Also, if time does exist, doesn’t there have to be a definable beginning or end? Otherwise it’s just infinity which to me suggests the absense of time.
I partially read “The Discoverers” by Daniel Boorstin several years ago and he discussed how different societies conceptualized of time and how they kept time. And it has had me wondering ever since. Then I started exploring Zen Buddhism which emphasizes the present moment as the only tangible reality, along with the illusion of the ego, which only furthered my questioning.
EDIT – I am aware that the concept of time is based on the revolution of the Earth and it’s moon. However, that is just how humans conceive of time. That’s not proof of time itself.
EDIT 2 – The explanation of timespace and relativity is the best from an objective point of view. No matter how much I read or watch, it was always a bit hard to grasp but it makes sense in terms of change or entropy. The reality of time being flexible vs the human perception of time being linear and unchangeable gets closer to what I am asking.
EDIT 3 – “Exist” is a tricky word.
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Time is an imaginary framework or “mental space” in which our mind references events. It’s not something you can ever “find” or “measure”. Clocks don’t measure time, they simply spin in circles at regular intervals.
It’s like the Celsius scale is an imaginary scale on which temperatures can be placed. Temperatures are real, but the scale on which they exist in a specific order is imaginary and only serves to help us refer to things.
So events exist, things happen, but the time *in which* they happen is just a concept.
Actually, by definition, the past doesn’t exist anymore and the future doesn’t exist yet. In other words, the past and the future don’t exist, but we can remember it and imagine it, meaning that in our mind, time is created through imagination. And while we could say that time isn’t real, it would be like saying the Celsius scale isn’t real: sure, it’s not “real” but a hot temperature will still burn you more than a cold one. But it’s not because of a scale that someone invented. The same way, time may not be real but an apple will still rot. It doesn’t rot because of time, it rots because of bacteria and chemistry, time is just a means to classify those things in a meaningful way.
This is why time only seems to ever move forward: our brain is constantly recording events, so clearly new events come after old events. That’s why time moves forward, and can never move backwards. It’s like the alphabet: it only ever goes in alphabetical order, not because of some hidden physical rule, but because that’s how it was defined.
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