plane sight.
(Happy to answer any questions)

Matthew Marsden
London
(www.Timelessness.co.uk)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58OrLRu8wp4

Ronald McCoy

It’s horribly non-disprovable, if you let yourself be bothered by things like that. It could have just happened, as your eyes hit this * asterisk; you remember reading everything before that, but it never really happened. For that matter, you never actually read that first asterisk, or what you are reading now; the universe came into existence when you hit this asterisk *.

“I don’t think I’ve ever quite gotten my head around the concept that time is an illusion. Relative to the observer? Of course. Bi-directional? Perhaps. But nonexistent? Ok that has me stumped. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any change at all, right?”

Congratulations, you may turn out to be the one sane person in a thread full of amateur metaphysicians.

One doesn’t need to. Limiting discussion even to the classical regime, the essence of Barbour’s work* as I understand it is that it renders unnecessary any a priori assumption of the existence of time. Best matching of configuration spaces, the use of what Barbour calls a “Jacobi-type action”, and treating reparameterization-invariance as a guiding principle is sufficient to produce everything you see in Newtonian physics.

Extending this to gravity appears to be promising as well providing that you (i) accept that Dirac really was onto something when he claimed to believe that the universe really isn’t four-dimensional, (ii) accept that the space of Riemannian three-metrics modulo diffeomorphisms probably has something really fundamental to tell us, and (iii) recall that the ADM decomposition of general relativity is, in many respects, even more elegant than the fully four-dimensional version.

Barbour’s work really does contain some wonderfully clever ideas and surprising results, not least of which is the rather magical way that the Lichnerowicz-York equation from general relativity magically pops out when you apply Barbour’s ideas to three-metrics modulo diffeomorphisms and volume-preserving (!) conformal transformations.

*: It’s rather unfair to label this work as being solely due to Barbour; I do so only for the sake of brevity.

If the universe (aka spacetime) is expanding, does this mean time is ‘dilating’ as well?

And can you explain to us what that means? I didn’t even understand my own question in any depth

Momentum is good stuff – the Periodic Table arises from it. Absence of acceleration does bad things to the Equivalence Principle and General Relativity – gonna use string theory, are ya? Saying that a pendulum is stationary in 4-space does not clear you from being late to your employment interview.

Theory predicts what observation tells it to predict. Theorists boast of their promiscuity while empiricists quietly pay child support.