The thing with time is we must constantly be aware that there are two substances time has for a human being. The first is the subjective time, the perception of time’s action upon us, the second is the objective time which exists as a physical truth. That is why it is so hard to talk about time without hitting mind boggling paradoxes.
If there was no Time then everything would be frozen in place, so to speak, as there would be no change.
Objective time is the time embedded in the fabric of the universe, not the ordering we record of when states “happen”. For this reason, a time-line without time is merely just a change-line, but it does exist on its own. It can go either way, having no arrow at either end. Change does not depend on direction.
Change does not create events. Change creates states. There exists change with constant entropy, change with lower entropy and change with higher entropy.
It is time who makes it so that, without intervention, all successive states have bigger entropy. It is time who makes change irreversible, but change is not intrinsically irreversible. Because time has an arrow and it will not rewind on its own, states become “events”, things that happen bound to slide in the past.
Time is an agent of change in a very specific direction. Life is another agent of change in the opposite direction.
How does motion exist without time? Does a photon move? If you ask a photon it might not agree with you as you know it moves but for it time does not work. Yet it is moving through space. Suppose the photon had awareness it would subjectively know it moves because you told him. If we somehow got to a timeless dimension there is nothing to stop us from imagining subjective time and therefore motion itself.
Time is just the time aspect that might be looked on as being relative to your position in Space.
In this view, time is a mere measurement. However that is exactly what Einstein achieved with his thinking: elevate time from a simple record keeping measurement to a mysterious presence deep in the workings of the universe.
Time is not the same thing with occurring change. Time is an active part of the universe which makes space behave a certain way, which makes energy transform spontaneously and so on. We interact with time by observing its effects and because of that it has infused many aspects: motion, speed, acceleration but in reality these concepts measure change, a series of states. I will not dive into disassembling each of these, but limit at saying we could use a new unit of measure other than second.
Time cannot be a dimension as such, because it would have to be at least 3D.
A point is dimensionless, contains nothing but a point. A line is all points, having one dimension containing points. A plane is all the lines, having two dimensions, one containing points and one containing lines. A space has all the planes, having three dimensions, all the points, all the lines and all the planes. A time has all the spaces? Having four dimensions is has all the points, all the lines, all the planes and all the spaces. Basically as you can see higher dimensions are wrapping all the possible states of the lower dimensions. But what is baffling is what does “all the spaces” mean?
The thing is, intuitively, there are not more “spaces”. Contrary to points, lines and planes who have physical correspondence (even points, as all base particles are dimensionless), “spaces” is not something we can experience. Space really is the final frontier. Therefore in order for time to contain more than one space it must first find these other “spaces”. It does so by creatingstates of space. Each space at a certain moment of time is another space.
Therefore a time IS a dimension, made by all the states a space is in.
As funny as it may be talking about them in movies and in books, there is no time travel paradox because there is also a fifth dimension contain all times. Therefore, it is my opinion that one can travel back in time but one cannot change the present. A specific set of states work towards this present. Once you go back in time and change something a new timeline is born.
The only way to really mess around with things for one “human being” is only by accessing the fifth dimension which contains all possible timelines, which contain all possible states of the entire space containing all planes and lines and points. Such a computation is very hard to say the least.
Thus Time indeed causes Entropy, but it also seems to cause Evolution for the same reason.
Words acquire multiple meanings from analogy. Analogy uses context to create a new facet of a concept. Words are precious diamonds and analogy is the jeweler faceting them. Therefore when discussing fundamental concepts one must take great care to set the proper context. Evolution has many meanings, in our case how things change in time, how things move through stages, how goals get closer, how improvement occurs and many other things.
We must fixate the term of evolution and make sure we are always looking at the same facet. The one we are interested in is evolution as a tool life devised to perfect its work of both lowering entropy and keeping it constant.
In this aspect evolution does not require time. Evolution can exist without time. Aging will also exist, but oldness and decay will be optional.
One should not see time as the generator of event sequences. Time is a probability function. It works in the deep fabric of the universe which we call space-time to generate entropy. Because we are so used to having a succession of events we mistake time itself for the concept of timeline. A timeline is one of many ways to order things. Sometimes these things are events. Other time they could be anything else. For example, I could place on a timeline oranges, children, stars and books ordering them by some time factor like age.
It is Time which is thus the Force of Aging, inherent in the structure of the Universe and it is Aging that causes Evolution
Aging is an effect of the arrow of time, because “aging” of both animate and inanimate matter is caused by order breaking apart because of time’s work. As I explained above evolution has one meaning of “progress” and “succession” of states, and if we consider this meaning then it is true that passing time results in evolution.
But you must think outside of the concept of time, în order to really grasp it. Biological evolution is not progress. Evolution is not a successive iteration of states, simply because it is not orderly! Biological evolution has millions of branches and all branches contribute back and forward to new unrelated iterations. You cannot arrange the whole biosphere on a timeline of evolution without multiple branching timelines. You can arrange one species or one individual in a species on one timeline. That is the awe of species: diversity. Therefore, aging does not cause biological evolution.
The existence of life causes the appearance of the process of biological evolution as a means of life adjusting itself.
To grasp the difference between aging and evolution think of an old man. If you put a teenager next to an old geezer you will know which one is of a bigger age. But if you put a crocodile next to a human will you just know which one is more “evolved”? One species is a lot older than the other, yet the evolution level of one species is orders of magnitude bigger than the others.
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