is time infinite?

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Reply Wed 17 Dec, 2008 02:54 pm
I am doing a paper on eternal recurrence and how it is flawed
I am trying to prove that, for actions to repeat themselves, time would have to repeat itself aswell. I am finding this actually very dificult.
so far, I have an explanation of a video tape: Consider a videotape: once the video has finished, it does not begin again. If an individual decided to watch it again, someone must rewind the video until it has reached a specific time. The time indicator on the screen will read a specific time. That time will change back to what it was in the past as one continues rewinding the videotape.

what do you think of that?
I kind of made it up on the spur of the moment Sad
so ya...any good argument for: if the world recurs, so should time.

????? please???????/
and thank you !!!!!! Smile
 
Fido
 
Reply Wed 17 Dec, 2008 03:40 pm
@meridius,
My clock stops when I stop looking at it... It helps us to make sense of our lives, but the future, and the past when beyond our own lives seem more and more unreal... So what then if your clock keeps ticking and your dead eyes do not see it... To matter it must have meaning and for meaning there must be life.. It does not matter when it has no meaning...

Nietzsche was living in faith... He could give up on God, but he could not give up on life... He was outside of the loop... He was cut off, a cull, without meaningful human relationships, like a monk... He could not hope to live through his children like your average human... All he had was the thought that the future would bring him round again... And I know other people have had the idea.. If you want to call it an idea.. It seems like pure stupidity... Stupid ideas do have a life of their own, and they do re-occur...
 
balhallah
 
Reply Wed 17 Dec, 2008 03:52 pm
@meridius,
I think to say that time repeats is confusing the matter of actual events being repeated. There's a theory: eventually, everything will happen. You can add to that, "...an infinite number of times". If you were to say that time repeats like a vhs, you'd basically be saying that every single thing that happens will happen again in the exact same sequence and timeframe as it did before. Now I guess that could be a legitimate belief and even be supported by the "everything eventually happens" theory, albeit approaching an infinitely small percentage of ever actually happening. Wink

Time is indeed relative, no pun intended to Einstein wannabe's, but I don't think that's the question.
 
meridius
 
Reply Wed 17 Dec, 2008 05:17 pm
@balhallah,
my basic point with the vhs thing was actually that time does not repeat itself. that if events were to recur once again, rewinding the tape, is also rewinding the time
 
Fido
 
Reply Wed 17 Dec, 2008 09:27 pm
@meridius,
meridius wrote:
my basic point with the vhs thing was actually that time does not repeat itself. that if events were to recur once again, rewinding the tape, is also rewinding the time

Since reason dismisses the thought as impossible fantasy; what part of philosophy has it??? I am not sure if any other philosopher besides Nietzsche put the idea forward... It may have some history in the Orient for all I know.. But the reason we have a world with more possibilities in the West is that we were willing to look at reality for what it is, instead of for all the things that it possibly isn't...
 
Icon
 
Reply Thu 18 Dec, 2008 07:47 am
@meridius,
Is time infinite? Of course not.

As soon as the human race is wiped out it will be called something completely different. Duh!:na:
 
manored
 
Reply Thu 18 Dec, 2008 11:22 am
@meridius,
I suppose that with infinite you mean ever-lasting. Time is infinite because if it had a end the universe would be forever locked in the moment of the end, and it would not be possible to perceive it ended.
 
No0ne
 
Reply Thu 18 Dec, 2008 12:21 pm
@manored,
Time, is a observation of change, for if everything never changed, everything would be a single frame. (time would be frozen/non-existent)

Such a thing, would be "The End Of Time"

Yet, you ask is time infinte?

Well a infinte reoccuring number never end's, it never stops then starts again.

Yet time, ends and starts again meany "times", and therefore is finite, and not infinite.

(*note, you must give an example on when time ends and re-starts again, since this is for your paper, I will not do all the work for you.)

:rolleyes:But heres 3 hints.

1."Past, Present, Future"
2."Change"
3."How Is A Movie Made Whole?"

:a-thought:
...:detective: CUT!
 
manored
 
Reply Thu 18 Dec, 2008 12:35 pm
@meridius,
But thats the point. You cannot prove it has an end because you need time to prove things Smile
 
No0ne
 
Reply Thu 18 Dec, 2008 01:09 pm
@manored,
manored wrote:
But thats the point. You cannot prove it has an end because you need time to prove things Smile


I edited my post, after you made this post, you might find it much more helpful.

Things that are infinte, have no ends.

Therefore if a thing has a end it is finite and not infinite.
 
balhallah
 
Reply Thu 18 Dec, 2008 01:58 pm
@manored,
manored wrote:
But thats the point. You cannot prove it has an end because you need time to prove things Smile


Exactly. Well, sortof. Physicists, cosmologists, etc much more knowledgeable than you or I struggle with that very thought to this day. Does existence have a beginning? Does it have an end? If the big bang happened, was it the first thing to happen? Is a billion light years like a nanosecond to an omnipotent one?

Do you see the "infinitely large" can of worms this opens up?

I think that in general, people get all caught up in trying to answer questions that we simply cannot figure out at this "time".
 
Fido
 
Reply Thu 18 Dec, 2008 05:10 pm
@No0ne,
No0ne wrote:
I edited my post, after you made this post, you might find it much more helpful.

Things that are infinte, have no ends.

Therefore if a thing has a end it is finite and not infinite.

Just a guess here, but if a thing were infinite, then it would have no beginning or end, because considered objectively a beginning would be an end...
 
Fido
 
Reply Thu 18 Dec, 2008 05:18 pm
@balhallah,
balhallah wrote:
Exactly. Well, sortof. Physicists, cosmologists, etc much more knowledgeable than you or I struggle with that very thought to this day. Does existence have a beginning? Does it have an end? If the big bang happened, was it the first thing to happen? Is a billion light years like a nanosecond to an omnipotent one?

Do you see the "infinitely large" can of worms this opens up?

I think that in general, people get all caught up in trying to answer questions that we simply cannot figure out at this "time".

It is possible for material existence to not have beginning or an end; but to have a lens... That is to say; what we think of as a big bang might well be all matter passing through itself, falling back at some point in time to a common center at nearly the same instant with too much energy to be contained by the mass...
 
Bonaventurian
 
Reply Thu 18 Dec, 2008 07:03 pm
@Fido,
A favorite proof of mine by the neo-Platonists:

Suppose time were infinite. Ok. An infinite number of days precedes this one. Ok. To arrive at the present day, each day preceding this one must be traversed...which is impossible, as per the term "infinite." Hm...then we never arrive at the present day. Wait! We have arrived at the present day! Time therefore is not infinite, but finite...or, at the very least, it has an origin. :shifty:
 
Fido
 
Reply Thu 18 Dec, 2008 08:17 pm
@Bonaventurian,
Bonaventurian wrote:
A favorite proof of mine by the neo-Platonists:

Suppose time were infinite. Ok. An infinite number of days precedes this one. Ok. To arrive at the present day, each day preceding this one must be traversed...which is impossible, as per the term "infinite." Hm...then we never arrive at the present day. Wait! We have arrived at the present day! Time therefore is not infinite, but finite...or, at the very least, it has an origin. :shifty:

A guy I read a quote from once said something about eternity being impossible to conceive because it is a present without beginning or end... It gets to a point when philosophy becomes theology, -all runned out of facts and flying on faith...
 
Ibn Sina
 
Reply Thu 18 Dec, 2008 11:02 pm
@meridius,
Time is another dimension, like space. And like space, it is infinite until it ends. That sounds dumb but here's an example: you draw a circle and it goes around infinitely, if you erase that circle you end the it but that circle would still be infinite.:perplexed:
 
Fido
 
Reply Fri 19 Dec, 2008 08:40 am
@Ibn Sina,
Ibn Sina wrote:
Time is another dimension, like space. And like space, it is infinite until it ends. That sounds dumb but here's an example: you draw a circle and it goes around infinitely, if you erase that circle you end the it but that circle would still be infinite.:perplexed:

Now that is funny; because I would say timespace are one dimension...Each only makes sense in relation to the other... To know where anything is you must know when it is, and vice versa.
 
No0ne
 
Reply Fri 19 Dec, 2008 12:58 pm
@Ibn Sina,
Ibn Sina wrote:
Time is another dimension, like space. And like space, it is infinite until it ends. That sounds dumb but here's an example: you draw a circle and it goes around infinitely, if you erase that circle you end the it but that circle would still be infinite.:perplexed:


:a-thought:
...:rolleyes:Let's all get on the same page here...
(Please read link below first please)

http://www.philosophyforum.com/forum/philosophy-forums/branches-philosophy/philosophy-science/1096-speed-time-24.html#post37740

What a thing once was, what a thing is, and what a thing will be, are the three states of change.

Basicaly, the past state of a thing ends when a thing becomes its present state, and the present state ends when a thing become's its future state.

Now this cycle can only infinitly repeat if there is something within this existence that exists, so therefore if there is a probability that everything would ceast to exist in this existence, then therefore time would also ceast to exist, and therefore be finite.

Due to the unknown varriable's it cannot be said that there is no probability that this existence will infinity exist or ceast to exist infinitly.

So it will allways be a theory that time is infinite or finite, due to unknown variables or events that could or could not happen at a given point of time within this existence that would ceast this existence from existing infinitly, or would allow this existence to infinitly exist.

So there is a probability that such a statment as "Time is infinite" is true, and there is a probability that such a statment as "Time is finite" is true, due to the fact that there are unknown variables in both equations.

Here are two other links that touch on the topic of why both statements are not facts.
http://www.philosophyforum.com/forum/lounge/general-discussion/2962-probability-2.html#post37731
http://www.philosophyforum.com/forum/lounge/general-discussion/2962-probability.html#post37650

Thank you all for your time, and enjoy:flowers:
 
Petrovich phil
 
Reply Fri 19 Dec, 2008 02:14 pm
@Fido,
Fido wrote:
Now that is funny; because I would say timespace are one dimension...Each only makes sense in relation to the other... To know where anything is you must know when it is, and vice versa.

time is the 4th dimension, and we see cross sections of it since we are in the 3rd dimension. if we lived in the 4th dimension we would see the beginning and the end of something, at the same time. you could draw a line from 2 minutes ago, to now.

so when time passes through our dimension we should see cross sections, and we do, we consider these different cross sections to be different 'ages'. a good example is looking at a person's face. you see them as a baby, and it is a cross section of time, and since time progresses, you will later see him as a young boy, then a man, then an old fart.

i do not know the nature of time. but before we can know whether time is infinite or finite, we need to know exactly what it is. and although time seems straight and predictable, this is because we are in the 3rd dimension, and we don't notice that time is actually looping and twisting in the 5th dimension. so yeah like no0ne said, we can't know if it is infinite because of missing variables. i think to find these variables we'd have to simply exist in a higher dimension, but hey we have technology. it'd be nice to somehow find these variables and transcend.

hope that helps :a-ok:


EDIT:
btw this idea of dimension on dimension comes from the book 'imagining the tenth dimension'
 
xris
 
Reply Sat 20 Dec, 2008 05:10 am
@Petrovich phil,
Petrovich wrote:
time is the 4th dimension, and we see cross sections of it since we are in the 3rd dimension. if we lived in the 4th dimension we would see the beginning and the end of something, at the same time. you could draw a line from 2 minutes ago, to now.

so when time passes through our dimension we should see cross sections, and we do, we consider these different cross sections to be different 'ages'. a good example is looking at a person's face. you see them as a baby, and it is a cross section of time, and since time progresses, you will later see him as a young boy, then a man, then an old fart.

i do not know the nature of time. but before we can know whether time is infinite or finite, we need to know exactly what it is. and although time seems straight and predictable, this is because we are in the 3rd dimension, and we don't notice that time is actually looping and twisting in the 5th dimension. so yeah like no0ne said, we can't know if it is infinite because of missing variables. i think to find these variables we'd have to simply exist in a higher dimension, but hey we have technology. it'd be nice to somehow find these variables and transcend.

hope that helps :a-ok:


EDIT:
btw this idea of dimension on dimension comes from the book 'imagining the tenth dimension'
Prove to me conclusively that these other dimensions exist? please...
 
 

 
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