Austin College, TX, is hosting a symposium on the nature of time. A list of speakers consisting of physicists and philosophers will be discussing about the nature of time, and if time is nothing more than an illusion or a human invention.
Maybe I'm just not smart enough, or I'm too simplistic in my view, or maybe I'm just a too-pragmatic experimentalist, but I really am puzzled with the constant issue on why time could be not real, or an "illusion". Whenever someone tells me this thing, my question back at him/her has always been "OK, show me how you could describe the complete dynamics of a system without using time". Of course, he/she can't, and it is impossible to do that with the physics that we have right now. So already, time is an essential ingredients in describing our world. Is this the property of something that isn't "real" or an "illusion"? Do you use an illusion as a NECESSARY INGREDIENT in describing ALL of the physical phenomena? I don't think so.
But here's another common argument being put forth : time is relative and isn't absolute, via Special Relativity. My response would be, so is LENGTH, which means that space (which is highly "attached" to time in Special Relativity) is also relative and can change. So how come no one is having a symposium to discuss that space is "not real" and is an "illusion"? Why pick on poor old time only? [pun indented.]
Of course, the experimentalist side of me would say that, unless they have something substantial that we can test, such an exercise is nothing more than (oh, you've gotta see this one coming from a mile away) a waste of time!
:)
Zz.
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