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Suppose you have nothing, but only a thing X which doesn't change at all, is there time? How would you say how many seconds/units of time have passed when there is only the thing X i.e. static too, and not any reference (like speed of light is constant/cesium atom) or any universal clock or absolute time-line. So would time be fundamental in such a scenario, or rather time doesn't seem to make sense without any sort of change then, or does it make sense without any change at all?

Siddharth Chakravarty
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    The concept of time wouldn't make sense in such a situation as there is nothing that changes. However either the object is an observer or has an observer and the interplay of subject and object can make time and space become useful categories again. – haxor789 Jul 04 '23 at 12:26
  • For something to exist, it must exist in someone's mind. You are formulating an scenario where there's only an object, and no subject. Then, there is no observer. Then, there is no observed. Such is an impossible scenario, you are speculating about something that is not perceived. Even more, you are trying to speculate about the scenario, the spacetime when/where such object... can't exist. – RodolfoAP Jul 04 '23 at 16:50
  • @RodolfoAP Your statement, "For something to exist, it must exist in someone's mind," goes towards idealism. However, a realism point of view might challenge it. – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 04 '23 at 17:25
  • @SiddharthChakravarty without an observer (realism: time would exist without any perceiver), the system is sustained by a circular logic. A "realist" clock would provide a "realist" time that would be such thing only in virtue of such very clock. – RodolfoAP Jul 04 '23 at 18:06
  • @RodolfoAP so that would just imply that time is 'how much change occurs in that clock', without the existence of such a clock, time ceases to exist, which shows that time doesn't exist in every scenario, that is what the question asks in a way... – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 04 '23 at 18:19
  • Following your Parmenidian God-like X thought experiment, change or more accurately speaking difference could indeed be said to *precede* time in a non-trivial, non-empty, subtle and hidden sense as opposed to the long held Kantian time as the fundamental deepest and purest perceptual form belonging and pointing to the sensations if you try to philosophize beyond the sensuous, where ironically even the word "precede" itself is not felicitous there which already implies the total linear order of time colloquially if not metaphysically... – Double Knot Jul 16 '23 at 00:25
  • Static means static *in time* for philosophers like Maudlin. "time is change" is a belief of other philosophers/physicists like Julian Barbour. Pick your poison. – J Kusin Jul 17 '23 at 22:12
  • @JKusin what is the definition of time then, for philosophers like Maudlin. – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 18 '23 at 13:58
  • @SiddharthChakravarty Time has an inherent and objective direction and flow for him, and isn’t just another dimension like space. – J Kusin Jul 18 '23 at 14:18
  • @JKusin if it is flowing, or basically changing, then it is itself its reference of change. (mostly people visualize this as a time line, (just like a real number line), where a point on the line (which indicates the present) is changing) – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 18 '23 at 14:23
  • @SiddharthChakravarty not sure he’d disagree with any of that. One of his projects is to develop a geometry which has inbuilt directionality. – J Kusin Jul 18 '23 at 14:31
  • You say that without the existence of a clock, time ceases to exist. That is like saying that without rulers, space ceases to exist, or without scales, mass ceases to exist, or without accelerometers, acceleration ceases to exist, which is nonsense. – Marco Ocram Jul 18 '23 at 16:11
  • @MarcoOcram I didn't just say 'without clocks', the meaning I'm trying to convey is of a reference, for example, the reference of an accelerometer could be defined as pointing out to some object which *already has an acceleration* and then comparing the acceleration of other bodies with respect to it. But suppose *nothing has acceleration* then the concept of acceleration won't even make sense. – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 18 '23 at 17:16
  • But how can you define 'unchanging' without reference to time? Unchanging means that the attributes of a thing at one moment are the same as they are at another. Unchanging in the sense you intended means unchanging with respect to time (imagine those last three words in italics!). – Marco Ocram Jul 18 '23 at 21:35
  • @MarcoOcram does even a moment here make sense, how would you define a moment here then? For example, suppose I see a ball in a room which has no change, yet I could talk about moments or basically time, because I can have some reference, and then a measuring device like clock to talk about moments in such a scenairo. But read the starting of this question, "Suppose you have nothing, but only a thing X..." that means you don't have anything as a reference. – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 19 '23 at 08:59
  • I made the exact, same biblical blunder. Welcome, good ta have ya in the team, mon ami. – Agent Smith Jul 19 '23 at 11:01
  • @SiddharthChakravarty you are continuing to confuse an inability to measure a property with the non-existence of the property- the latter does not follow from the former. – Marco Ocram Jul 19 '23 at 16:04
  • @MarcoOcram you are not getting the whole argument, it is about a reference which has the property, or the property itself (something like a time-line) and not about the measuring device, I already told you that in my previous reply, that the existence of a measuring device is not necessary for the existence of the property – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 19 '23 at 17:30
  • @SiddharthChakravarty When I get the chance, I will update my answer to address your points. – Marco Ocram Jul 19 '23 at 18:25

3 Answers3

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How could you know? Serious question.

We think the universe began as 'one thing', a singularity or very close to one, at a quantum scale. So in a very real sense, all being and time are happening to 'one thing'.

And just like you can get particle-antiparticle pairs from 'empty' space, we think all particles had an antiparticle in their past in order to balance the quantum 'budget', but the antiparticles decayed or were consumed by a CPT-violating process. That is matter, any matter, is involved in a long story that relates it to the whole universe (Conformal Cyclic Cosmology relates this to all matter decaying to photons, which don't experience time because of lightspeed). Even once created, properties like angular momentum are related to the universe's rest frame.

Quantum properties are really properties of systems isolated from the environment, over some time scale. When there is no way for the universe to keep track of them, their conjugated variables like position and momentum become uncertain (mass-energy will be having gravitational effects, putting a constraint on that).

I'd suggest the only possible isolated 'thing' wouod have such massive uncertainty it could be anything:

'In the begin there was nothing, which had no way to tell what was there, so it exploded'.

CriglCragl
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The answer to this question does not come under mere physics. Since change happens while thinking, I wouldn’t like to use even the term ‘get an answer’. In this case I would like to use the term ‘reveal the answer’. If you believe or not, that there is nothing else anywhere, time [as we feel (also in any form) by comparing changes] can’t exist. The one without a second or the Ultimate truth or Pure Consciousness or Brahman is that only thing. We feel that everything else is made of tiniest particles and is always changing.

SonOfThought
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  • I am not sure exactly I get what you mean, could you please be more clear, in the past, I tried watching a lot of resources to discover or realize Brahman, but all of them somewhere had a lot of questions unanswered. – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 18 '23 at 14:25
  • @SiddharthChakravarty: You will certainly have heard the Mahavakya ‘Aham Brahmasmi’. This implies the real nature of oneself is Brahman (the One without a second). And the realization is not from outside. – SonOfThought Jul 19 '23 at 01:42
  • what I'm asking is how does one prove, or rather justify that there is Brahman. – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 19 '23 at 09:00
  • @SiddharthChakravarty: You can check the terms - 'the one without a second', 'pure', 'consciousness', 'proof' and think about who and how we can synchronise these terms and get proof like we get from experiments or analysis or other methods. In other words, 'Is it possible to get a proof like other proofs?' Or you can ask yourself this question: "Is a proof of something without a second the same as a regular proof?" – SonOfThought Jul 21 '23 at 13:17
  • can you just me a clear answer, how did you prove or realize Brahman? – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 22 '23 at 20:09
  • @SiddharthChakravarty: Since your main question is not about realization, I didn’t say anything about my realization in my answer. Now I don't care about it. If you wish to listen to it from a great Guru, you may refer to this link: https://www.sriramanamaharshi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/who_am_I.pdf – SonOfThought Jul 25 '23 at 12:44
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According to modern physics, every object in the Universe exists in a 4d volume we call spacetime. Your hypothetical unchanging 'thing' would, assuming it is part of the Universe, follow a trajectory in spacetime as much as any other object would. From moment to moment the object itself might be unchanged but its position in spacetime would not be. Time would be unmeasurable without change, but it would be mistake to conclude there is 'no time' simply because you cannot measure it.

You say in your comments that the question 'isn't just restricted under the modern physics view.' If you are ignoring physics then you are entering the realm of imagination, and therefore you can imagine the object in any other universe with any other properties you care to give to it. For example, you might imagine a universe with only two spatial dimensions. You can try to imagine a universe with or without time, but I put it to you that it is the properties of the imaginary universe that determine whether time exists, not the properties of an object within that universe, since we know that in our universe time exists regardless of whether the objects we contemplate are unchanging.

However, I also suggest that it is not possible to maintain a meaningful concept of a universe without time, for when you say that an object exists or is unchanging you are inevitably confronted by temporal considerations. If I ask you to define what you mean by 'exists' you will eventually have to recognise that the word implies an aspect of persistence, which unavoidably relies on a concept of time. Likewise if I push you to explain what you mean by 'unchanging', you will eventually have to use phrases such as 'never changes' or 'is always the same' which again invoke the idea of time.

Marco Ocram
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  • The answer provided is correct in the context of modern physics and the concept of spacetime. However, given what the question is, you can deduce that the question suggests to not go with such an assumption of the thing existing in such a universe based on the model of modern physics. – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 04 '23 at 12:23
  • However, looking at the contrast between the question and this answer, time would then not be fundamental or rather existing in every scenario, and only exist or be emergent in certain scenarios only. – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 04 '23 at 12:28
  • @SiddharthChakravarty in that case the question is a fairytale and can have any answer you like. – Marco Ocram Jul 04 '23 at 12:36
  • how does it necessarily become a fairytale? The conditions are well-specified... someone talking about relative time during Newton's era would sound fairytale too then I guess. – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 04 '23 at 12:39
  • The only time we know about is the time in our Universe, which is one of four fundamental dimensions. To measure time, one needs some phenomenon with a period, but the existence of time is not dependent on the availability of devices to measure it any more than space is dependent on the existence of rulers. – Marco Ocram Jul 04 '23 at 12:40
  • If you are positing the existence of a hypothetical object outside of our Universe, then you have no idea whether time, as we know it, plays any role. Either you confine your considerations to what we know about spacetime, or you disregard it and all bets are off. – Marco Ocram Jul 04 '23 at 12:42
  • I never said it is dependent on the devices to measure it, my question implicitly states that time is then dependent on change, without change or some 'phenomenon', time won't exist. – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 04 '23 at 12:43
  • @Macro Ocram if you want to look at it from a 'practical view' then looking at scenarios, where time doesn't exist or doesn't make sense, might help us better understand what time is then exactly, or how one should make sense of it. – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 04 '23 at 12:46
  • But you are not entitled to claim that. In our Universe time is not dependent on change. Measuring time is dependent on it, but time isn't. So if that is the case in this Universe you clearly cannot claim it is necessarily not the case elsewhere. You can imagine the existence of some other region without time, but your conjecture is just that- imaginary- and you could equally imagine a region without change but with time. – Marco Ocram Jul 04 '23 at 12:46
  • @Macro Ocram, how exactly are you defining 'time' then, if one keeps on changing its definitions, or has no proper definition, then the discussion is futile. "...you could equally imagine a region without change, but with time" but how exactly, would you have like a reference there, or some absolute time-line, then yes it is possible, but then that reference or time-line has change going on. – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 04 '23 at 12:49
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    You might find it helpful (I do) when considering questions about time to bear in mind the analogy with space. If you imagine an isolated unchanging particle, does space exist? You have no way of measuring space in that scenario, but does that mean space does not exist? – Marco Ocram Jul 04 '23 at 12:49
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/147035/discussion-between-siddharth-chakravarty-and-marco-ocram). – Siddharth Chakravarty Jul 04 '23 at 12:56