Comment Re:If you really wanted to be a purist… (Score 1) 916
Hmm, interesting viewpoint, but I think a bit naive.
Just because you can't "SEE" time, doesn't mean it is any less measurable than, say, lenght, or more generally, distance.
First: I don't know what "distance" is, distance is meaningless on itself. I know all objects are supposed to have distance between them, but I can only percieve this because of the effect of distance: The objects appear to be separated: without the objects (which can be points) there is no distance.
We can see that two objects have distance between them, yet we can also see the effects of time on those objects.
But we can only "measure" distance between two objects by comparing it to other objects (for those using the metric system, the standard meter). That sounds pretty indirect to me. We don't have a "universal" measure of lenght. Why is comparing elapsed time to a second so different from that?
Second, you say "Just by saying we can measure something doesn't actually mean that we can"
A quality of an object is measurable if and only if we can quantify it, that is, we can meaningfully attibute a mathematical structure to it.
For example, "lenght" is measurable because we can attibute a number to it, "symmetry" is measurable because we can attribute a group to it, a quantummechanical particle is measurable because we can attribute a wavefunction to it.
We seem to have no trouble quantifying time, hence it must be measurable. "love" is a different thing altoghether, though it is not impossible that one day we can quantify it in a meaningful sense.
Third: Time is a changing thing, it is dependent on (relative) speed of and gravitational field around the observer. It's called a frame of reference. But people in the same frame of reference will observe the same "time". It is however the same story with distance.
Just because you can't "SEE" time, doesn't mean it is any less measurable than, say, lenght, or more generally, distance.
First: I don't know what "distance" is, distance is meaningless on itself. I know all objects are supposed to have distance between them, but I can only percieve this because of the effect of distance: The objects appear to be separated: without the objects (which can be points) there is no distance.
We can see that two objects have distance between them, yet we can also see the effects of time on those objects.
But we can only "measure" distance between two objects by comparing it to other objects (for those using the metric system, the standard meter). That sounds pretty indirect to me. We don't have a "universal" measure of lenght. Why is comparing elapsed time to a second so different from that?
Second, you say "Just by saying we can measure something doesn't actually mean that we can"
A quality of an object is measurable if and only if we can quantify it, that is, we can meaningfully attibute a mathematical structure to it.
For example, "lenght" is measurable because we can attibute a number to it, "symmetry" is measurable because we can attribute a group to it, a quantummechanical particle is measurable because we can attribute a wavefunction to it.
We seem to have no trouble quantifying time, hence it must be measurable. "love" is a different thing altoghether, though it is not impossible that one day we can quantify it in a meaningful sense.
Third: Time is a changing thing, it is dependent on (relative) speed of and gravitational field around the observer. It's called a frame of reference. But people in the same frame of reference will observe the same "time". It is however the same story with distance.
