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We've talked about changes in time and abstract time, but I don't recall any evidence for time moving forward. Telling me that the entropy is decreasing isn't proof either because maybe it is decreasing while time is moving backward.

So what evidence exists that time is moving forward? I would like to know.

PhilX

For what it's worth, I'll point out that "forward" is a relative assessment based on whatever else appears static (or moving forward more slowly), all according to one's chosen frame of reference. Applying that to our experience of time, we sense change that rather than being random appears to feature prominent "irreversibilities."

Personally, these irreversibilities strike me as the key to our subjective sense of time's arrow. The entropy concept says about the same thing, but the formal mathematics doesn't support it: Classical mechanics, QM, and Relativity all feature "time symmetry." You can run the equations with negative time values and they still work (suggesting the possibility of moving backwards in time; the QM wave function evolving via many possibilities converging into fewer possibilities).

But there is one formalism that supports irreversibility: Non-linear dynamics, the mathematics of complexity theory. The so-called bifurcation points in non-linear dynamics are fundamentally irreversible. You cannot run the equations backward beyond the last bifurcation. What makes this compelling to me, is that most of the real-world systems that humans experience are fundamentally non-linear. Processes like the weather, organic growth, and evolution cannot be accurately modeled by traditional scientific formalisms because the phenomena cannot be reduced to linear equations.

So we can say that trees don't de-grow into saplings, not because entropy doesn't allow it (it does allow it from a purely mathematical perspective!), but because each branching is an irreversible event according to complexity theory, and human experience is of the complex, macroscopic world, not the idealized worlds implicit in classical formalism.

"So what evidence exists that time is moving forward?"

Versus what, being circular, as in Nietzsche's myth of eternal recurrence?

Philosophy Explorer wrote:We've talked about changes in time and abstract time, but I don't recall any evidence for time moving forward. Telling me that the entropy is decreasing isn't proof either because maybe it is decreasing while time is moving backward.

So what evidence exists that time is moving forward? I would like to know.

PhilX

I don't even know what you mean by 'time moving forward'. Can you explain this in more depth? Your question seems to imply that 'time' is more of an objective reality than merely the peculiar way we perceive/cognize the world.

Atreyu wrote:

Philosophy Explorer wrote:We've talked about changes in time and abstract time, but I don't recall any evidence for time moving forward. Telling me that the entropy is decreasing isn't proof either because maybe it is decreasing while time is moving backward.

So what evidence exists that time is moving forward? I would like to know.

PhilX

I don't even know what you mean by 'time moving forward'. Can you explain this in more depth? Your question seems to imply that 'time' is more of an objective reality than merely the peculiar way we perceive/cognize the world.

I believe by convention, it was decided by someone that time moves forward. What does it mean to move forward in time I don't actually know which is part of the reason for this thread. I suppose this is one of those situations where your intuition tells you whether or not time is moving forward. Maybe someone can offer further input on this.

Phi

P E.

Take a look in a mirror and compare it with an old picture of yourself, note the change. It does not matter what words we use to describe the change,but you will note that things have changed. It is movement that we have given the name time. Does it really matter what word we use, forward, upward, downward? Backward somehow is problematic

Regards, John.

Philosophy Explorer wrote: I believe by convention, it was decided by someone that time moves forward. What does it mean to move forward in time I don't actually know which is part of the reason for this thread. I suppose this is one of those situations where your intuition tells you whether or not time is moving forward. Maybe someone can offer further input on this. Phi

Do you really believe that? Really? Once upon a time somebody decided that it would be 'before, now, and then after' rather than 'after, now, and then before' ? And then eventually everyone else accepted it and a protocol was established?

I don't think this is how it 'went down' at all. To me, 'moving forward in time' is a cognitive construct which is inherent in man as he is. 'Moving forward in time' is the way we cognize time, the way we think, and we cannot think in any other way. Try imagining the clock moving in the other direction. The calender going from December to January. Would this make sense?

Now the sophisticated sophist which is always present in forums like this will inevitably say that that is because we have learned to think like that, that it is a part of the socialization process, and that the reason for the apparent nonsensicalness is because of the powerful effect which that process has on all of us. But this is not so. Even before man thought to measure time he already had this cognition of 'moving forward in time', hence the corresponding forward moving measurement. And this is evidenced by the fact that we can imagine time moving backwards and yet this does not corroborate with our direct senses. We can rewind a videotape and watch a dog running backwards. So the fact that we can cognize time 'moving backward' and 'moving forward', yet with only one of these two being corroborated by direct perception, shows that this cognition is inherent. We 'know' our cognition is 'correct' because of the fact that we can imagine it being otherwise and yet our direct perception corroborates it as we think it.

Everything is in a state of constant movement and change. We use the concept of time, to measure those changes, in the same way we use the concept of miles, to measure distance. Time is a measurement and does not move, since "now" is the only point in time, in which a measurement may be taken, and it is always now.

Philosophy Explorer wrote:We've talked about changes in time and abstract time, but I don't recall any evidence for time moving forward. Telling me that the entropy is decreasing isn't proof either because maybe it is decreasing while time is moving backward.

So what evidence exists that time is moving forward? I would like to know.

PhilX

What do you mean time is moving forward? What goal are you thinking of? What goal does time have?

-- Updated Tue Jul 15, 2014 10:18 am to add the following --

Present awareness wrote:Everything is in a state of constant movement and change. We use the concept of time, to measure those changes, in the same way we use the concept of miles, to measure distance. Time is a measurement and does not move, since "now" is the only point in time, in which a measurement may be taken, and it is always now.

How can 'now' be measured without perception, which is a past concept? Time is measured through memory. It is impossible to measure the 'NOW.'

Misty wrote:

Philosophy Explorer wrote:We've talked about changes in time and abstract time, but I don't recall any evidence for time moving forward. Telling me that the entropy is decreasing isn't proof either because maybe it is decreasing while time is moving backward.

So what evidence exists that time is moving forward? I would like to know.

PhilX

What do you mean time is moving forward? What goal are you thinking of? What goal does time have?

Misty,

I don't know which is why I'm asking the question in this thread. Does anyone know the answer? Who decided that we're moving forward in time that the sundial depicts in moving to the right in increasing numbers? It could be arranged with the numbers on a sundial moving with decreasing numbers with a shadow.

PhilX

Personally, I just go by my pedometer....

Philosophy Explorer wrote:We've talked about changes in time and abstract time, but I don't recall any evidence for time moving forward. Telling me that the entropy is decreasing isn't proof either because maybe it is decreasing while time is moving backward.

So what evidence exists that time is moving forward? I would like to know.

PhilX

The idea that time moves forward coupled with the idea that past events are fixed is taken in modernity to exist upon a real line, although at one end the big bang suggests that line to be terminated and at the other (now) another puzzle exists since the future is not well understood. Ignoring the big bang and focusing locally, which is the human perspective and a theoretical observer's perspective, we can state that events are ordered even without a time piece. For instance to intentionally grow a turnip one must plant a turnip seed. That seed will germinate, then root and leaf out, then eventually if it is good soil and good seed it will head a bulbous central root stalk that we know as a turnip. Incidentally when young my turnips are every bit as good as a radish when eaten raw, and easier to grow. Lastly to get more seed one must grow the turnip for two years, at which point it will produce seed pods, which of course enter the ordered event stream after the yellow flowers form.

The cyclic nature of events leads some to claim time to be looped, but I suspect that the loops that form in space should not be confused with time. Some respected physicists make strong statements on the reversibility of time, yet they have only taken the real valued form and inverted it, and it is the real valued form which is the largest fraud of modern thinking. Time is unidirectional, and so the mapping to a bidirectional representation must suffer such conflicted thinking as Michio Kaku is capable of. Einstein imposed a light cone, which collapses the presupposed time dimension in the analysis.

The very word 'dimension' is tied to the real line, so that three dimensional space implies that three real lines will compose it. It happens to be physically provable in our locality to address space this way. It is a long argument that I will spare you some of the details of. Simplest version: draw a grid every inch along the floor from one corner. Select a position in the room to test. Move a plumb bob (a weighted string) to that position and lower it to contact the floor. Mark the position on the floor and the length of the string. These positions have decomposed the three dimensional position into two positions, and the one on the floor can be further decomposed into two positions via the grid on the floor. Realizing that a more refined measurement is required for greater precision (and that those means are available) should satisfy the user that the space in the room can be addressed positionally by three values. As we move the object through the space we see that these values change and that the freedom of the object to travel through the space is crucial to the working of the experiment, for if this freedom did not exist then the experiment would fail.

Now let's consider this physical experiment with time. The freedoms of time are nonexistent. We are trapped in the present moment within the experiment, and attempts to shift an object through time would lead to disappearing objects or doubling of objects, and these are not possible. Claims that time is one dimensional ought to bring time into correspondence with one of the physical dimensions, particularly when the tensor form is in use, which brings about a mathematics with an arbitrary reference frame basis and supports the unification of space and time, based upon the assumptions of the real value.

There is another way to look at the real number. It has two signs: positive and negative. It is possible to generalize these so that we may consider a three-signed number system P3. We may likewise consider a one-signed number system P1. This leaves the real value (P2) as a member of a family of number systems, rather than as the fundamental building block. This family does extend upward to high sign systems P4, P5, and so on. The traditional dimension of these systems is one less than their signature, so as for instance P2 is one dimensional P3 is two dimensional, P5 is four dimensional, and extending this logic down onto P1 we have a zero dimensional unidirectional entity which still can do arithmetic.

These polysigned systems are balanced coordinate systems whereby components in each sign cancel with one another just as they did upon the real line. Their unit vectors are formed by rays emanating from the center of a simplex to its vertices, where the number of vertices is the number of signs.

The one-signed numbers (P1) are zero dimensional and unidirectional and so they satisfy the qualities of time which are treated as conflicts in modernity. Modern mathematics and physics rest upon assumptions established in the 1600's which allowed the naming of a number as 'real'. Complex numbers have been built out of the real value by consideration of the existence of the square root of a negative one. It happens that P3 are equivalent to the complex numbers, but do not require any additional construction. This establishes a strong scent for those who have that sense intact. Welcome to the polysign numbers: http://bandtech.com/PolySigned/index.html They are young and fresh, and they still need lots more work, yet they are strong enough to stand on their own and to stand up to half a millenium of accumulation. Your belief or disbelief is optional. They are a fine proof of the human condition. I would not think of burning a disbeliever at the stake, but would point out that the influence of mimicry upon a system as supposedly pure as mathematics denies that system's purity. We are caught just about there, and it leaves all of us burdened as assessors of the truth, which happens to be something wee humans aren't actually that good at. The good news is that if a concept as simple as the generalization of sign has been overlooked, then there is hope of finding other fundamentals that have been overlooked.

We know we're going forwards in time because we don't suck poo up our bums when we go to the loo.

Age is the proof that we are moving "forward" in time. Only using forward because we it is possible to move up, down, left, right, forward and backward in the time dimension, but it seems that everything is moving in a single direction. This single direction would be "forward" I suppose, and aging and death is proof of our movement forward in time.

In the Universe there is no direction, no orienteers. People come up with orienteers. So far, people chose word and concept of "forward" to explain where the time moves. Very relative concept. Most likely, it was created in analogy to kinetic, spatial relations: something is left behind, back there, some things lay ahead. It has to do with human anatomy, the way they walk forward but not backward. Forward is always in front of your eyes, while backward is behind your back, something you do not see, unless you turn there your eyes. To say that human anatomy is the only true construct among Multi Universes would be too much of a stretch. Under different conditions people could have different set of organs and different notions about time or time could be not perceivable to them.

-- Updated Wed Jul 30, 2014 1:18 pm to add the following --

Ruskin wrote:We know we're going forwards in time because we don't suck poo up our bums when we go to the loo.

...but toilet does, so does time go backward for the toilets?