2. How Is Time Related to Mind?

Physical time is public time, the time that clocks are designed to measure. Biological
time, by contrast, is indicated by an organism's circadian rhythm or body clock, which is
normally regulated by the pattern of sunlight and darkness. Psychological time is
different from both physical time and biological time. Psychological time is private time.
It is also called phenomenological time, and it is perhaps best understood as awareness
of physical time. Psychological time passes relatively swiftly for us while we are enjoying
an activity, but it slows dramatically if we are waiting anxiously for the pot of water to
boil on the stove. The slowness is probably due to focusing our attention on short
intervals of physical time. Meanwhile, the clock by the stove is measuring physical time
and is not affected by any persons awareness or by any organism's biological time.
When a physicist defines speed to be the rate of change of position with respect to time,
the term time refers to physical time, not psychological time or biological time.
Physical time is more basic or fundamental than psychological time for helping us
understand our shared experiences in the world, and so it is more useful for doing
physical science, but psychological time is vitally important for understanding many
mental experiences.
Psychological time is faster for older people than for children, as you notice when your
grandmother says, "Oh, it's my birthday again." That is, an older person's psychological
time is faster relative to physical time. Psychological time is slower or faster depending
upon where we are in the spectrum of conscious experience: awake normally, involved
in a daydream, sleeping normally, drugged with anesthetics, or in a coma. Some
philosophers claim that psychological time is completely transcended in the mental state
called nirvana because psychological time slows to a complete stop. There is general
agreement among philosophers that, when we are awake normally, we do not experience
time as stopping and starting.
A major philosophical problem is to explain the origin and character of our temporal
experiences. Philosophers continue to investigate, but so far do not agree on, how our
experience of temporal phenomena produces our consciousness of our experiencing
temporal phenomena. With the notable exception of Husserl, most philosophers say
our ability to imagine other times is a necessary ingredient in our having any
consciousness at all. Many philosophers also say people in a coma have a low level of

consciousness, yet when a person awakes from a coma they can imagine other times but
have no good sense about how long they've been in the coma.
We make use of our ability to imagine other times when we experience a difference
between our present perceptions and our present memories of past perceptions.
Somehow the difference between the two gets interpreted by us as evidence that the
world we are experiencing is changing through time, with some events succeeding other
events. Locke said our train of ideas produces our idea that events succeed each other in
time, but he offered no details on how this train does the producing.
Philosophers also want to know which aspects of time we have direct experience of, and
which we have only indirect experience of. Is our direct experience of only of the
momentary present, as Aristotle, Thomas Reid, and Alexius Meinong believed, or
instead do we have direct experience of what William James called a "specious present,"
a short stretch of physical time? Among those accepting the notion of a specious
present, there is continuing controversy about whether the individual specious presents
can overlap each other and about how the individual specious presents combine to form
our stream of consciousness.
The brain takes an active role in building a mental scenario of what is taking place
beyond the brain. For one example, the "time dilation effect" in psychology occurs when
events involving an object coming toward you last longer in psychological time than an
event with the same object being stationary. For another example, try tapping your nose
with one hand and your knee with your other hand at the same time. Even though it
takes longer for the signal from your knee to reach your brain than the signal from your
nose to reach your brain, you will have the experience of the two tappings being
simultaneousthanks to the brain's manipulation of the data. Neuroscientists suggest
that your brain waits about 80 milliseconds for all the relevant input to come in before
you experience a now. Craig Callender surveyed the psycho-physics literature on
human experience of the present, and concluded that, if the duration in physical time
between two experienced events is less than about a quarter of a second (250
milliseconds), then humans will say both events happened simultaneously, and this
duration is slightly different for different people but is stable within the experience of
any single person. Also, "our impression of subjective present-ness...can be manipulated
in a variety of ways" such as by what other sights or sounds are present at nearby times.
See (Callender 2003-4, p. 124) and (Callender 2008).

Within the field of cognitive science, researchers want to know what are the neural
mechanisms that account for our experience of timefor our awareness of change, for
our sense of times flow, for our ability to place events into the proper time order
(temporal succession), and for our ability to notice, and often accurately estimate,
durations (persistence). The most surprising experimental result about our experience
of time is Benjamin Libets claim in the 1970s that his experiments show that the brain
events involved in initiating our free choice occur about a third of a second before we are
aware of our choice. Before Libets work, it was universally agreed that a person is aware
of deciding to act freely, then later the body initiates the action. Libet's work has been
used to challenge this universal claim about decisions. However, Libet's own
experiments have been difficult to repeat because he drilled through the skull and
inserted electrodes to shock the underlying brain tissue. See (Damasio 2002) for more
discussion of Libet's experiments.
Neuroscientists and psychologists have investigated whether they can speed up our
minds relative to a duration of physical time. If so, we might become mentally more
productive, and get more high quality decision making done per fixed amount of
physical time, and learn more per minute. Several avenues have been explored: using
cocaine, amphetamines and other drugs; undergoing extreme experiences such as
jumping backwards off a tall bridge with bungee cords attached to one's ankles; and
trying different forms of meditation. So far, none of these avenues have led to success
productivity-wise.
Any organisms sense of time is subjective, but is the time that is sensed also subjective,
a mind-dependent phenomenon? Throughout history, philosophers of time have
disagreed on the answer. Without minds in the world, nothing in the world would be
surprising or beautiful or interesting. Can we add that nothing would be in time?
Philosophers disagree on this.
The majority answer is "no." The ability of the concept of time to help us make sense of
our phenomenological evidence involving change, persistence, and succession of events
is a sign that time may be objectively real. Consider succession, that is, order of events in
time. We all agree that our memories of events occur after the events occur. If
judgments of time were subjective in the way judgments of being interesting vs. notinteresting are subjective, then it would be too miraculous that everyone can so easily
agree on the ordering of events in time. For example, first Einstein was born, then he
went to school, then he died. Everybody agrees that it happened in this order: birth,

school, death. No other order. The agreement on time order for so many events, both
psychological events and physical events, is part of the reason that most philosophers
and scientists believe physical time is objective and not dependent on being
consciously experienced.
Another large part of the reason to believe time is objective is that our universe has so
many different processes that bear consistent time relations, or frequency of occurrence
relations, to each other. For example, the frequency of rotation of the Earth around its
axis is a constant multiple of the frequency of oscillation of a fixed-length pendulum,
which in turn is a constant multiple of the half life of a specific radioactive uranium
isotope, which in turn is a multiple of the frequency of a vibrating violin string; the
relationship of these oscillators does not change as time goes by (at least not much and
not for a long time, and when there is deviation we know how to predict it and
compensate for it). The existence of these sorts of relationships makes our system of
physical laws much simpler than it otherwise would be, and it makes us more confident
that there is something objective we are referring to with the time-variable in those laws.
The stability of these relationships over a long time makes it easy to create clocks. Time
can be measured easily because we have access to long-term simple harmonic oscillators
that have a regular period or regular ticking. This regularity shows up in completely
different stable systems: rotations of the Earth, a swinging ball hanging from a string (a
pendulum), a bouncing ball hanging from a coiled spring, revolutions of the Earth
around the Sun, oscillating electric circuits, and vibrations of a quartz crystal. Many of
these systems make good clocks. The existence of these possibilities for clocks strongly
suggests that time is objective, and is not merely an aspect of consciousness.
The issue about objectivity vs. subjectivity is related to another issue: realism vs.
idealism. Is time real or instead just a useful instrument or just a useful convention or
perhaps an arbitrary convention? This issue will appear several times throughout this
article, including in the later section on conventionality.
Aristotle raised this issue of the mind-dependence of time when he said, Whether, if
soul (mind) did not exist, time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked;
for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted
(Physics, chapter 14). He does not answer his own question because, he says rather
profoundly, it depends on whether time is the conscious numbering of movement or
instead is just the capability of movements being numbered were consciousness to exist.
St. Augustine, adopting a subjective view of time, said time is nothing in reality but
exists only in the minds apprehension of that reality. The 13th century philosophers

Henry of Ghent and Giles of Rome said time exists in reality as a mind-independent
continuum, but is distinguished into earlier and later parts only by the mind. In the 13th
century, Duns Scotus clearly recognized both physical and psychological time.
At the end of the 18th century, Kant suggested a subtle relationship between time and
mindthat our mind actually structures our perceptions so that we can know a priori
that time is like a mathematical line. Time is, on this theory, a form of conscious
experience, and our sense of time is a necessary condition of our having experiences
such as sensations. In the 19th century, Ernst Mach claimed instead that our sense of
time is a simple sensation, not an a priori form of sensation. This controversy took
another turn when other philosophers argued that both Kant and Mach were incorrect
because our sense of time is, instead, an intellectual construction (see Whitrow 1980, p.
64).
In the 20th century, the philosopher of science Bas van Fraassen described time,
including physical time, by saying, There would be no time were there no beings
capable of reason just as there would be no food were there no organisms, and no
teacups if there were no tea drinkers.
The controversy in metaphysics between idealism and realism is that, for the idealist,
nothing exists independently of the mind. If this controversy is settled in favor of
idealism, then physical time, too, would have that subjective feature.
It has been suggested by some philosophers that Einsteins theory of relativity, when
confirmed, showed us that physical time depends on the observer, and thus that
physical time is subjective, or dependent on the mind. This error is probably caused by
Einsteins use of the term observer. Einsteins theory implies that the duration of an
event depends on the observers frame of referenceor coordinate system, but what
Einstein means by observers frame of reference is merely a perspective or coordinate
framework from which measurements could be made. The observer need not have a
mind. So, Einstein is not making a point about mind-dependence.
To mention one last issue about the relationship between mind and time, if all
organisms were to die, there would be events after those deaths. The stars would
continue to shine, for example, but would any of these events be in the future? This is a
controversial question because advocates ofMcTaggarts A-theory will answer yes,
whereas advocates of McTaggarts B-theory will answer no and say whose future?
For more on the consciousness of time and related issues, see the article
Phenomenology and Time-Consciousness. For more on whether the present, as

opposed to time itself, is subjective, see the section called "Is the Present, the Now,
Objectively Real?"

3. What Is Time?

Physical time seems to be objective, whereas psychological time is subjective. Many

philosophers of science argue that physical time is more fundamental even though
psychological time is discovered first by each of us during our childhood, and even
though psychological time was discovered first as we human beings evolved from our
animal ancestors. The remainder of this article focuses more on physical time than
psychological time.
First, some attention needs to be paid to terminology. Physical time is all the times or all
the ordered times. Times are the temporal coordinates of our coordinate system. Think
of a time as a point on a line. A moment is not an event [think of the event of feeling a
specific pain] but rather is either a time [as in, "He called me the moment he felt the
pain"] or the duration of a brief event [as in, "The pain lasted for only a moment]. The
terms instant and moment are often used interchangeably, but when used as a
duration in physics then the duration is exactly zero seconds. When the term "instant" is
used as a time rather than a duration, then we can say time is composed of the instants.
Instantaneous events, on the other hand, are not instants; they are events that last
only for an instant [in the sense of duration] and only at an instant [in the sense of a
single time coordinate]. Although instants are not events, too often an author will
conflate the terms "instantaneous event" and "instant" and say, "There is an ordering of
instants that forms the totality of all the events throughout history" when the author
really means instantaneous events and not instants. Another terminological difficulty
occurs when an author says, "Time is a series of instants." This is a misuse of the
word "series." A series is a sum of discrete terms; time, however, is a linear continuum
of instants, not a series of instants.
Any definition of the word "instant" that ties instants to events will presuppose the
controversialrelational theory of time. For example, in 1929 Bertrand Russell offered
these precise definitions of instant and of occurring at an instant:
X is an instant iff X is an exhaustive class of mutually overlapping events.
Event E is at instant X iff E is a member of X.
On Russell's definition, an instant is neither a time, nor an event, nor an event's
duration, but rather is a class.

Now, back to the question, "What is time?" Time is what we use a clock or calendar to
measure. But measurements depend on frames of reference. Before the creation of
Einstein's special theory of relativity, it might have been said that time fixes these four
features of reality: (1) For any event, it fixes when it occurs. (2) For any event, it specifies
its durationhow long it lasts. (3) For any event, it fixes what other events occur
simultaneously with it. (4) For any pair of instantaneous events that are not
simultaneous, it specifies which happens first. With the creation of the special theory of
relativity in 1905, it was realized that these four features of time can be different in
different reference frames. Nevertheless, within a reference frame, these are still four
key parts of the answer to the question, "What is time?"
Relativity theory implies that in any reference frame over short durations, that is,
locally, time can be embedded in the mathematician's real line, so the temporal
coordinates have the structure of the real numbers rather than merely the structure of
the integers or the fractions. It is because of what time is that we can succeed in this
embedding.
All of the above are important features of time, but they do not tell us all of what time
itself is.

a. The Variety of Answers

Bothered by the contradictions they claimed to find in our concept of
time, Zeno, Plato, Spinoza, Hegel, and McTaggart gave a radical answer the question,
What is time? by replying that it is nothing because time does not exist (see
LePoidevin and MacBeath 1993, p. 23). In a similar vein, the early 20th century English
philosopher F. H. Bradley argued, Time, like space, has most evidently proved not to be
real, but a contradictory appearance.The problem of change defies solution. In the
mid-twentieth century, Gdel argued for the unreality of time because Einstein's
equations allow for physically possible worlds in which events precede themselves. In
the twenty-first century some physicists such as Julian Barbour say that in order to
reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics either time does not exist or else it
is not fundamental in nature; see (Callender 2010) for a discussion of this. However,
most philosophers agree that time does exist. They just cannot agree on what it is.
We cannot trip over time, so what exactly is it? Is time human-made in analogy to how,
according to some constructivist philosophers, mathematical objects are created by
humans, and once created then they have well-determined properties some of which

might be difficult for humans to discover? Or is time a Platonic idea existing outside of
the physical world where it is independent of human activity? Or is time an emergent
feature of physical changes, in analogy to how a sound wave is an emergent feature of
the molecules of a vibrating tuning fork, with no single molecule making a sound? When
we know what time is, then we can answer all these questions.
One answer to our question, What is time? is that time is whatever the time
variable t is denoting in the best-confirmed and most fundamental theories of current
science. Time is given an implicit definition this way. Nearly all philosophers would
agree that we do learn much about physical time by looking at the behavior of the time
variable in these theories; but they complain that the full nature of physical time can be
revealed only with a philosophical theory of time that addresses the
many philosophical issues that scientists do not concern themselves with.
Lets briefly explore other answers that have been given throughout history to our
question, What is time?
Aristotle claimed that time is the measure of change (Physics, chapter 12). He never
said space is a measure of anything. Aristotle emphasized that time is not change
[itself] because a change may be faster or slower, but not time (Physics, chapter
10). For example, a specific change such as the descent of a leaf can be faster or slower,
but time itself cannot be faster or slower. In developing his views about time, Aristotle
advocated what is now referred to as the relational theory when he said, there is no
time apart from change. (Physics, chapter 11). In addition, Aristotle said time is not
discrete or atomistic but is continuous. In respect of size there is no minimum; for
every line is divided ad infinitum. Hence it is so with time (Physics, chapter 11).
Ren Descartes had a very different answer to What is time? He argued that a
material body has the property of spatial extension but no inherent capacity for
temporal endurance, and that God by his continual action sustains (or re-creates) the
body at each successive instant. Time is a kind of sustenance or re-creation ("Third
Meditation" in Meditations on First Philosophy).
In the 17th century, the English physicist Isaac Barrow rejected Aristotles linkage
between time and change. Barrow said time is something which exists independently of
motion or change and which existed even before God created the matter in the universe.
Barrows student, Isaac Newton, agreed with this substantival theory of time. Newton
argued very specifically that time and space are an infinitely large container for all
events, and that the container exists with or without the events. He added that space

and time are not material substances, but are like substances in not being dependent on
anything except God.
Gottfried Leibniz objected. He argued that time is not an entity existing independently
of actual events. He insisted that Newton had underemphasized the fact that time
necessarily involves anordering of events. This is why time needs events, so to speak.
Leibniz added that this overall order is time. He accepted a relational theory of time and
rejected a substantival theory.
In the 18th century, Immanuel Kant said time and space are forms that the mind
projects upon the external things-in-themselves. He spoke of our mind structuring our
perceptions so that space always has a Euclidean geometry, and time has the structure
of the mathematical line. Kants idea that time is a form of apprehending phenomena is
probably best taken as suggesting that we have no direct perception of time but only the
ability to experience things and events in time. Some historians distinguish perceptual
space from physical space and say that Kant was right about perceptual space. It is
difficult, though, to get a clear concept of perceptual space. If physical space and
perceptual space are the same thing, then Kant is claiming we know a priori that
physical space is Euclidean. With the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries in the 19th
century, and with increased doubt about the reliability of Kants method of
transcendental proof, the view that truths about space and time are a priori
truths began to lose favor.
In the early 20th century, Alfred North Whitehead said time is essentially the form of
becominga cryptic, but interesting philosophical claim.
By contrast, a physics book will say time is locally a linear continuum of
instants. Michael Dummetts model of time implies instead that time is a composition
of intervals rather than of instants. His model is controversial for a second reason. It is
constructive in the sense that it implies there do not exist any times which are not
detectable in principle by a physical process.
The above discussion does not exhaust all the claims about what time is. And there is no
sharp line separating a definition of time, a theory of time, and an explanation of time.

b. Time vs. Time

Whatever time is, it is not time. Time is the most common noun on the Internet;
time is not. Nevertheless, it might help us understand time if we improved our
understanding of the sense of the word time. Should the proper answer to the question

What is time? produce a definition of the word as a means of capturing its sense? No.
At least not if the definition must be some analysis that provides a simple paraphrase in
all its occurrences. There are just too many varied occurrences of the word: time out,
behind the times, in the nick of time, and so forth.
But how about narrowing the goal to a definition of the word time in its main sense,
the sense that most interests philosophers and physicists? That is, explore the usage of
the word time in its principal sense as a means of learning what time is. Well, this
project would require some consideration of the grammar of the word time. Most
philosophers today would agree with A. N. Prior who remarked that, there are genuine
metaphysical problems, but I think you have to talk about grammar at least a little bit in
order to solve most of them. However, do we learn enough about what time is when we
learn about the grammatical intricacies of the word? Ordinary-language philosophers
have studied time talk, what Wittgenstein called the language game of discourse
about time. Wittgensteins expectation is that by drawing attention to ordinary ways of
speaking we will be able to dissolve rather than answer our philosophical questions. But
most philosophers of time are unsatisfied with this approach; they want the questions
answered, not dissolved, although they are happy to have help from the ordinary
language philosopher in clearing up misconceptions that may be produced by the way
we use the word in our ordinary, non-technical discourse.
When chemists made their great breakthrough in understanding water by finding that it
is essentially H2O, this wasn't a discovery about the meaning of "water," but about what
water is. Don't we want something like this for time?

c. Linear and Circular Time

Is time more like a straight line or instead more like a circle? If your personal time were
circular, then eventually you would be reborn. With circular time, the future is also in
the past, and every event occurs before itself. If your time is like this, then the question
arises as to whether you would be born an infinite number of times or only once. The
argument that you'd be born only once appeals to Leibnizs Principle of the Identity
of Indiscernibles: each supposedly repeating state of the world would occur just once
because each state would not be discernible from the state that recurs, so counting the
recurrences wouldn't make sense. The way to support the idea of eternal recurrence or
repeated occurrence seems to be to presuppose a linear ordering in some "hyper" time
of all the cycles so that each cycle is discernible from its predecessor because it occurs at
a different hyper time.

During history (and long before Einstein made a distinction between proper time and
coordinate time), a variety of answers were given to the question of whether time is like
a line or, instead, closed like a circle. The concept of linear time first appeared in the
writings of the Hebrews and the Zoroastrian Iranians. The Roman writer Seneca also
advocated linear time. Plato and most other Greeks and Romans believed time to be
motion and believed cosmic motion was cyclical, but this was not envisioned as
requiring any detailed endless repetition such as the multiple rebirths of Socrates.
However, the Pythagoreans and some Stoic philosophers such as Chrysippus did
adopt this drastic position. Circular time was promoted in the Bible in Ecclesiastes 1:9:
"That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there
is nothing new under the sun." The idea was picked up again by Nietzsche in 1882.
Scholars do not agree on whether Nietzsche meant his idea of circular time to be taken
literally or merely for a moral lesson about how you should live your life if you knew that
you'd live it over and over.
Many Islamic and Christian theologians adopted the ancient idea that time is linear.
Nevertheless, it was not until 1602 that the concept of linear time was more clearly
formulatedby the English philosopher Francis Bacon. In 1687, Newton advocated
linear time when he represented time mathematically by using a continuous straight line
with points being analogous to instants of time. The concept of linear time was
promoted by Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Barrow, Newton, Leibniz, Locke and Kant.
Kant argued that it is a matter of necessity. In the early 19th century in Europe, the idea
of linear time had become dominant in both science and philosophy.
There are many other mathematically possible topologies for time. Time could be linear
or closed (circular). Linear time might have a beginning or have no beginning; it might
have an ending or no ending. There could be two disconnected time streams, in two
parallel worlds, and perhaps one would be linear and the other circular. There could be
branching time, in which time is like the letter "Y", and there could be a fusion time in
which two different time streams are separate for some period but then merge into one
stream. Time might be two dimensional instead of one dimensional. For all these
topologies, there could be discrete time or, instead, continuous time. That is, the microstructure of time's instants might be analogous to a sequence of integers or, instead,
analogous to a continuum of real numbers. For physicists, if time were discrete
or quantized, their favorite lower limit on a possible duration is the Planck
time of about 10-43 seconds.

d. Does Time Have a Beginning or End?

In ancient Greece, Plato and Aristotle agreed that the past is eternal. Aristotle claimed
that time had no beginning because, for any time, we always can imagine an earlier
time. The reliability of appealing to our imagination to tell us how things are eventually
waned, thanks in large part to the influence of Aquinas. In Medieval times, Aquinas'
contemporary St. Bonaventure said there was a first motion and thus a first time.
Martin Luther estimated the world to have begun in 4,000 B.C.E. Johannes Kepler
estimated it to have begun in 4,004 B.C.E. The Calvinist James Ussher calculated that
the world began on Friday, October 28, 4,004 B.C.E. Advances in the science of geology
eventually refuted all these small estimates, and advances in astronomy eventually
refuted the idea that the Earth and the universe were created at about the same time.
Isaac Newton believed future time is infinite and that, although God created the
material world some finite time ago, there was an infinite period of past time before
that.
Contemporary physicists generally agree that future time is infinite, but it is an open
question whether past time is finite or infinite. Many physicists believe that past time is
infinite, but many others believe instead that time began with the Big Bang about 13.8
billion years ago, that is, 13,800,000,000 years ago.
In the most well-accepted version of the Big Bang Theory in the field of astrophysics, at
the beginning of our Big Bang, our universe had an almost infinitesimal size and an
almost infinite temperature and gravitational field. Our universe has been expanding
and cooling ever since.
In the more popular version of the Big Bang theory, the Big Bang theory with inflation,
our universe once was an extremely tiny bit of explosively inflating material. About 1036
second later, this inflationary material underwent an accelerating expansion that
lasted for 10-30 seconds during which the universe expanded by a factor of 10 78. Once this
brief period of inflation ended, the volume of our universe was the size of an orange, and
the energy causing the inflation was transformed into a dense gas of expanding hot
radiation. This expansion has never stopped. But with expansion came cooling, and this
allowed individual material particles to condense and eventually much later to clump
into stars and galaxies. The mutual gravitational force of the universes matter and
energy decelerated the expansion, but seven billion years after our Big Bang, our
universes dark energy became especially influential and started to accelerate the

expansion again, despite the mutual gravitational force, although not at the explosive
rate of the initial inflation. This more recent inflation of the universe will continue
forever at an exponentially accelerating rate, as the remaining matter-energy becomes
more and more diluted.
The Big Bang Theory with or without inflation is challenged by other theories such as a
cyclic theory in which every trillion years the expansion changes to contraction until our
universe becomes infinitesimal, at which time there is a bounce or new Big Bang. The
cycles of Bang and Crunch continue forever, and they might or might not have existed
forever. For the details, see (Steinhardt 2012). A promising but as yet untested theory
called "eternal inflation" implies that our particular Big Bang is one among many other
Big Bangs that occurred within a background spacetime that is actually infinite in space
and in past time and future time.
Consider this challenging argument from (Newton-Smith 1980, p. 111) that claims time
cannot have had a finite past: As we have reasons for supposing that macroscopic
events have causal origins, we have reason to suppose that some prior state of the
universe led to the product of [the Big Bang]. So the prospects for ever being warranted
in positing a beginning of time are dim. The usual response to Newton-Smith here is
two-fold. First, our Big Bang is a microscopic event, not a macroscopic event, so it might
not be relevant that macroscopic events have causal origins. Second, and more
importantly, if a confirmed cosmological theory implies there is a first event, we can say
this event is an exception to any metaphysical principle that every event has a prior
cause.

e. Does Time Emerge from Something More Basic?

Is time a fundamental feature of nature, or does it emerge from more basic timeless
featuresin analogy to the way the smoothness of water flow emerges from the
complicated behavior of the underlying molecules, none of which is properly called
"smooth"? That is, is time ontologically basic (fundamental), or does it depend on
something even more basic?
We might rephrase this question more technically by asking whether facts about time
supervene on more basic facts. Facts about sound in the air supervene on, or are a
product of, facts about changes in the molecules of the air, so molecular change is more
basic than sound. Minkowski argued in 1908 that we should believe spacetime is more
basic than time, and this argument is generally well accepted. However, is this

spacetime itself basic? Some physicists argue that spacetime is the product of some
more basic micro-substrate at the level of the Planck length, although there is no
agreed-upon theory of what the substrate is, although a leading candidate is quantum
information.
Other physicists say space is not basic, but time is. In 2004, after winning the Nobel
Prize in physics, David Gross expressed this viewpoint:
Everyone in string theory is convincedthat spacetime is doomed. But we
dont know what its replaced by. We have an enormous amount of evidence
that space is doomed. We even have examples, mathematically well-defined
examples, where space is an emergent concept. But in my opinion the
tough problem that has not yet been faced up to at all is, How do we
imagine a dynamical theory of physics in which time is emergent? All the
examples we have do nothave an emergent time. They have emergent space
but not time. It is very hard for me to imagine a formulation of physics
without time as a primary concept because physics is typically thought of as
predicting the future given the past. We have unitary time evolution. How
could we have a theory of physics where we start with something in which
time is never mentioned?
The discussion in this section about whether time is ontologically basic has no
implications for whether the word time is semantically basic or whether the idea of
time is basic to concept formation.

f. Time and Conventionality

It is an arbitrary convention that our civilization designs clocks to count up to higher
numbers rather than down to lower numbers as time goes on. It is just a matter of
convenience that we agree to the convention of re-setting our clock by one hour as we
cross a time-zone. It is an arbitrary convention that there are twenty-four hours in a day
instead of ten, that there are sixty seconds in a minute rather than twelve, that a second
lasts as long as it does, and that the origin of our coordinate system for time is
associated with the birth of Jesus on some calendars but the entry of Mohammed into
Mecca on other calendars.
According to relativity theory, if two events couldn't have had a causal effect on each
other, then we analysts are free to choose a reference frame in which one of the events
happens first, or instead the other event happens first, or instead the two events are

simultaneous. But once a frame is chosen, this fixes the time order of any pair of events.
This point is discussed further in the next section.
In 1905, the French physicist Henri Poincar argued that time is not a feature of reality
to be discovered, but rather is something we've invented for our convenience. He said
possible empirical tests cannot determine very much about time, so he recommended
the convention of adopting the concept of time that makes for the simplest laws of
physics. Opposing this conventionalist picture of time, other philosophers of science
have recommended a less idealistic view in which time is an objective feature of reality.
These philosophers are recommending an objectivist picture of time.
Turning now from the question of whether time is objective, let's consider whether the
the measure of time is objective. Can our standard clock be inaccurate? Yes, say the
objectivists about the standard clock. No, say the conventionalists who say that the
standard clock is accurate by convention; if it acts strangely, then all clocks must act
strangely in order to stay in synchrony with the standard clock that tells everyone the
correct time. A closely related question is whether, when we change our standard clock,
from being the Earth's rotation to being an atomic clock, or just our standard from one
kind of atomic clock to another kind of atomic clock, are we merely adopting
constitutive conventions for our convenience, or in some objective sense are we making
a more correct choice?
Consider how we use a clock to measure duration to measure how long an event lasts.
We always use the following metric, that is, method: Take the time of the instant at
which the event ends, and subtract the time of the instant when the event starts. For
example, to find how long an event lasts that starts at 3:00 and ends at 5:00, we subtract
and get the answer of two hours. Is the use of this method merely a convention, or in
some objective sense is it the only way that a clock should be used? That is, is there an
objective metric, or is time "metrically amorphous," because there are alternatively
acceptable metrics?
There is also an ongoing dispute about the extent to which there is an element of
conventionality in Einsteins notion of two separated events happening at the same
time. Einstein said that to define simultaneity in a single reference frame you must
adopt a convention about how fast light travels going one way as opposed to coming
back (or going any other direction). He recommended adopting the convention that light
travels the same speed in all directions (in a vacuum free of the influence of gravity). He

claimed it must be a convention because there is no way to measure whether the speed
is really the same in opposite directions since any measurement of the two speeds
between two locations requires first having synchronized clocks at those two locations,
yet the synchronization process will presuppose whether the speed is the same in both
directions. The philosophers B. Ellis and P. Bowman in 1967 and D. Malament in 1977
gave different reasons why Einstein is mistaken. For an introduction to this dispute, see
the Frequently Asked Questions. For more discussion, see (Callender and Hoefer
2002).

4. What Does Science Require of Time?

This article has already said quite a bit about what science requires of time, but in this
section we recollect some of those points and add a few more.
Physics, including astronomy, is the only science that explicitly studies time, although
all sciences use the concept. Yet different physical theories place different demands on
this concept.
At the beginning of the 20 th century, the appearance of both the general theory of
relativity and the Big Bang theory transformed the investigation of whether time is finite
or infinite from a primarily speculative and metaphysical investigation into one that
occupied scientists in their professional journals.
The Big Bang theory of cosmology places demands on the amount of past time. In 1611,
Irish Bishop James Ussher declared that the implication of his reading of the Bible
reveals that the beginning of time occurred on October 23, 4004 B.C.E. Today's science
disagrees; it implies that our universe is at least as old as the beginning of the Big Bang,
which was about 13.8 billion years ago. Other astronomical observations suggest the
amount of future time is not finite but very probably a potential infinity (in Aristotle's
sense of the term) as opposed to an actual infinity.
Physical theories treat time as being another dimension, analogous to a spatial
dimension, and they describe an event as being located at temporal coordinate t, where t
is a real number rather than a rational number. Each specific temporal coordinate is
called a "time." An instantaneous event is a moment and is located at just one time, or
one temporal coordinate, say t1. It is said to last for an "instant." If the event is also a socalled "point event," then it is located at a single point location, say <x1, y1, z1>.
The fundamental laws of science do not pick out a present time. This fact is often
surprising to a student who takes a science class and notices all sorts of talk about the

present. Scientists frequently do apply some law of science while assigning, say, t 0 to be
the name of the present moment, then calculate this or that. This insertion of the fact
that t0 is the present is an initial condition of the situation to which the law is being
applied, and is not part of the law itself. The basic laws themselves treat all moments
equally.
Science does not require that all its theories have symmetry under time-translation, but
this is a goal that physicists do pursue. If a theory has symmetry under time-translation,
then the laws of the theories do not change. The law of gravitation in the 21 st century is
the same law that held one thousand centuries ago.
Physics also requires that almost all the basic laws of science be time symmetric. This
means that a law, if it is a basic law, must not distinguish between backward and
forward time directions. The second law of thermodynamics is therefore not considered
to be a basic law.
Science also places requirements on the structure of time. For instance, in physics we
need to speak of one event happening pi seconds after another, and of one event
happening the square root of three seconds after another. In ordinary discourse outside
of science we would never need this kind of precision. The need for this precision has led
to requiring time to be a linear continuum, very much like a segment of the real
number line. So, one requirement that relativity, quantum mechanics and the Big Bang
theory place on any duration is that it be a continuum. This implies that time is not
quantized, even in quantum mechanics. In a world with time being a continuum, we
cannot speak of some event being caused by the state of the world at the immediately
preceding instant because there is no immediately preceding instant, just as there is no
real number immediately preceding pi.

Einstein's theory of relativity has had the biggest

impact on our understanding of time. He said time is relative, meaning it is relative to

the chosen reference frame or the chosen coordinate system. Galileo and Newton both
would have said speed is relative to reference frame. Einstein would agree but would
add that both the durations of events and the times when they occur are relative to the
chosen reference frame.
For example, any observer fixed to a moving railroad car in which you happen to be
seated will say your speed is zero [in their reference frame in which the car has zero
speed], whereas an observer fixed to the train station will say you have a positive speed.
But as Galileo and Newton understood relativity, both observers will agree about the
time you had lunch on the train. Einstein would say they are making a mistake about
your lunchtime; they should disagree about when you had lunch.
For Newton, the speed of anything, including light, would be different in the two frames
that move relative to each other [say, one frame is fixed to the train and one frame is
fixed to the train station], but Einstein disagreed and said Maxwells equations require
the speed of light to be invariant in all frames. This implies that Newton's so-called
"Galilean equations of motion" are incorrect. Einstein, in his special theory of relativity,
figured out how to change the equations; the consequence is the Lorentz
transformations in which two observers in relative motion will have to disagree also
about the durations and occurrence times of events.
What is happening here is that Einstein is requiring a mixing of space and time;
Minkowski said it follows that there is a spacetime which is more fundamental than
either time or space alone, and spacetime divides into its space part and time part

differently for different observers, that is, different reference frames or different
coordinate systems. So, time is relative in the sense that the duration of an event
depends on the reference frame used in measuring the duration. Specifying that an
event lasted three minutes without giving even an implicit indication of the reference
frame is like asking someone to stand over there and not giving any indication of where
there is.
One implication of this is that it becomes more difficult to defend McTaggart's Atheory which says that properties of events such as "happened twenty-three minutes
ago" and "is happening now" are basic properties of events and are not properties
relative to chosen reference frames.
Another profound implication of relativity theory is that accurate clocks do not tick the
same for everyone everywhere. Each object has its own proper time, and so the correct
time shown by a clock depends on its history (in particular, its history of speed and
gravitational influence). Relative to clocks that are stationary in the reference frame,
clocks in motion in the frame run slower, as do clocks in stronger gravitational fields. In
general, two synchronized clocks do not stay synchronized if they move relative to each
other or undergo different gravitational forces. Clocks in cars driving by your apartment
building run slower than your apartments clock.
Suppose there are two twins. One stays on Earth while the other twin zooms away in a
spaceship and returns ten years later according to the spaceships clock. That same
arrival event could be twenty years later according to an Earth-based clock, provided the
spaceship went fast enough. The Earth twin would now be ten years older than the
spaceship twin.
According to relativity theory, the order of events in time is only a partial order because
for any event e, there is an event f such that e need not occur before or after f, nor
simultaneous with f. These pairs of events are said to be in each others absolute
elsewhere, which is another way of saying that neither could causally affect each other
because even a light signal could not reach from one event to the other. Adding a
coordinate system or reference frame to spacetime will force the events in all these pairs
to have an order and so force the set of all events to be totally ordered in time, but what
is interesting philosophically is that there is a leeway in the choice of the frame. For any
two specific events e and f that could never causally affect each other, the analyst may
choose a frame in which e occurs first, or choose another frame in which f occurs first, or

instead choose another frame in which they are simultaneous. Any choice of frame will
be correct. Such is the surprising nature of time according to relativity theory.
General relativity places other requirements on events beyond the requirements of
special relativity. Unlike in Newton's physics and the physics of special relativity,
according to general relativity our spacetime is dynamic in the sense that any change in
the amount and distribution of matter-energy will change the curvature of spacetime
itself. Gravity is a manifestation of the warping of spacetime. In special relativity, its
Minkowski spacetime has no curvature. In general relativity a spacetime with no mass
or energy might or might not have curvature, so the geometry of spacetime is not always
determined by the behavior of matter and energy. This point has been interpreted by
many philosophers as a good reason to reject relationism.