Talk:Time/Archive 7

First sentence compromise idea
A thought just occurred to me. Our first sentence currently reads:

Time is the continuing sequence of events occurring in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future, and a measure of the durations of those events, the intervals between them, and the rates of changes occurring in them.

This can be broken up into a conjunction of two claims:

Time is the continuing sequence of events occurring in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.

and

Time is a measure of the durations of those events, the intervals between them, and the rates of changes occurring in them.

I wonder if some people here who are more partial to the old "Time is part of a measurement system" first sentence might like the current first sentence better if those two claims were reversed (no change of content, just presentation), something like:

Time is a measure of the durations of events, the intervals between them, and the rates of changes occurring in them; and the continuing sequence of them in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.

That last part seems long and awkward to me though and if we're going back to "sequence" I think "continuing" loses its value (of clarifying the meaning of "progression"), so I might trim it down to something like:

Time is a measure of the durations of events, the intervals between them, the rates of changes occurring in them; and the apparently irreversible succession of them from the past through the present to the future.

On a slightly different note, I wonder if anyone would object to changing "rates of changes occurring in them" to "frequency of them", since every change is an event in itself and so a rate of change can be stated as a frequency of events (both have the same form of units, something-per-time). If that was OK, I would simplify further to:

Time is a measure of the durations and frequencies of events and the intervals between them; and the apparently irreversible succession of them from the past through the present to the future.

Thoughts? --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:32, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I like what you have here Phforrest, and I will be glad to try to select later. Good job! Steve Quinn (talk) 04:30, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks Steve. Since I haven't heard any further comment from anyone on either this or my earlier suggestions (in re Tigo's "Secondary" concerns) in a few days, I've gone ahead and implemented them. I welcome criticism and suggestions on these edits; I believe they are mostly organizational and don't change any substantial claims, but everyone please say so if you think otherwise (or dislike this reorganization).
 * Steve, one thing you may be able to help with: the references on the first sentence seem an odd jumble of individual references and two strange amalgamated references named DefRefs01 and DefRefs02. It seems like if things are going to be amalgamated they should all be amalgamated together into one set of dictionary definitions, otherwise they should all be split up, but I don't know much about the technicalities of writing inline citations on wiki. That seems like it's more your forte though, can you maybe help sort that out? --Pfhorrest (talk) 00:01, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Below, I like these two the best -- I they are a decent compromise. And I find myself liking the second one the best out of the two:
 * Time is a measure of the durations of events, the intervals between them, the rates of changes occurring in them; and the apparently irreversible succession of them from the past through the present to the future.
 * Time is a measure of the durations and frequencies of events and the intervals between them; and the apparently irreversible succession of them from the past through the present to the future.
 * Am I correct in assuming that "frequencies" and "rates of change occurring in them" are considered interchangeable? Pertaining to the refs -- I will have a look but JimWae may understand the reasons for the configuration of these particular references better than I. Perhaps he will have a look and see what needs to be remedied. Also, I think it will be easier now that we seem to be settling down. Steve Quinn (talk) 04:37, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

<!-- No. Sorry, but this brings us right back where we were several months ago, to the assertion that time "is" the measurement, not that which is measured. It favors one of the two views given in the sources, the view that time has no reality other than the act of measurement. But this entire discussion has been about including the view that time is not the measurement itself, but the thing being measurement, and there are major sources that agree with that view. Would we say that length is a measurement, or that mass is a measurement? I'll wait a little for comments before attempting a rewrite, but the sources do not all agree with the assertion that time is a measurement. Rick Norwood (talk) 11:23, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Borrowing Steve Quinn's list above, and sorting it as to whether time is a measurement or a thing being measured:

Time is a measurement:


 * A number, as of years, days, or minutes, representing such an interval: ran the course in a time just under four minutes.
 * A system by which such intervals are measured or such numbers are reckoned: solar time
 * a point of time as measured in hours and minutes

Time is a thing being measured, e.g. a continuum, a process, something measured (as distinct from the measurement itself), progress, duration, a period, an interval:


 * An interval separating two points on [a] continuum;
 * A similar number representing a specific point on this continuum, reckoned in hours and minutes:checked her watch and recorded the time, 6:17 AM.
 * the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues : duration"
 * a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future.
 * the indefinite continued progress of existence
 * indefinite, unlimited duration in which things are considered as happening in the past, present, or future; every moment there has ever been or ever will be
 * A duration: (a long time since the last war; passed the time reading).
 * the entire period of existence of the known universe; finite duration, as distinguished from infinity
 * the entire period of existence of the world or of humanity; earthly duration, as distinguished from eternity
 * definite [interval] allotted, used, or suitable for a purpose: (such as departure time)

Unclear whether the word applies to the measurement or the thing being measured:


 * Victorian times (a period of years in history)
 * Time of year (another time period)
 * the point or period when something occurs : occasion
 * an appointed, fixed, or customary moment or hour for something to happen, begin, or end
 * an opportune or suitable moment
 * Father Time

Now, nobody doubts that the word time can be used to describe a measurement. "The time is 3 PM." The question is whether that is the only way the word is used. Clearly not.

The word most commonly used by the sources quoted above is "continuum" ("continued", "continues"), but as noted this begs the question whether time is continuous or discrete in the mathematical sense. That's why I think the best word is something like the one we had: "progression". The sources also use "duration" but this seems circular, since we would define "duration" as "time". I have no objection to "process", "interval", or "period" if anyone prefers one of these. My objection is to the statement that time is a measurement, and only that. A measurement of what? Rick Norwood (talk) 15:50, 21 July 2012 (UTC) -->


 * Pf, the "compromise" lede is no good. It's a big run-on sentence that actually makes little sense since it first describes time as a measurement and then fails to lay down any concept of what is being measured.  The whole problem that started this is the highly non-neutral POV that time is primarily a measurement.  Time existed long before anyone was around to measure it or to care about the measurement and time exists in all sorts of contexts where there is no measurement of it and time will exist long after there is any measurement of it. 70.109.178.39 (talk) 16:54, 21 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I think the problem here is a mis-reading. I did not and would not put that time is a measurement; I put that time is a measure, as in, something by which something else is measured, ala "courage is the measure of a man" again. I would say very well that "space is a measure of the size of objects and distances between them", without implying that space is only a measurement; space is whatever is measured when you measure the size of objects or distances between them, whatever it is by which sizes and distances are measured. Likewise the intention with the lede I had in place was to state that time is that by which durations of events and the intervals between them are measured.
 * Note that the lede that you reverted to says exactly the same thing still, just in a different order. It says time is a measure right now. And my version also said that time was an apparently irreversible succession of events from past to present to future, much like this one. You seem to be objecting "Q and P, not P and Q!" when they are logically equivalent; and the only reason I suggested P and Q was because other people were apparently making the opposite lapse of thought and crying "It's not Q and P, it's P! And also Q."
 * Also, the first sentence you reverted to is more of a run-on sentence than my version, which also trimmed down the language used on the (what is now) second half. Since your concern seems to be that 'your' half comes first and is worded exactly how you want, I'm going to be bold and reinstate the changes I made to the second half, which will make it less of a run-on sentence again.
 * Also you reverted a lot more than the parts you objected to; there's a reason I made the edits one part at a time, so you could have undone just the first-sentence change or the first-paragraph change or whatever and not the whole thing. I'm going to restore the rest, which no one has yet raised any objections to, and leave the first sentence and NPOV tag as they stand. --Pfhorrest (talk) 19:52, 21 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Ok, I think Pfhorrest is presenting some good reasoning here. Steve Quinn (talk) 20:19, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It may be that most of the defs that are referenced in the article do not use the term "continuum". Even if we just use the ones that Rick posted above there are only four defs out of about nineteen or twenty that use the word continuum. And those that do use the word continuum also add words that the other defs use such as: "measure, duration, a period, interval, measured or measurable period, period of... (existence, world, humanity) and so on. These defs are populated with such words. A form of the word "measure" is used 13 times, "period" is used eight times. It seems to me that the broadest, or the most useful, definition of time available is that it is a "measure" of durations, frequencies, events, intervals, periods, and rates of changes. Isn't it really the conglomeration of these words that expresses what is intended? Steve Quinn (talk) 20:52, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * So I mean to say I think what Phorrest just had up in the lede is the best one, with the best coverage. Steve Quinn (talk) 21:00, 21 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks Steve.
 * On a slightly tangential note, it occurs to me that a big feature of this issue is (to slightly abuse some mathematical terms) ordinality vs cardinality. Time has both senses: it is both ordinal, about what kind of order (series, sequence, progression, succession) things are in; and cardinal, about "how big" things (durations, intervals) are. The lede both as it stands now and my version as of yesterday covers both of those senses ("Time is a progression/succession/sequence/etc..." and "Time is a measure..."), and I think it's important that it continue to do so. What order those senses are mentioned in is not important to me as I think they are equally important. --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:24, 21 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Pf, listen, before your edit that created the run-on lede, I presume outa a sense of making compromise (BTW, thanks for deleting SQ's attempt to inject his editorializing in the lede of the previous edit; "copy edit", yeah right), I warned about it [20:02, 14 July 2012 (UTC)] and lamented it [06:34, 18 July 2012 (UTC)], so please do not pin that mistake on me. I did not change it, because run-on sentences in the lede are less of a problem than naked POV and can be dealt with later when things really settle down.  I do not own the article (SQ and JW do), so I do not sit here and pounce on every edit that I might not agree with.  But I am going to try to hold down the fort against naked POV pushing.  When we can get to some agreement about the principal elements of the lede, we can copy edit (and not the kinda sneaky "copy edit" that JQ does).  I only reverted to the most current version that did not have the objectionable POV lede.  There is lotsa cruft in there and I surely don't mind if cruft is removed or fixed.
 * My concern is that we do not, as Wikipedia editors, count ourselves as more knowledgeable about the common meaning of words of widespread use than the dictionary. If anyone wants to accuse me of POV pushing, I'll cop to the notion that I am pushing the POV of the English-language dictionary.  That's different than pushing the POV of Sean Carroll (it's a good POV, BTW) or experimental physicists or some airhead philosophers or whatever specific discipline.  We begin with the most widespread perspective of what time is, not just what time is "used for" or "measured" by beings like us.  13.6 billion years ago there was time and it wasn't a measurement.  15 billion years in the future there will almost certainly be a Universe with time existing and likely no one around to be measuring or experiencing it.  Even today, other places in the Universe (like 99.999999999999% of the Universe) there are objects and events that exist in time and there is no one there to measure it.  The measurement POV is an extremely salient POV.  It needs to be right up there in the article.  Very important.
 * But it is clearly not the widest nor most inclusive POV. Since "time [as] the indefinite continued progression of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future" has meaning, accuracy, and applicability for all scenarios and since "time [as] a measurement used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events or the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change of quantities in material reality or in the conscious experience" has meaning and applicability only to a subset of scenarios, reversing the order in the lede definition not only doesn't make syntactical sense, to insist on doing so is evidence of non-neutral POV.
 * As I said at the outset, we can identify three really important POVs to get in here for the lede: The principal dictionary POV (time as a notion or phenomenon or concept) worded in such a way that the lay person has the least trouble with it (this is why I would leave out the word "continuum", but I am not demanding that since it is clearly in the dictionary), the measurement POV ("time is what clocks measure"), and the experiential POV (beings like us "feel" time flowing by, etc.).  Let's get them in, in two sentences, both supported by correct citations, and in an order that makes conceptual sense (define what it is before the measurement or experience of it) and that has widespread POV to the common reader and is NPOV.  That's what we have to do. 70.109.178.39 (talk) 23:55, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * BTW, this week PBS Nova had re-run Brian Greene's "Fabric of the Cosmos" episode called the "Illusion of Time" and it was very good. Still doesn't support ranking the measurement definition as conceptually more fundamental than the primary dictionary definition. 70.109.178.39 (talk) 00:10, 22 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Tu quoque. Read what I said about "a measure of" vs "a measurement" again. 6'2" tall, 220lbs are some measurements of a man; but courage (some say) is the measure of a man, i.e. proportional or identical to manliness, the more courageous one is the more manly he is. Likewise, 3 mins 14 seconds is 'a measurement of time, but time is a measure of a duration, i.e. proportional or identical to duration, the longer the duration the longer the time. But of course that is not the only sense of time; 3AM, July 25, 1982 is a time, but it is not a measure of anything and it is not a duration, it is one in a sequence (or series or progression or succession) of points in time, time being (in this other sense) identical to that sequence (or series or progression or succession). Both of these different but related senses are important and well supported by dictionary definitions. On that note, also reread what I wrote in reply to Steve above, about ordinality and cardinality. The problem with splitting them up into two sentences is we then have a first-sentence definition that says that time is one thing, period; and then we have another sentence that says, what, time is another thing? Our first sentence has to be a complete statement of the uncontroversial definition of time (i.e. that minimalist definition which doesn't say anything against any notable points of view). Consider if we said something like "Space is the arrangement of things in relation to each other, principally in three dimensions. Space can be used to tell how big things are and how far apart from each other they are..." That doesn't work because space is just as much about how big and far apart things are as where they are in relation to each other, and each of those facets can be used to tell something about the other; neither is more primary. Likewise time's ordinal and cardinal senses; it is both about the sequence that things happen in, and about how long they happen and how far apart they happen, equally.
 * As to your three POVs, your phrase "principal dictionary POV (time as a notion or phenomenon or concept)" seems to confuse several different things together. One is that, one way or another, we are trying to agree on a first sentence definition for this article and so are inherently dealing with the notion or concept of time, whether that notion or concept be of time as a measurement or as a dimension or as an experience or as more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, any way you cut it we're dealing with a notion or a concept of time as something; we're just trying to fill in the 'something' there. Throwing "phenomenon" into that mix makes no sense because a phenomenon is an empirical occurrence, something which can be observed, an event or object of some kind, a happening or, more etymologically, a "seeming" or "appearance", and so is in no way even roughly synonymous with notion or concept, so I'm not sure what you're going for with that there. And lastly, I think we have all agreed that dictionary definitions are a good place to source the first-sentence definition of time, and we are trying to work out the details of that now. As I said to Steve earlier, and to you some time before that, I think things common to dictionary definitions are a great place to start, but then we have to take away things which would pronounce some viewpoints as wrong by definition; and aside from that, there is also the issue of how best to phrase it. That is what we are trying to work on now. --Pfhorrest (talk) 03:45, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It may not seem that way to some folks here, but I don't reply to absolutely every point that someone makes because to do so, either I have to copy their point over and "gi" it to reference it, or I commit the unforgivable sin of inserting an answer right after the point (usually not midsentence). And we have done that at many many talk pages, especially, when there are lotsa points flying back and forth.  With meaningful indentation, it is trivial to see who says what.  I respond to points that I thought are directed at me or points that I might have something to respond with.
 * To say that "courage is the measure of a man" is a measurement. It doesn't have meaning without first knowing what "courage" is and what a "man" is.  It's not that I didn't hear it, it's that I didn't get it.  And I still don't.  It frames the subject in terms of measuring it, whereas in the very first sentence of the lede it needs to say what it is, in the context of our common and lay understanding.  And for that, we go to the general-purpose dictionary and not the glossary of a physics textbook or some other physics lit.
 * I am not suggesting (and never had) that we use the word "phenomenon" (or "concept" or "notion") in the lede text. Never said that at all.  It is for communication with people here about what we are trying to do about separating these notions or concepts of what time is.  Time, space, life, culture, etc. are all phenomena.  We observe them, we sorta think we know for sure what it is, but phenomena often are hard to pin down the definitions thereof.  Probably a better word is noumenon.  Doesn't matter.  Neither word should be going into the lede.
 * Well... that's what this NPOV thing is all about, Pf. Who is to say that these "some viewpoints" are correct (neutral) when they contradict the dictionary definition?  As to the common or lay definition of the word, what is the most NPOV source of the meaning of the word?  So some editor has some viewpoint that is contradicted (or at least not indicated) by the dictionary definition?  Does that mean that the dictionary has a non-neutral POV or the editor?  Is this editor's authority about the word greater than that of a long-standing and highly regarded dictionary?
 * I saw them do this at the Marriage article. Several editors do not like the dictionary definition for the lede because it doesn't support their viewpoint.  Then the common lay-person comes across the article and reads it and they think that the common meaning of the word isn't what they had understood all their life (and what is the primary dictionary definition) what the word meant, and there is either confusion, or if the lay-reader is savvy, they will understand that someone is using Wikipedia to try to sell them something.  We must not use Wikipedia to sell people the experimental physicist's POV of time in the lede.  Time means more than measurement.
 * Please, all of us, we need to all consider WP:IDHT in these discussions. I could come down with a litany of what some editors are ignoring (and I suspect, they are ignoring it because it's inconvenient to their POV, which is intellectually dishonest), and I do repeat some of these points.  But instead of bringing up IDHT, I'll just wait until people do hear it.  And I'll repeat the points occasionally, but not every time.  Eventually they might hear it (and acknowledge it) on their own.  Dunno.  We'll see. 70.109.178.39 (talk) 04:31, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I deleted the comments I wrote above, because I wanted to spend more time thinking about the issues involved. 70.109.178.39 undeleted them. I really wish he/she had respected my wishes, but since they've been up all day, I suppose the best thing is to leave them. I'm still thinking and reading and have not reached any final conclusion. Rick Norwood (talk) 01:02, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

As an aside the IP seems to have unilaterly stuck his "newest" comments in between Phforrest's and mine. This is not correct. For one thing I was responding directly to Phforrest's comments with my first statement. The second are more general comments but they still build on Phforrest's comments. It seems to me that this takes my comments out of context.I would like to take a vote that we move those "new" comments down in the correct order. The IP claims to have been here since 2004 and does appear to know what is kosure and what is not. Please also note I have had to stop now for about 10 or 15 minutes, distracted from ten main conversation. Also please note, it is not necessary to correct my spelling on a talk page. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 02:42, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I was wanting to fix that myself, both because it's out of order and the wrong level of indentation. It's another reply to the same message of mine you're replying to and so should go after yours on the same level of indentation. I didn't want to fix it because of the hubbub over moving his talk page comments before, but since I'm not the only one bothered by it I'll do that in a moment. (Also your own indentation here is confusing, and I'm correcting that with this reply as well). --Pfhorrest (talk) 03:05, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, sorry about that-- I thought I indented correctly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Steve Quinn (talk • contribs)
 * BTW guys, Indentation is not policy, but there is an essay about it, and if you look at Indentation example #3, it says that my insertion was correct. When I do that, I add more colons to make sure that it appears as inserted. 70.109.178.39 (talk) 03:42, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * That essay says that indentation is an enforced behavioral guideline (and the essay is just an elaboration on that guideline), and example #3 is someone replying to an earlier comment; in our conversation, my comment you and Steve both replied to is like "Example"'s comment there, Steve's comment is like "Place holder"'s comment, my reply to Steve is like "Example"'s reply to "Place holder", and your comment is like "sandbox"'s comment (except, unlike their example, you didn't post it before I replied to Steve; but the structure is still the same, if I hadn't have replied to Steve yet your post should have gone under him like in their Example #2, and then my reply to him would have gone between his comment and yours, indented an extra level, which is what their Example #3 shows). --Pfhorrest (talk) 03:52, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It's not policy. It says so.  It is not enforceable in the same sense of, say, WP:3RR.  And my use is precisely the same.  I was answering your comment, not SQ's comment to your comment, nor SQ's comment to the one preceding.  The inserted comment came in chronologically (speaking of "Time") later than the comment below the inserted point.  I'm outa here for tonight.  70.109.178.39 (talk) 04:36, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The example page is an essay, but it links back to an enforce guideline, and says "Although this example page about how to indent is an essay, it should be noted that the use of normal indentation is a behavioural guideline that editors are expected to follow. Such guidelines may be enforced by administrative action, especially when other editors have been unable to persuade an individual to abide by them. The guideline should never be used to bite newcomers who don't know how to indent properly, but experienced users are expected to comply with it, to facilitate threaded discussion on talk pages."
 * Example #3 there isn't saying to always insert newer comments above older comments, it's saying not to insert them after other comments of the same level. So if someone else replies to your comment which I am replying to now, they comment should go below this one, indented on the same level; as your should have gone after Steve's reply to me, and on the same level as Steve's. Then if you come along, even after that, and reply to me here, your reply should go directly below this, even if that means being above the earlier-posted comment on the same level as this. That is what example 3 is saying. I will self-demonstrate in a moment. In case it's not clear from the time stamps, I posted this paragraph first. --Pfhorrest (talk) 06:59, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I posted this paragraph third. Pretend I'm you, replying to my own paragraph above. --Pfhorrest (talk) 07:02, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I posted this paragraph second. Pretend I'm a different person replying to you. --Pfhorrest (talk) 07:00, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

To get back on track here -- I can see that Rick has a point about "continuum". I also see that it stands out in the dictionary definitions. Also, I want to compliment Rick on coming up with that parphrase. In addition, Phorrest's reply to me and the other editor shows a grasp of the subtle distinctions involved here, (and anchored in the sources too). Therefore I can really appreciate what I am seeing here. Steve Quinn (talk) 05:03, 22 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Now, 70.109.178.39 has taken my comment out, after it I said above to leave it in, and after it had been responded to above, said responses now not makeing any sense. I've left a message to him on his Talk page, but let me reitterate here:   70.109.178.39: Do not edit other people's posts.  Don't put them back.  Don't take them out. Rick Norwood (talk) 11:46, 22 July 2012 (UTC)


 * So does this mean you do want me to remove the "comment" characters or not?  With as much effort, you too can remove that, then your wish is unambiguous.  But I try to reverse mistakes when I make them, but it is unclear which direction the car is facing and whether putting it in "R" or "D" will drive the car outa the ditch.  Rick, please include or remove your comments so that we  (or I) know. 70.109.178.39 (talk) 13:27, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I think it is time to move on, and focus on editing the article. Rick Norwood (talk) 14:50, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Senses of time
Steve, regarding this edit, my intention in "some sense of time" was to be "time, in some sense of the word"; a segue from the preceding sentence which says that precise definitions of time across all fields are contentious... nevertheless many fields just pick one and use it. A word sense. I'm not sure if that was clear and you still object to it or if you didn't see that that's what was meant. Maybe we should wikilink "some sense of time", or just say "time, in some sense of the word"?


 * I see your point. You intended "sense" in the sense of "meaning of the word", not in the sense of "sensation".  The question of whether we experience a sensation of passing time (independent of its measurement) is very controversial.  For what it's worth, I know what time it is without looking at a clock, within about fifteen minutes, and can wake myself up for any time I desire without an alarm clock.  But that's a personal anecdote, not evidence. Rick Norwood (talk) 11:50, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, what I meant was these entities agree on using time as a measure, and that would be (in essence) what a clock says. For instance, according the sources -- the speed of a baseball pitch is measured in relation to fractions of a second, efficiency in a work place is in relation to increments such as minutes or hours, winning an olympic race is in terms of a "clocked" time. It is specific how these examples (or entities) use time in the same way. Therefore there does not appear to be any "sense of the word" or "sensation" involved. See what I am saying?  Steve Quinn (talk) 17:49, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * This is a point we have been discussing for some time. What you say above is in agreement with the point of view that there is no "sense" of time, that measurement is all there is to time.  Several sources agree.  But other sources see time as the thing being measured, and we need to express that view as well. Rick Norwood (talk) 13:53, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I think you misunderstand. According to our discussion the lede presents two or more signifigant definitions of time. In contrast, this is not the lede sentence. This is part of the first paragraph, and part of the four paragraphs. If it were the lede, yes, it might be a problem based on our discussion. Acording to our discussion I thought we had decided to carry the most notable views in the lede sentence, which appears to be so. Ater the lede sentence, there is no reason that the first paragraph, and the four paragraphs of the introduction, cannot be populated with one sentence saying "time as a measure" while another says "time -/- the thing being measured". And other sentences might state other views, which they do already, throughout the introductory four paragraphs.
 * In addition, this serves as a description of how time is used as a measure. Secondly, this is how time is applied in these fields. I don't think there is any way to get around the use of time in this context. This is also consistent with the second part of the lede already. In other words, it does not conflict with the lede and our discussions. As an aside, I like that you placed the word "incorporate" into this sentence. I found it to be very useful.
 * Furthermore, we don't seem to be discussing time as a "sense" or "experience" at the moment. However it is already covered in the introduction and laid to rest. This is because it is in agreement with with the sources that say this issue has not been resolved. I actually think it is profound to have that sentence bcause it shows we have been doing our homework. The last thing is I think this should be moved back to the first paragraph. It seems to be an important issue. It is one that came up early in our discussions, and it is one that seems to rear its head frequently enough. Hence, I think it deserves to be placed in the first paragraph -- even the last sentence would work. --- Steve Quinn (talk) 15:50, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * --- In the above I wrote "...seems to rear its head frequently enough." I meant to say "...seems to rear its head every now and then". Steve Quinn (talk) 16:22, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Steve. From your deletion of "Nevertheless", as well as the "sense of", I think the relation between the 2nd and 3rd sentences I intended in my reorganization is maybe not clear. What I was going for was:
 * 1st sentence: time is something more or less like this;
 * 2nd sentence: but anything more specific than that is highly contentious;
 * 3rd sentence: nevertheless people make practical use of definitions more specific than that all the time.
 * "Nevertheless" and "some sense of" are in reference to the preceding (2nd) sentence, saying that, although any sense (as in meaning, understanding, notion, concept, definition) of time more specific than the vague one we open with in the first sentence is contentious, all kinds of fields use some such sense (meaning, understanding, notion, concept, definition) of time to get practical things done all the time.
 * I'm not trying to say anything about whether or not (or if so how) we experience time; you'll note none of our recent first sentences say either anything about whether or how time is subjectively experienced, or whether or how time is objectively realized. We are silent and thus neutral on the matter. Then in later paragraphs we talk about those issues more. I don't think we want to get into either of those issues in the first paragraph, which is about definitions; but they do definitely need to be touched on somewhere in the lede (i.e. everything before the first section break).
 * I'm going to put "Nevertheless" back in and a different phrase ("some notion of time") to keep that segue, for now, but if you really object go ahead and remove them again and I'll leave them out until we settle it. --Pfhorrest (talk) 19:02, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I had no idea that I was messing up your work. Presently "nevertheless" is quite a good fit now that I see the relations between the sentences ( ah enlightenment ! ) And let me just leave ""some sense of"" in their for a few days. There is a certain elogquence to it, compared to what I had there earlier today and what I had originally, when I first constructed the sentence. I didn't mean to rain on your parade. Steve Quinn (talk) 01:40, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
 * (In case you're wondering what I am responding to, count the colons. I'm afraid that if I put the comment where it really belongs and makes the most sense, someone here will take offense and move it to the bottom.) It still returns us to what I had been saying all along.  We need to think about this with an outline.  Before telling the reader about what is being measured and what is being experienced, the article needs to tell the reader what it is (from the most NPOV).   The fact is this measurement is simply an extension of this experience; a technological extension.  This is quite the same for measuring (or experiencing) any other physical quantity.  Rick Norwood's internal clock is just one example.  This is why I suggested dealing with both concisely in one compact sentence. 71.169.179.128 (talk) 02:32, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I counted the colons but I am still not sure which response. Also, I am sure there are other responses with this many colons, how do we know whether or not one of these is the preferred reference? In addition, there is a space between the succession of colons and the beginning of the above response. This seems to further confuse the issue. --- Steve Quinn (talk) 03:36, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, Steve, here I am following the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of it, as was demanded of me. And I am not taking the blame for the ambiguous result. 71.169.179.128 (talk) 04:46, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

This is unhelpful. Also please note that my internal clock is a) anecdotal and therefore not evidence and b) almost certainly chemical in nature. Let's stick to academic sources that assert a subjective component to time. Rick Norwood (talk) 13:01, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Not taking any blame for "unhelpful" either. It's simply about the consequences of getting what one wishes.
 * About the topic at hand: I never said that your experience is evidence of anything other than your experience. I agree.  But your experience is likely shared by others with similar experience.  Pretty much all of us and all of the readers of the article experience time going by, and most of us have some sense of measurement of time solely from our own experience of it: "Back in five minutes... About a half-hour ago... We did that last week..."  Our measurement of time with clocks of increasing precision is an extension of our measurement of time solely from our experience.  That's why they are two sides of the same coin.  One clock perhaps is more "chemical in nature" (but I would use the word "biological" or "physiological").  There is an "operational" aspect of time in the measurement of time with clocks and there is a very similar operational aspect of time in the measurement of it solely from our experience of time.
 * Now, what I am asking, for the sake of the lede, is what other major POVs of time are there to get into the lede so that it includes all of them and thus does not betray neutrality of POV? There is:
 * Time as a notion in and of itself. What time is when and where there is no one around to be measuring nor experiencing it. The Wheeler quote: "Time is what prevents everything from happening at once."
 * Time as measurement in physical systems. The Einstein quote: "Time is what clocks measure.  Nothing more."
 * Time in the experience of humans and other conscious beings. Closely related to "whether or not time ... exist[s] independently of the mind".
 * Are there there other major POVs of time that encompass broad epistemological understandings or usage of the word? If there are only these three, it doesn't seem hard to me to get this down concisely, still in two sentences (to avoid the big run-on sentence).
 * Pf, I'm trying to get us to focus on this.  About your "P and Q", I am saying that time has to have some definition (and the dictionary is the NPOV place to get it) of what before we include that this what is measured and/or experienced (and to include either of these measured or experienced aspects of what before the what is not NPOV).  And you have made no case that they have to be in the same sentence.  There is nothing wrong with saying "Light is a wave and has these wave-like properties. Light is a particle and has these particle-like properties."  Do they contradict?  Some might say so, but the physics is that light displays both properties in different contexts.  They need not be in the same sentence if doing so makes for a cumbersome run-on sentence. 71.169.179.128 (talk) 16:10, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I've found a source claiming that Einstein believed that time is what clocks measure, nothing more. I have not found a source for that as a direct quote of something Einstein wrote.  Have you?  The other quote, "Time in what keeps everything happening at once," is from an old science fiction novel, and is quoted more as a joke than anything else, though it has been cited often enough to keep it in the article, correctly attributed. Rick Norwood (talk) 20:57, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I apologize for my unhelpful comments. That did not forward the conversation. As an aside -- I think we can leave the lead and the first paragarph alone. It seems that an agreement has been reached.  Steve Quinn (talk) 22:35, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The other paragraphs in the intro appear to be just fine, as well. Steve Quinn (talk) 22:35, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I think we have covered all the bases. Steve Quinn (talk) 22:38, 27 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Steve (and everyone else), why quit here with a mediocre, designed by committee intro paragraph for a topic as salient and fundamental as this? Wikipedia need not be mediocre, it can have some real art and style in the construction and writing, be informative and NPOV to boot. This is why I am trying to solicit participation about what are the most fundamental perspectives to consider for the article.  I still think it's those three, but I might have missed something salient.
 * It's in layers. Lede sentence with time in the broadest POV possible. Then we bring in this more anthropocentric POV, time as measurement and time as something that is experienced.  Then we bring in the major classic disciplines that consider time (science, religion, philosophy, maybe history). Then what people do with time in business, industry, sports, and performing arts, music, dance, and the live theater.  Connect to some of those relevant quotes to give it a little more style.  And eventually someone will call it an encyclopedia article of a widespread and important article.
 * It doesn't have to be an encyclopedia of the mediocre. Crowdsourcing need not be the least common denominator. 71.169.179.128 (talk) 05:16, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Suggesting time Must be defined in terms of Electromagnetism
The beginning section seems a bit wooish and metaphysical...

We should keep both relativity and quantum physics in mind, For instance: "Time is a measure of observed electromagnetic change in a locally defined area"

In this way we have both the requirement of an observer which is necessary for both relativity and quantum physics and we have also taken into consideration that time progresses differently in a gravitational field. All biological processes actually slow in colder weather, and we have been able to slow light in certain circumstances by cooling gasses. By this I am inferring that time is actually changed when energy level is changed. This agrees with all modern science that I am aware of. The reason we use calculus in physics is because change defines physics.

The sentence above, however, is just an example of one formulation that I believe concisely and non-circularly defines time. Nemesis75 (talk) 02:19, 24 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Your proposed definition is circular, as electomagnetic phenomenon require a time dimension to produce observable effects. I don't agree that the current version is circular, as its quite general. How do you think its circular? Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 23:54, 27 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Besides, there is a Time in physics article where you can put it in purely the physics POV without violating NPOV. But not here.  That's what started this whole little hubbub a while back in the first place. 71.169.179.128 (talk) 05:19, 28 July 2012 (UTC)


 * When you say time is a measure of intervals you are stating that time is measure of time, and there are other poorly or circularly defined sentences as well IMO. It's absurdly difficult to concisely define time without being self-referential. However, as you pointed out, electromagnetic phenomena require a time dimension. We call it space-time because in modern physics time has a physical existence instead of just a conceptual one. Einstein often even referred to it as an aether. By referring to this physical existence, I believe we can avoid circular definitions. A fair way to visualize the dimension of time is (first, recognize there are infinite moments to split the universe into so even this visualization lacks something.) to imagine every moment as a new copy of the universe that is completely stationary and then take these multiple universes as though they were in boxes set next to each other and flatten them into slices or pages stacked against each other. Then time occurs like a flip-book, it is a perspective shift from one universe to the next. You can visualize an object travelling through the papers but truthfully it's simply the focal point that is changing. Since there are more universes in the future than in the past because of more quantum possibilities, it's much like (or perhaps directly is) a gravitational pull so therefore time moves forward instead of back. So when we talk of time we must intrinsically or contextually include the perspective of the observer because it is an observation that requires a perspective. If we say "observed change in a defined area" we imply a variety of things that are typically implied but hidden from immediate view. We are saying that there is an observer who is moving through the time dimension and observes this to be true by the change observed in some area they have defined. All this is necessary to avoid getting too deeply into the fact that time occurs differently in different places but still keeping that consideration in mind. Time could be defined in terms of dimensional travel of an observer but then I think the wording has become too arcane.


 * Perhaps what we could add is a differential perspective as well. If an observer can compare electromagnetic events in different gravitational fields they will find a difference in the progression of well defined electromagnetic events such as the cycle of a cesium 133 atom. IE the atomic clocks on GPS satellites run faster. So when we say "electromagnetic change" I suppose we could say progression instead but that implies positive time. I guess we could add an additional perspective for differentiation but that is why I added "in a locally defined area". Ultimately I'm just trying to add another perspective to the debate along with a suggestion of how to do it with the hope that someone can take what I've added and make it better, but as it stands, I still have to say that I believe my first suggestion takes much into account that has otherwise been ignored and it does so with as little self-reference as possible. But perhaps the one thing wrong with it is that it is too concise and requires additional expounding? Nemesis75 (talk) 17:58, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Time itself is not a "continuing sequence," rather its a "continuum," in which sequences of events are observable quantities
The first sentence is not bad,
 * "Time is the continuing sequence of events occurring in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future..."

but it contains the word "sequence," which is rather an objective observable of time, and not actually an intrinsic aspect. Something like this..
 * "Time is [the name given to] the continuing progression of events occurring in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future..."

would work better. Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 00:00, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
 * "the name given to" doesn't really add meaning, IMO. Then it should say "Time" is the name given to... But we don't need to relegate it to the word "time", but it should be about time.  The notion of time.
 * "Continuum" is in the dictionary. It's okay, I guess, but I thought it was both a little pretentious and stuffy (or dorky, like "duh, what'sa 'continuum'?  Sounds like Star Trek and the 'space-time continuum'.").  And it might not be accurate.  As far as we can tell, time could be quantized to a really small sampling period (like the Planck time or something bigger).  But, as people mentioned, it is ordered on a single dimension of stuff.  It is both ordinal and cardinal.
 * And what do you mean by "objective observable" vs. "intrinsic aspect"? 71.169.179.128 (talk) 05:29, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
 * An observable is just a property of something which we can see in some way, and though appearance may contribute to the overall picture of something, its not often the case that such appearances actually define what something is. So for example a cat may have hair, but that doesn't mean that's what a cat is, that is we don't define a cat as "a thing with hair." In this case, defining time itself as a "sequence" creates the impression that time is not actually a thing itself, but a term for any series of observables. The point here is that time is not a sequence, or rather that's not the most substantive definition of time. It would be more accurate to say that time is what's *inbetween those sequential events, but that definition too has the problem of leading us to think of time as simply a measurement concept, which we all by now seem to have deprecated.


 * The best thing to do here is to use the term "continuum," because it indicates the two prime ideas underlying time: continuity, and dimension. I will reserve comment about the issue of whether time is quantized, but I will state that its not improper in some articles (where the definition is undeveloped or controversial) to state that [term] (the name of the article) is a *name given to a concept... which we then define in some way. All words are simply names in a certain respect, and long before we developed any scientific intuition about time we had the concept of time, and most (or all) languages give that concept a name. Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 02:04, 29 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't like the "Time is the continuing sequence of events ..." phrase, either. But I don't own the article and I don't assume ownership.
 * I think that the word "continuum" is both a little pretentious (even if it's in the dictionary) and might be inaccurate. I really don't see the need for it, but I do recognize the dictionary as the arbiter of what is NPOV in the lede.  "Continuing progress of existence and events" is much better and is what I have always been advocating since it is well-supported by the dictionaries and the meaning is clear to the laity.  "Sequence" has the connotation of discreteness, and that also might be inaccurate.  It can't be both continuous and discrete.  We'll see if and how other editors feel about it, but I don't like "sequence" either. 71.161.192.63 (talk) 00:34, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Time and change
Jacksmart99 (talk) 20:00, 29 July 2012 (UTC) Time has, I believe, two core, very simple, though subtle, definitions. It is not a phenomenon, nor a force, nor a dimension, nor a flow. Time doesn't "cause" anything, it merely measures the effect that other change agents have. It has two distinct usages. Firstly it is a measurement. Time measures in the same sense that distance measures. Distance measures the gap between two points. Time measure the gap (interval) between two events. (From this core usage, as a measurement, time also has some subsidiary usages as a calibration, referenceing and indexing system). The question is, what is it measuring? Distance measures space. Time measures..? Well, event to event is a reference to change (change occurs when events occur). So time is a measure of change - perhaps more accurately, change rate. Change can either be grouped change, as in a composite object, or specific. So, for example, the Human Body is a composite object. It has an age, as a composite, despite the fact that, for instance, hair and brains - two of the bodies components, age differently - so change s grouped. Or Time can be specific to, say, a quantum particle (i.e non-composite). Each particle will have its own unique event horizon, or change stream. Time, as a measurement, is speficic to each event then, it is not a universal (it might CALIBRATE as a universal, but that's subsidiary and arbitary). Time doesn't cause change. Things don't age because of time. Time merely measures change and change rate.

The second usage of Time is as a collective term. All events and intervals that occur (all change that happens in other words) are grouped together and Time is used as their collective. The idea that "time moves on", is actually describing change as happening. So time is a collective, the underlying element of time being change-events and duration. These, again, are specific, not universal. So the definition of Time, based on these usages, should be:- 1. A measurement of change; 2. A collective term for all change. I have expanded on the reasoning behind these definitions on www.thisistime.co.uk


 * Time is not measurement - that leads to a reification fallacy. And while defining time as macroscopic change, time is not itself change, because change cannot exist without time. Physics treats time as a dimension or dimensions within spacetime. What exactly is wrong with this rather widespread idea? -Stevertigo (t | c) 01:35, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Jacksmart99 (talk) 10:11, 30 July 2012 (UTC)I disagree. Time is measurement. The idea that “change cannot exist without Time” is like saying length cannot exists without distance. It doesn’t say anything. Change doesn’t need time. Change may occur over a duration, but that duration is NOT a dimension set, or phenomenon. Change happens (Julian Barbour in The End of Time (Phoenix, London, 1999), says (p231) "All true change in quantum mechanics comes from interference between stationary states with different energies. In a system described by a stationary state, no change takes place".

And you measure the change duration using a calibration system (Time). IF change doesn’t happen, Time doesn’t exist. Change causes time. This is the subtle understanding that I believe you are missing.

Time as a dimension? Mmm. I’ll be bold here...this is where physicist have put up their own red-herring which has become a barrier to clear understanding. The problem is that every event to event happening has its own change characteristics, unique and independent. We use Time to measure these. But each one is unique to the event to event occurence. Like distance is unique to every point to point. You could call each a (time) dimension. There are therefore as many time dimensions as there are  event to event occurrences. Time is specific (to every event to event), not general. Which is why Spacetime is, at best, a poor approximation.Jacksmart99 (talk) 10:01, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

(talk) 10:01, 30 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I understand the idea that change creates time, and I agree with it in a certain way. If space and time cannot be extricated from each other, the flow of time can be thought of simply as a kind of change, with little difference from simple motion. I would have little problem with stating that time itself is a name given to a certain kind of change. (Of course we would need to *source that - do you know of any?) But even beneath that level, there is the issue of whether change - any kind of change - requires something called time in which it can occur. Doesn't change require time? Hence you might start to understand the idea of dimension, and how its not invalid. That's not to say that we truly understand time yet - we understand holography now - perhaps time is simply a kind of computation, a la digital physics. -Stevertigo (t | c) 05:36, 31 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Jack, while I agree that time as a dimension may not actually be true, we can't just impose our opinions willy-nilly. Until science has come around to a different way of thinking we must describe what is the accepted version, not our own opinions on the subject. Personally I feel very strongly that time is not truly a dimension but you'll find in my post above about electromagnetic definition, that I've provided a very good explanation of current accepted theory which is actually quite in opposition to my personal opinion on the subject. I agree with you in essence that time and change are inextricably linked but I find it my duty to present this truth only within the framework of modern accepted science. Nemesis75 (talk) 18:33, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

We shouldn't go looking for sources to support our own ideas, but should report what the sources say, quoted extensively above. The two common views are that time is a continuum, (in mathematics an axis at right angles to three spatial axes) or that time is a measurement. It's fun to talk about, but the article needs to stick closely to the sources. Rick Norwood (talk) 11:16, 31 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Agreed, and that gets to the issue I presented in the above section, where I criticized the usage of "sequence" in the lede sentence as inaccurate. I too support the usage of "continuum" in spite of arguments which claim the term has a vague meaning. In my understanding, "continuum" simply means 'something with *dimension and *continuity.' Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 07:12, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

While "continuum" is more common, more than one cited source uses "sequence" and others use "progress" or "progression". The objection to "continuum" was not that it is too vague, but rather than it is too specific, implying that time is continuous rather than discrete. "Progress" was objected to on the reasonable grounds that it suggested "improvement". That left "sequence" and "progression". In my view, either of those words is preferable to "continuum" because of the problem I mentioned. Rick Norwood (talk) 11:58, 1 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Given a choice between "sequence" and "progression" there is no choice - "sequence" is unusable and "progression" is quite apt. The issue of whether time is continuous or discrete is not fatal for the usage of "continuum," which you and I both note is used in several dicdefs. The reason its not a big deal is that time is clearly not quantized in the macroscopic sense, even if its possible that time is quantized at the quantum level - ie. for individual particles, or rather the constituent information of those particles. Hence what may be quite quantized at the microscopic level becomes a smooth continuous phenomenon when those particles interact with others. The debate about whether nature is "stuff like" or "thing like" applies even to time. Hence its reasonable to think that there are dualities with regard to how we think of time, ie. a discrete-continuous duality, along the lines of wave-particle duality. Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 22:11, 1 August 2012 (UTC)


 * If you change it to "progression" or even "progress", I won't revert it. I won't even revert "continuum" even though I don't particularly like the word because I know it's in the dictionary.  I would disagree with you about using the latter and assuming it does not fatally contradict discreteness.  I think, as far as we know today, that time is fully continuous and thus that "non-spatial dimension" is a continuum.  That's just as much certain as the indefinite property which is also in at least one dictionary (as the primary definition) but was objected to by someone (I forget who) here.  I don't think that "continuum" is necessary, but it isn't a blatantly POV word like "measurement" is (for the primary def in the lede) and it's in the dictionary in the primary definition.
 * I still think the article needs a lede paragraph that touches on all of the major POVs and sets up the concept from those major (and possibly conflicting) POVs. 71.161.192.63 (talk) 03:51, 3 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Okay, so now we have "the continuing progression of events ..." "Continuum" is not mentioned specifically, but the disamb page is linked to with "continuing progression".  Now, if you hit that link and look at the disamb page, there are two plausible articles where to go from there; Continuum (theory) and Continuum (set theory) and perhaps Linear continuum, and all imply continuous as in the opposite of discrete.  "Continuum" is, as best as I can tell, the same as the real line or is mappable to the real line in a one-to-one manner.  Continuous and continuing are not the same meaning.  Not at all.  So let's not migrate any dictionary reference of "continuing" to "continuous".  "Continuing" is closer to "indefinite" which is also in the dictionary, but some folks objected to (to which I don't see why).
 * Now, as far as human beings know at present, time is continuous, and if the article is to assume such, let's just put in "continuum". But it might not be and if we are to broaden the POV to include the possibility that time is discrete (and if Nature's sampling period were as small as, say, the Planck time, I doubt that mortal beings will ever know the difference).  As far as I can tell, we have no more evidence to refute or confirm "continuous" or "continuum" than we have evidence to refute "indefinite".  In fact, since we pretty much know that, in the direction of the past, time is not indefinite, then we know that time does not map directly to the negative real axis.  So, I just don't know why we would want an oblique reference to continuum, especially if we're not going to say it explicitly.
 * The other issue that I will revisit is that of leaving out existence. It's in one of the dictionaries (in the primary definition) and I cannot understand why anyone would say that time and existence are not directly connected to each other.  To say that it's continuous and it's about the progression of events leaves unclear about what time is between events.  Events happen at certain particular times (from the POV of a particular frame of reference), and there are periods between such events and not time progressing during such periods?  Time exists even when no particular events exist, but there is always existence during those periods.  So I would like to see someone justify leaving that out, considering it's in a reputable dictionary.  And I would like to see someone justify leaving out "indefinite", yet keeping the reference to "continuum", while both in the dictionary.  I am still convinced that the strongest synthesis of the various primary dictionary definitions is:
 * Time is the indefinite continued progression of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.
 * You can slice and dice this and no key word is without support from the primary definition of some reputable English language dictionary. I am unconvinced that any case has been made to exclude any key word and I am unconvinced that this can be made either more neutral or broad in its POV nor more concise in its wording.  Remember "continued" or "continuing" are quite different than "continuous" or "continuum". 70.109.178.7 (talk) 02:31, 5 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree that "existence" or "reality" are the relevant objects which time influences, and would not object to putting them in. Others though may take issue with this, and prefer to limit the influence of time to just events. I can understand their view, and how its influenced by relativity, which pretty much destroyed the idea that time flows the same for everyone. But the key to understanding that idea is not that time negates any concept of real existence, rather it just means that different objects experience a different rate of time, not that objects exist in different times.
 * Naturally one may misinterpret relativity to mean that there is no real concept of reality and everything is simply an illusion or some relativistic mishmash, but that's just a misunderstanding of relativity. I think some of that sort of thing goes on here and in other time discussions. Hence yes, I view the concept of time in broad terms ("reality" and "existence") as well as microscopic terms (quantum "events"), and understand that the word "time" may mean somewhat different (but quite related) things for each of those pictures.
 * All that said, I'm reluctant to change the current wording at this moment, though I will probably feel differently tomorrow. Try addressing the potential concern that others might raise against the idea of time as a macroscopic phenomenon - how would you answer such an objection? I'll check in mañana and see what your answer to that is. Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 07:52, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't believe time is specifically macroscopic in scientific terms. Though there is currently a mild schism in physics between the macroscopic and microscopic, there is still a philosophy of unity of the two regardless of the incompatibility of the theories. I believe time, or the multiple dimensions we refer to as time, is actually a point at which the two theories tend to cross; especially when considering the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. As I said above in another post, the real physical existence of space-time as something that can be traversed may be the critical component that is missing from the discussion. I can, at the very least, refer to Einsteins multiple references to space-time as an aether and a real substance but the concept of "space-time" and the fourth dimension all come from the idea that time has a real physical existence, not just a conceptual one. This is an intrinsic part of the 20th century scientific revolution. Nemesis75 (talk) 18:33, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Effect of Time on Humanity and Environment, A Global issue
The planet is in a accelerated state of decay due to the emissions of fossil fuel. This issue being how Time is measured is dependent on isotope decay. You know the saying that Time is money? That is a problem because the more debt we accumulate, the faster the decay. Swiss time is slower than isotope decay, which is an reason the valuation of the dollar is diminished. We know that our planet (and solar system) is moving really fast. Really I care more about the future, and less about the past. Science is experimental. They measure time by cesium isotope decay which is an environmental issue, and has little to do with our velocity. I believe the atomic clock is destructive to the planet, our safety and well being. Whomever controls the definition of Time, ultimately controls the Money. Science does nothing, and neither does the government. It a Global issue that needs to be fixed else we will destroy ourselves. There may be no solution, but slowing time back to Swiss movement would slow that tempo of life and the way we work. I opine that the faster we manipulate time the worst the economy gets. The data from NOAA shows our environment is changing, so we know what we need to do. How do we actually make the world change for the better? Humanity is a slave to time, and there is no freedom. Mapsurfer49 (talk) 21:53, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Wow. Interesting viewpoint Throckmorton Guildersleeve (talk) 17:10, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Back on the first sentence again
Hi guys, sorry I've been absent so long, had a ton to catch up on when I got back from vacation.

On the wording that currently stands, I think it's a bit verbose and can be made a little more concise, and that this will resolve some of the above issues. Namely, "progression" and "succession" seem to be redundant, both suggesting a march of one thing after another. Since there has been misinterpretationof "progression" as meaning "improvement" here previously, I would suggest we pick the latter of the two, "succession", and consolidate it down to that: "Time is the apparently irreversible continuing succession of events..."

That gets a little heavy on the adjectives being piled onto "succession" though, which brings us to the issue of "continuing". I understand that this is intended not to mean "continuous", but rather "ongoing" or "indefinite". But whichever of those it is taken to mean, that quality of time is not a defining characteristic of it, but a merely incidental feature, as evidenced by the (minor and very specialized) debates over whether time really is continuous and over whether time really is indefinite. I think it does no harm to remove the word "continuing" (saying less rarely hurts, even if what's omitted is widely accepted), and does the small good of slightly improving neutrality and of streamlining the prose, so I would suggest we remove it, leaving us with the much more concise "Time is the apparently irreversible succession of events..."

As far as the suggestion to add "existence" back in there, I think the debate on that is getting highly tangential. My objection to reinserting it is this: what is a "progression of existence"? (or "succession of existence" if we change the phrasing as I suggest above). A progression or succession of events makes obvious sense; one event follows after another. But what "progression of existence" is intended to mean eludes me. I am not making any statement here about whether or not time exists or whether things exist in different times or anything like you're all discussing above; I think just the words do not convey any coherent meaning.

From the anon's comments above, I think the intended meaning is the same as that captured by the second half of the current first sentence: a measure of the durations of events and the intervals between them. Just preemptively I want to emphasize that that "a measure of" language is not to say that time is a measurement, but rather it is whatever is measured; and I'm happy to work on some other phrase to use there to convey the idea that time is whatever durations span, be they durations of events or of the 'empty' intervals between them as the "progression of existence" phrase apparently intends to convey.

To reiterate my earlier comments on my intended connection between the two halves of this sentence: the first is intended to describe time's role in ordering, arranging, or sequencing things, about pastness vs futureness and so on; the second is intended to describe time's role in (I really can't think of a suitable synonym here) measuring things, about how long events and the gaps between them last. To make the analogy with space again, it would be like saying "Space is the arrangement of objects around each other, and a measure of the size of those objects and the distances between them." --Pfhorrest (talk) 01:22, 10 August 2012 (UTC)


 * There is a big problem with the word "apparently" here, namely that the very idea of time reversal (T-symmetry) is just not possible. Period. There is no T-symmetry, for all objects larger than the theorized tachyon, because of plain and simple thermodynamics. There is just no such thing as going backwards in time, except in speculative models which would violate WEIGHT to mention here in the lede. Hence the word "apparent" or "apparently" is just unnecessary. -Stevertigo (t | c) 05:34, 11 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think "apparently" has undue weight issues, because it is not claiming that time might be reversible; it is merely softening the claim that time is irreversible. We are still only stating that time is irreversible; we are just stating it less forcefully. That exact phrasing is supported by the sources cited too, so I think that counts against due weight as well.
 * I really want to use a better lay synonym for "anisometric" here anyway (as discussed above) to get more to the heart of it (the important point is that the past and future are fundamentally different directions in time, even if you could get back to the past from the future; unlike say left and right are completely arbitrary directions in space, but much like up and down were considered fundamentally different directions in space by Aristotelian mechanics). But we couldn't find such a synonym when we looked earlier.
 * Honestly I wouldn't object to removing "apparently irreversible" completely, as "from the past through the present to the future" does a pretty good job of establishing that anisometry, and it would streamline our prose. That is, I'd be fine with just "Time is the succession of events from the past through the present to the future...". --Pfhorrest (talk) 06:31, 11 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Understood. Will comment more tomorrow. -Stevertigo (t | c) 08:57, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

To say that time is a succession of events seems to me to be saying that a stage is the action that takes place upon that stage. The missing word is "continuum", but we have seen problems with that. I suggest: "Time is the dimension along which events occur in apparently irreversable succession." References: "Newton did for time what the Greek geometers did for space, idealized it into an exactly measurable dimension." About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution, Paul Davies, p. 31, Simon & Schuster, 1996, ISBN-13: 978-0684818221; "It was the minute hand that would in fact propel human time into a new dimension...", About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang, Adam Frank, p. 77, Free Press, 2011, ISBN-13: 978-1439169599; "We might also add: time is the dimension of change...", "Time's Square", Murray McBeath, in The Philosophy of Time, edited by Robin Le Poidevin and Murray McBeath, Oxford University Press, 1993, ISBN-13: 978-0198239994. Rick Norwood (talk) 13:12, 11 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Rick, I agree that "continuum" works, but can we go over the issues with "continuum" and see if these issues are actually fatal for its usage? Pfhorrest and I seem to agree that the word "apparently" is not necessary, because time is just not reversible in all but the most outlandish proposals. Hence mentioning these in the lede, even tangentially via usage of "apparently," gives undue weight to such theories. We can however treat the issue of T-reversal in the bottom lede paragraph which deals with time travel.
 * The problem with calling time a "dimension" is that in extra dimension theories of spacetime like 11D or 12D string theory, time exists in more than just one dimension - it is regarded as essentially inseparable from space, hence the term "spacetime." Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 20:40, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I actually said that I don't think there is a problem with "apparently" being attached to "irreversible", but that I didn't think "irreversible" was necessary at all (so "apparently" is fine to go with it). Whether or not time is reversible is not something we really need to talk about in the first sentence; but if we are to talk about it, I think "apparently" softens "irreversible" to the right degree. --Pfhorrest (talk)


 * The problem is that it isnt even an issue of "apparent" phenomenon, or lack thereof. Every serious inquiry into the idea of time travel runs into major snags, thus there is no issue of any "apparent" phenomenon to say otherwise. There unfortunately is just no such thing as time travel or time reversal except in fringe theories or science fiction, and that basic fact doesn't need to be "softened." -Stevertigo (t | c) 03:12, 12 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Both the words "apparently" and "irreversible" should remain. Anti-particles have this property called T-symmetry, but the arrow of time is still the apparent reality.  Please don't take this as an indication of consensus.   71.169.181.254 (talk) 05:05, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Stevertigo: the issue with "continuum" is highly technical: quantum time may be discrete rather than continuous. The objection to "dimension" is similarly technical. But these are the two words used most frequently by the sources, and I think the article should use one or the other. I agree with 71.169.181.254 and Pfhorrest that "apparently irreversible" is a good choice. "Apparent" not only softens "irreversible" but also has the sense of "to all appearances" time is irreversible. "The moving finger writes and having writ..." Rick Norwood (talk) 12:04, 12 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Again, words like "apparently irreversible" (or "existence" for that matter) are "good choice[s]" not simply in a vacuum. It's because they are in the primary definitions in widely-used dictionaries. Now "continuum" is also in some of those dictionaries, but both because it might be problematic, and it's not really necessary (when the word we might need is "continuing" or "continued").  However, our attitude should be to show great deference to dictionary definitions lest our own personal POV slip in without notice. 71.169.181.254 (talk) 00:51, 13 August 2012 (UTC)


 * My argument in favor of trimming out other parts (like "apparently irreversible") is exactly what you say about "continuum": "it might be problematic, and it's not really necessary". Omitting it doesn't add any bias toward any POV, it removes a slight bias against some POVs. The fact that those POVs are minority POVs doesn't matter, because by omission we are not pushing for them; we are simply not pushing against them. It is not enough to have sources backing a POV, or for a POV to be a majority POV. "The dictionary says so" is a good reason to include a point of view, but not a good reason to exclude contrary points of view.
 * You have still not answered my comments about "existence" above. What is a "progression of existence" supposed to mean, and how are the gaps of time between events not already covered by the second half of our current first sentence? --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:42, 13 August 2012 (UTC)


 * First, my main concern about non-neutral POV was that of insisting that the lede for Time be principally of the POV of measurement or of experience of beings like us since 1. it is certain that time existed and had operational effect before there were anyone anywhere measuring it or experiencing it and 2. the primary definitions in the three salient dictionaries of the English language has the broader definition. It's not about "my" POV or "your" POV or anyone else's POV unless we witness an obstinate insistence of either of these less broad definitions (that's when I suspect it's some physicist or physics major having some trouble believing that there are other ways to view and interpret the reality that they find themselves in).  So far, as best as I can see it, leaving religion out of it for the moment, there are still 3 major POVs (and none are bad, but not all are general): time as some facet of reality that transcends any beings measuring it or experiencing it, time as something that someone measures in physical reality, and time as something that someone experiences.  All three are very important but the latter two are not as broad and thus not as neutral.  Time is not like culture or society or justice or love.  The latter doesn't really exist outside that of beings (normally human beings) experiencing it.  But it is silly to deny the existence of time outside of the existence of beings like us that measure and experience it.  That is my sole specific POV concern and always had been.
 * Now, about my general POV concern that applies to any article (including this one) and any editor (including myself) is that for a fundamental concept, the source of NPOV in the lede comes from the reputable and widely-used dictionaries. If its subject is definable, then the first sentence should give a concise definition: where possible, one that puts the article in context for the nonspecialist. I hope we can agree on that.  I continue to assert that the NPOV source of concise definitions are the dictionaries. Now, "concise" does not simply mean short.  It needs to be complete (to what extent is possible) and short.  Again, the dictionaries do a better job of that than do I or anyone else here, unless they count themselves a lexicographer.  I just do not understand the hesitancy to draw from the dictionary regarding this.
 * The words "progress of existence" is OED. I don't really understand why the objection to "progress" stuck after it was explained that it doesn't always mean "getting better", but changing it to "progression" seemed to be an acceptable compromise if that is what it took to get something resembling the dictionary definition into the very first sentence.  "Progress of existence" is English.  Like other definitions in the dictionary, I guess you would have to look up those words and put together meaning with the syntax, but we all know that sitting down with a dictionary and using it as a self-contained source of definitions will eventually lead to circularity.  I dunno how it begins other than someone picking up a rock and saying "rock".  And the burden of proof (or of explanation) is really on you to show that the gaps between events are somehow covered with other words in the lede sentence.  They're not.  "Existence" or "reality" exists (as does time) between events.  But if you don't believe me, please at least believe the dictionary.
 * Lastly, this "Ruler of Wikipedia" editor was a piece of shit. I don't know how you saw anything useful coming out of him/her.  One look at the contribs shows that.  And now they blocked him/her indefinitely.  So I am, again, returning it to the "LGV", that is fully justified by the dictionary and am asking you to explain how the dictionary is wrong from the NPOV. 70.109.185.99 (talk) 06:28, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I feel like you are talking past me, as you keep putting forth "its in the dictionary" against my specific rebuttal of that justification, without addressing that rebuttal directly. I am not saying that dictionaries are not reliable sources, and I am not saying that I or anyone else knows better than the dictionary; I am saying that dictionaries report a wide variety of common, usually rough and lay understandings of words; while if we are to give one definitive statement in the lede of a more extensive encyclopedia article, we need to be more sophisticated than that. Being in the dictionary is a good argument for a viewpoint being notable; but it is not a good argument for a viewpoint being definitive. I am saying, to maintain NPOV for viewpoints not covered in the dictionary's rough treatment, we sometimes need remain silent on matters that the dictionary would coarsely take a definitive stand on.
 * Let me relate an analogous case: defining "person". If you look up most dictionary definitions, one definition of "person" will be "a human being". However, there are very notable viewpoints according to which not all and only human beings are persons; some nonhuman things may also be persons, and some biologically human things may not be persons. So to have the article on Person begin with "A person is a human..." would be biased, despite the fact that dictionaries often include that definition, and that when most people talk about persons, they are usually talking about humans.
 * I am saying that likewise, just because lots of dictionaries say "continuum" or "indefinite" or things like that about time, does not automatically make those claims NPOV. It would be undue weight if we were to go into detail in the lede about how time might be discrete or finite or whatever; but simply not asserting that it is a continuum or indefinite solves the issue by not taking a stand on it. Continuousness and indefiniteness and so on may be very common to ordinary people's notions of time, and the dictionary including them is a good argument for that point, but that point does not establish that they are either necessary to any complete definition of time, or that they are neutral to all competing definitions of time. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:59, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Time is the succession of events isn't great, since it could be read as a definition of history. Time is more like the successiveness of events, the tendency of one event to succeed another. Also the "references" generally don't mention "succession". 1Z (talk) 10:34, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree. "Time...is the succession of events..." (or sequence of events or progress of events) confuses the events with the dimension (or continuum) along which events happen. My suggestion opened to mixed reviews, but I'm going to suggest it again: "Time is the dimension along which events occur in apparently irreversable succession." References: "Newton did for time what the Greek geometers did for space, idealized it into an exactly measurable dimension." About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution, Paul Davies, p. 31, Simon & Schuster, 1996, ISBN-13: 978-0684818221; "It was the minute hand that would in fact propel human time into a new dimension...", About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang, Adam Frank, p. 77, Free Press, 2011, ISBN-13: 978-1439169599; "We might also add: time is the dimension of change...", "Time's Square", Murray McBeath, in The Philosophy of Time, edited by Robin Le Poidevin and Murray McBeath, Oxford University Press, 1993, ISBN-13: 978-0198239994. Rick Norwood (talk) 14:28, 14 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Time is an aspect/feature of events. It is an aspect that can be modelled on a number line - a dimension. To avoid taking a POV on the substantivalist-relationist issue, something like this:
 * Time is a dimension of events — in which events can be sequenced, their duration and the intervals between them can be compared and quantified, and with which rates of change can be measured.


 * Saying time is "a dimension of events" does not imply the realist-substantivalist-Newtonian position that such a "dimension" exists independently of the events. I think it is wise to heed the caution contained in the first paragraph that defining time is a challenge, cease trying to begin "Time is the...", and return to begin by giving a broad description of the basic temporal concepts.
 * Time is not "the sequence of events" - a sequence of events is simply a sequence of events. Events only have sequence because by "an event" we already understand that a temporal component is involved. Nor is time "the sequence of ALL events" - as some events cannot be established to have a definite sequence.
 * While "succession" is an exceedingly better term than "progression", for the same reasons as above, time is still not identical to any "succession of events", but rather events are successive because events are already understood to have a temporal component, and not all events are located at the same place on that dimension.--JimWae (talk) 19:41, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * "Dimension" also does not imply a continuum. --JimWae (talk) 20:48, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with Peterdjones that "Time is more like the successiveness of events, the tendency of one event to succeed another"; that is the intended reading of the wording as it stands now, and a reason why we changed away from "sequence", but I can see how it could still seem to be talking about the set of events, and not the order of that set. So how about an older suggestion that never made its way into the article: "order". Time is the order of events from past to to the present to the future..."? This really makes explicit what I intended the two halves of the first sentence to accomplish together: time is both an order and a measure, it's both about what events come before and after which, and about how long and how far apart those events are. Again, just like space is about both position and size/distance. I'm going to be bold and change that now, but if anyone takes offense go ahead and revert. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:59, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Phorrest, I think "Time is the order of events from past to to the present to the future..." doesn't actually solve the problem. With this statement Time equals "order of events...". More likely the "order of events" is given by "time". It seems to me, realizing a temporal component precedes the "order of events" or "sequence of events". I think saying "Time orders and sequences events from the past to the present to the future..." comes much closer to solving the problem. Or else try "Time orders or sequences events from past to present to the future...". Please notice that "order" and "sequence" have their own shades of meaing. Or we could throw out one of those words. Steve Quinn (talk) 14:56, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Rick Norwood wrote:  As I said before, this issue is not fatal for the purpose of using the term "continuum" - time very well may be quantized at a microscopic scale, but as those particles interact with others, what may be a discrete phenomenon becomes continuous through the sheer complexity of these interactions. Hence, "continnum" can fit. - Can you explain the difficulty with "dimension." The only real apparent snag is in limiting time to a single dimension. - Yeah, that seems to be my conclusion as well. I lean towards "continuum," over "dimension." -Stevertigo (t | c) 23:18, 16 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The problem with dimension is the one you noted. There may be more than one time dimension.  Which is why I wrote "Time is a dimension..." rather than "Time is the dimension..."  Between continuum and dimension I have no strong preference. Rick Norwood (talk) 00:34, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

ISO 8601
Should not this page refer / link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:6B0:E:2018:0:0:0:207 (talk) 23:22, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

My only issue with this is that ISO 8601 is a human based system to represent the recording of time. In other words data format. Whether time is recorded in 24 hour format or 12 hour format really does not add to the discussion on this "time" wiki page. This page is more focuse on what is time as opposed to what is the best way to write time references. Throckmorton Guildersleeve (talk) 17:18, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

newtonian time
Why does searching for "newtonian time" bring you to "time", when they just aint the same thing??? Newtonian time is where it is universally constant, while this time is in reality a relative quantity. New article needed? I decided. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.226.254.178 (talk) 10:47, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Newtonian time now redirects to Absolute time and space --JimWae (talk) 21:27, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Einstein name not mentioned in the main description??
I find it quite strange if not downright wrong that Einstein name is not mentioned in the main description of time which is often the only portion of text that most people read. From the start "Time is a dimension ..... " until  ".....and in human life spans"  Einstein name is not mentioned once whether other scientists are mentioned (Newton, Kant, Leibniz). Einstein has completely changed the way we look at time not in a theoretical way but in a measure proven scientific way. Without Einstein's work we wouldn't be thinking of time the way we are now. He has fundamentally transformed the conception of time itself. Unless his theory of relativity is proven wrong at some point, I believe his name cannot be omitted from the main description of time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gadio2007 (talk • contribs) 09:47, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Hey, feel free to suggest here what to add and where to add it. Be careful about being wp:bold, since it is very difficult to get several editors here to even agree to putting in the dictionary definitions of time in the lede.  But I would be interested in seeing a good one-sentence reference to how Einstein's perspective of time contrasts with those of Newton's, Leibniz, and Kant's. 71.169.184.73 (talk) 16:32, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

No mention of the concept of time presented by Aristotle
This wiki section on time makes no mention of the concept of time presented by Aristotle, in his work titled 'Physics'. In Book IV, Aristotle states that 'we want to know what time is and what exactly it has to do with movement". He reaches a number of conclusions (1) "time is not movement, but only movement in so far as it admits of enumeration"; (2) "time then is a kind of number"; (3) "every simultaneous time is self-identical; (4) "if there were no time, there would be no 'now', and vice versa"; (5) "time then also is both made continuous by the now and divided by it"; (6) "time is number of movement in respect of the before and after, and it is continuous since it is an attribute of what is continuous; (7)"time is not described as fast or slow, but as many or few and as long or short" (8) :there is the same time everywhere at once, but not the same time before and after"; (9) "not only do we measure the movement by time, but also the time by the movement, because they define each other"; (10) "time is a measure of motion and of being moved, and it measures the motion by determining a motion which will measure exactly the whole motion"; (11) "to be in time means, for movement, that both it and its essence are measured by time"....clearly then to be in time has the same meaning for other things also, namely, that their being should be measured by time", (12) "since time is number, the 'now' and the 'before' and the like are in time, just as 'unit' and 'odd' and 'even' are in number; (13)"to be in time does not mean to coexist with time, any more than to be in motion or in place means to coexist with motion or place; (14) "since what is in time is so in the same sense as what is in number is so, a time greater than everything in time can be found"; (15) "a thing then will be affected by time, just as we are accustomed to say that time wastes things away, and that all things grow old through time..."; (16)"things which are always are not, as such, in time, for they are not contained by time, nor is their being measured by time"; (17) since then time is the measure of motion, it will be the measure of rest--indirectly, for all rest is in time"; (18)"time is not motion, but number of motion: and what is at rest,also, can be in the number of motion"; (19) "neither will everything that does not exist be in time, i.e., those non-existent things that cannot exist, as the diagonal cannot be commensurate with the side"; (20) the 'now' is the link of time (for it connects past and future time), AND it is a limit of time (for it is the beginning of the one and the end of the other); (21) in time all things things come into being and pass-away".

In book VI, Aristotle offers this operational definition of time: "that which is intermediate between moments is time". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.185.50.151 (talk) 12:42, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Section on time perception
The section on time perception was titled as "judgement of time" (and later "temporal judgements" by User:JimWae), but this phrasing is inappropriate and seems rather based on pedantry. What's wrong with simply titling it as "time perception" or "perception of time"? The majority of readers are more familiar with that phrase than one that attempts to achieve a more specific definition of which the difference is trivial at best, and only serves to confuse and be preoccupied in pedantry. - M0rphzone (talk) 09:37, 8 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, I also think "== Time perception ==" is better. It's now in line with the main article Time perception to which it refers. - DVdm (talk) 11:45, 8 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I find it surprising that someone like (Redacted), who has no energy for (Redacted) as he calls it, would concern himself with articles on the == Perception of Time == Yanickborg (talk) 12:52, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Time-like concepts: terminology
The term "time" is generally used for many closed but different concepts. Speaking exactly, one should distinguish at least between: From this point of view, the term time can be used as a shorthand or in general sense. Nevertheless, in an exact text like in definitions, proper term should be chosen:
 * instant as an object - one point on the time axes. Being an object, it has no value;
 * time interval as an object - part of the time axes limited by two instants. Being an object, it has no value;
 * date as a quantity characterizing time instant. Being a quantity, it has value, say, 2014-04-26T09:42:36,75 in the standard form, or today, 9:42 a.m. in a colloquial form;
 * duration as a one of quantities characterizing time interval . Being a quantity, it has value, say, 15 minutes. Other quantities describing a time interval are e.g. dates of its begin and end.

rather than because Δt is neither name of that interval nor its value (it is its duration - one of more quantities connected to that interval, other quantity being e.g. date of its start instant).
 * effect occurs during time interval of duration Δt = 5 s (full text)
 * effect occurs during short time interval (given property of that interval)
 * effect occurs during 5 s time interval (given quantity = duration characterizing that interval)
 * effect occurs during 5 s (shorthand)
 * effect occurs during time interval Δt = 5 s

JOb 10:27, 9 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Notes and references

JOb 10:27, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Web time
JavaScript's internal clock starts at 1 January 1970 00:00:00. This can be shown with the getTimefunction.

Is this going to be added to the page?

Blehmann1 (talk) 16:18, 29 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I have removed it per wp:unsourced and wp:original research. Please provide wp:reliable sources for such content. Cheers - DVdm (talk) 18:47, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Religion
Under Religion, I have restored the edits for now per WP:RELEVANCE and removed any unreliable/online sources while keeping the text sources.. 71.82.112.140 (talk) 14:51, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I have put standard citation templates in place—with missing page parameters. Please provide the exact pages on which we can verify the content? Thanks. - DVdm (talk) 15:12, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I don't remember the exact pages and can't for the life of me refind those claims. Fortunately, after a lengthy, nearly unpromising google search, I found another text source which should come in useful for this claim. Please see Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death - Page 111 - states "...but time should in fact be thought of as an illusion..." 71.82.112.140 (talk) 16:32, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I replaced the source. On the other hand, a search for time being a "paradox" in the first book results in nothing. Are you sure about that one? - DVdm (talk) 17:22, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * For one example of time being described as paradoxical in a similar fashion to this claim, please take into account A Rational Mystical Ascent: The Coincidence of Opposites in Kabbalistic and Hasidic Thought - which states "...To this we might add the paradoxes of time, for example, that the present is both completely distinct from yet imbued with the past and the future..." 71.82.112.140 (talk) 03:52, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Do we have something that is not self-published, preferably a wp:secondary source? - DVdm (talk) 08:12, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
 * There is something published by Johns Hopkins University found here which states, "...Taken together, these two passages sum up the strange paradox of time: it is both inexorably ubiquitous, yet also maddeningly difficult to talk about..." There is also a list of paradoxes on Wikipedia, which (listed under Mysticism, not Time) includes Tzimtzum, or "how to reconcile self-awareness of finite Creation with Infinite Divine Source". See also: Temporal finitism (or the idea that time is finite) and temporal paradox (or time paradox) - which might be worth mentioning.
 * For additional sources in support of this claim, Scientific American published an article entitled The Paradox of Time: Why It Can't Stop, But Must, and Boston University/Lawrence Erlbaum Associates also published one called The Paradox of Time. These particular sources should be somewhat more helpful than something self-published on a Kabbalah website, on time as a "paradox". However, I wish they had made the same claims about the past, present, and future in Kabbalah. Nevertheless, I still think it is safe to say that in some religious aspects, especially in Kabbalah, time can be viewed as paradoxical and illusionary.
 * Side note: Although these scholarly, secondary sources seem more reliable, two of them don't appear to bluntly mention Kabbalah at all (excluding the Johns Hopkins page which has links to Kabbalah books in the sidebar), so they might be useless in support of this claim. Please see The Kabbalah of the Soul: The Transformative Psychology and Practices of Jewish Mysticism, which, on page 126, states, "...The paradox of the future altering the past is also seen to be an illusion..." Also, refer to the book listed above (Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death) which also mentions on page 132, the application of the "paradox of time" to Kabbalistic symbolism. It has been proven difficult to find very many additional sources on this specific claim in particular, but I think we have a little bit more to work with now. 71.82.112.140 (talk) 13:52, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry, insufficiently interested to bother checking :-) - DVdm (talk) 09:15, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Error about the defenetions about a year
It appears that a year actually lasts 365.25 days, or 365 days and six hours. The infomation on this page about a common year is incorrect since it said it lasts only 365 days and to tell the truth, leap years does not exist. The reason that people say that leap years exist because that they forgot to count the remaining 6 hours of the year, and since full days are easier to count, they put a leap year every 4 years(24÷4=6). Please add your thoughts in the section below about if you agree or object this edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gerry.y.ma (talk • contribs) 01:47, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I believe that you are confusing the common year's duration (365 days) with the length of a Julian astronomical year (365.25 days). Dustin  ( talk ) 01:56, 16 July 2014 (UTC)


 * The common year is defined as having 365 days, whereas the leap year is defined as having 366 days, as you can verify in the articles. Note that the Julian year is defined as having 365.25 days, as you can also see in the article Year. I have added the Julian year to the article. - DVdm (talk) 08:36, 16 July 2014 (UTC)


 * And of course the average year is currently none of those, as reflected by there being only about 24 1/4 leap years per century. And the year is slowly getting longer, as reflected by the addition of several leap-seconds per decade. Chill out and smell the bullshit! --Jerzy•t 11:19, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Delineating the topic "Time"
I said at Talk:Time (disambiguation) that the lead entry at the Dab page had to closely reflect the lead on the accompany primary topic article, but then got out ahead of myself by composing

-- to replace the IMO clearly unacceptable Dab lead that reads


 * Time is a common term for the experience of duration and a fundamental quantity of measuring systems.

-- this tentative Dab-page lead entry:


 * Time is the domain of knowledge concerning the ordering of events, and measurement of non-spatial separation among events, neglecting the considerations introduced by the physics of relativity.

which i regard as also doing a better job of capturing the scope of the accompanying article Time than does its current lead sent (which reads)


 * Time is a measure in which events can be ordered from the past through the present into the future, and also the measure of durations of events and the intervals between them.

(Note that my approach would continue the current partitioning off of a separate article Time in physics (or something with about the same scope, even if with a different title), which, i should think, deserves mention in Time essentially only by a sentence or short 'graph including that link.)

I can imagine meeting some anticipable objections with an odd-looking (but i think well-accepted) structural approach, that may offend users' intuitions less: letting Time redirect to Time (classical conceptions), or Time (pre-relativistic conceptions). That would reflect the fact that while most people don't think about relativity when they say "time", there is an ambiguity between "time" in the sense most people mean and "time" (what is in almost everyone's experience adequately described by classical conceptions, but in a strict sense doesn't exist at all bcz all this/that matter keeps anything from actually behaving exactly as classical dynamics describes.) That classical-time article of course would need a HatNote like


 * This article is about time as described by classical physics. See also Time in relativistic physics.

(or even, if you have the guts for it!)


 * ... See also Time in physics.

--Jerzy•t 09:30, 22 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I did the best i could on the Dab, but i'm still not satisfied with the Dab handling of the articles Time and Time in physics, whose topics overlap in ways very poorly captured by their titles. --Jerzy•t 10:55, 22 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I have undone your edit to the about-clause, as the article Time in physics is not exclusively about the relativistic aspects of time. I found no way to account for that, so I undid it altogether. Other suggestions welcome. - DVdm (talk) 19:53, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

"Time is often referred to as the fourth dimension,,,"
This vapid idea ought to be scrapped rather than perpetuated. Obviously time is a dimension of existence, ( a 3-dimensional object has no detectable physical reality if it does not exist for a finite duration) but not of space. Parrot-fashion repetition of it implies: 1) The Post Office could evaluate the postage of a parcel from the data that it measures 3x4x5 cm, and is scheduled to last 6 hours. Or 2)"Since there could not possibly exist a 4th dimension of space, we must be talking of something else in disguise". A refusal to admit the possibility of what is difficult to conceive.125.237.122.52 (talk) 03:26, 11 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Where does the article say that time is a dimension of space? NebY (talk) 07:44, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

History of our clock time measurement system in this article is poor
The section on the history of the calendar is pretty good. Of course how we get 365 days in a year is also simple to understand, as both the day (noon to noon) and year (equinox to equinox) are simple observations that all cultures can make.

The history of why the day is divided into 24 hours and not some other number is not very well described. The article on clocks has a little better description, but still not as good as the calendar portion above.

The article has these sections:


 * History of the calendar


 * History of time measurement devices

Right there you see the problem. The "History of the Calendar" is about how we came to have our current calendar. Logically there should follow a "History of the clock". It would also be about the abstract ideas (that there are 24 hours, that they are divided into AM and PM, that the counting of them begins with 12 -- these are all very strange things, unlike any other measurement system, and not explained here) and not the devices used to measure it.

Perhaps using the term "History of the Clock" would be confusing so one could label it "History of the Division of the day into smaller units"  (And the symetrical "History of the Calendar is logically "History of the Division of the year into smaller units".)

In other words there is both a abstract and physical manifestation of the division of time for both the periods of greater than a day, and those less than a day. (It does not take much technology to "build" a calendar, so there is no need for a separate section on it. Any writing system will do.)

ZeroXero (talk) 19:29, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Timeframe
Timeframe and time frame redirect here, but the article doesn't explain the concept. IMO we should either add a section explaining what a timeframe is, or point the redirect to a page which actually explains the topic (such as Time Frame). -- Gordon Ecker, WikiSloth (talk) 06:49, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

I think the later is a good idea: redirect to the wiktionary page. But that may be because I lack insight into what a longer section of this article would say about it. The definition seems complete, and I don't think there is a lot more to say about it. But if there is maybe you could sandbox it here and we could add it.

ZeroXero (talk) 19:33, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Edits to lead
I have reverted this edit to the lead by user :
 * Opening sentence does not conform to wp:LEADSENTENCE. Opening statement must give a definition, as it used to. Original sentence was moved to bottom of the edit, adding wp:unsourced wp:POV "Philosophically".
 * Contains "...defined by a specific frequency of a vibrating element" not backed by the cited source. And wrong.
 * Contains two wp:CIRCULAR references.
 * Contains one wp:unsourced statement "co-ordinates Earth's seasons to the zodiac constellations, especially the rising sign of spring which is now in Pisces and gradually shifting to Aquarius (see the dawning of the age of Aquarius).​"
 * "Dawning of the age of Aquarius"? Looking at user's edit history, this seems to be their hobbyhorse.

I have left a final warning on user's talk page. Comments welcome. - DVdm (talk) 06:43, 23 June 2016 (UTC)


 * The reason I changed it to what I did was to point out an obvious deficiency in the article, namely the omission of the main thing time is. it has always been and still is a co-ordination of events with the cycles of earth and moon, so why is this completely missing from the article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jiohdi (talk • contribs) 12:39, 23 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Please sign all your talk page messages with four tildes ( ~ ) and indent the messages as outlined in wp:THREAD and wp:INDENT. Thanks.
 * Time is much more than "co-ordination of events with the cycles of Earth and Moon". Cycles, Earth and Moon are mentioned at various places in the article and thus not completely missing. While the first sentence of your edit is acceptable in historic context (—but unsourced in the format that you provided—), it is too narrow (—ancient world only—) and cannot be used as an opening sentence of an article. It also does not provide a definition—see wp:LEADPARAGRAPH. Before changing the lead of this article, please check the archives of this talk page. You'll find that it took considerable wp:consensus effort to arrive at the current form. - DVdm (talk) 12:59, 23 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Jiohdi, you're welcome to have and hold to your own personal philosophy about stuff, but you are not welcome to force other people to accept it. Does time exist on the other side of the Milky Way?  Thousands of light-years from here?  Is the time out there governed by the "natural cycles of Earth and Moon"?  That's so silly.
 * DVdm Thank you. The present lede for this article is better than it has been for years. 71.184.228.118 (talk) 06:36, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Rationale for recent reversion of two reversions
User:94.175.0.86, over the last 24 hours you have made two reversions, deleting materials while claiming to be restoring materials in your comments, and also while providing no further explanation for your major reversions. Meanwhile the accuracy of the article has been quite degraded. GMT was agreed to by the International Meridian Conference, not by the Convention of the Metre. Before making any further edits to this article, could you please:
 * 1) Explain your most recent edits here?
 * 2) Provide true and accurate explanations for any further revisions to the article in the "reason" field?

These future courtesies by you would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,

Scott P. (talk) 16:11, 27 June 2016 (UTC
 * What is the "International Meridian Conference 1984"?  Do you mean the International Meridian Conference 1884?   What is "Howse 1997", cited in support of this edit?   Why did you provide no book title, year and place of publication and International Standard Book Number?   Are you referring to "Greenwich Time: And the Discovery of the Longitude" by Derek Howse, published in 1980?   The centimetre/gramme/second system was introduced by the Convention on the Metre in 1874, information which you removed without explanation. 94.175.0.86 (talk) 16:32, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Re your message on my talk page, I'm not disputing that GMT was first agreed to internationally at the International Meridian Conference but you still have not explained why you removed the information about the international adoption of the second ten years earlier. 94.175.0.86 (talk) 17:04, 27 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your prompt replies here. Regarding the International Meridian Conference, if you could please click on the cross-link to this conference that I provided in my edit, I am certain that the article will inform you greatly about this conference.  I believe the Howse cite, was a cite about the conference that I pulled directly out of the conference article itself.  I will look at it more closely, and improve it as you suggest, thank you.  In the 1800's it was then the scientific custom to assign inquiries into time as the exclusive domain of astronomy, and inquiries into weights and measures, into the Earth Sciences.  (This is an interesting fact that I only just learned myself, a day or two ago, in my research into these articles.)  Thus, the Convention of the Metre officially had nothing to do with Time, though unofficially I do believe the subject was then discussed there.  Accordingly, it was innacurate to associate any international agreement on GMT with that convention, or really to include a reference to that convention in that article at all, as far as I can see.


 * Thanks,


 * Scott P. (talk) 17:10, 27 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Regarding the mistaken "download dates," also thank you for pointing that out. I will correct them.  Thanks, Scott P. (talk) 17:12, 27 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I will wait until tomorrow for any more potential input from yourself, before I make any more edits to the Time articles, just to assure we are on the same page before I do. Thanks kindly, Scott P. (talk) 17:15, 27 June 2016 (UTC)


 * PS: When I did my most recent "editing stint" on the time articles, in which I did some from memory at first, when I later returned to attempt to properly document all that I had edited in, I discovered that one of my sources had a few major errors in it, thus the major corrections towards the end of my "editing stint". Scott P. (talk) 17:46, 27 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Metre Convention seems to back up what you say, but presumably you have no objection to the inclusion of a reference to the centimetre/gramme/second system introduced by the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1874? 94.175.0.86 (talk) 17:53, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Certainly add a ref, if you can clearly document somewhere that includes any specific wording of the Convention Agreement that includes anything about Time or the Second. Otherwise, It appears to me that your source may have been making the same erroneous assumption that mine did, namely that Time was officially discussed at that conference, as all of the documents that I have thus far found, including the BIPM website itself, say nothing about the second having been defined at that conference. The absence of this info from the BIPM website itself seems to me to be the most telling. Also, I think it is probably a foregone conclusion that until the conversion to the SI-second, which is now based on cesium oscillations, there was no real need to sign any agreement on the exact definition of the second, as that had been defined and agreed upon centuries earlier, with no dissent or controversy.

Essentially it was what most folks now hold it to be, one 60th part of a minute, which is one 60th part of an hour, which is 1/24th part of a day, which is approximately 1/365.25th part of a year. That definition worked well enough for society until the speed-up of the "electronics revolution," when we first discovered all sorts of "nasty little secrets" about our little, supposedly well ordered universe! We uncovered scandalous secrets like the fact that the solar year was inconstant by a good part of a second each year, etc. etc. Our little celestial myth of the "exactitude of the heavenly spheres" slowly crumbled before our very eyes. How sad!

In my time as a Wikipedia editor, it has never ceased to astound me as to how sometimes fiction seems to attempt to make its way into "facthood!" Your source may be an instance of that, who knows? Thanks again for your thoughtful reply, Scott P. (talk) 19:13, 27 June 2016 (UTC)


 * You are truly amazing.  You appear to be doubting the veracity of the Wikipedia article which describes what was decided at the Convention and confirms that timekeeping was not a matter with which it concerned itself.   Again, how you can regard the introduction of the CGI system as a "fiction" is beyond me.   That was done in 1874 and is the reason why the meeting which agreed the Convention took place.   My edit was already in the can before I noticed your comment and I will be saving it momentarily. 94.175.0.86 (talk) 19:43, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

How the "second" was (or was not) defined at the Convention of the Metre
I'm not certain what you mean when you say that I, "appear to be doubting the veracity of the Wikipedia article which describes what was decided at the Convention and confirms that timekeeping was not a matter with which it concerned itself."

I am only saying that it seems to me that unless some new agreement about the definition of what a second might have been was officially defined by that Convention, or unless some other unit of time might have been newly defined by that Convention, then I cannot see why that Convention should be referred to in the article on Time. I've pored over the actual treaty agreements, and have found nothing about any references to definitions of time in any of them. I have found secondary sources that describe the treaty as defining the "CGS" system of measurement, but those documents are all interpretations of the treaty. In the treaty itself I could find no mention of any "time definitions," or of the CGS system of measurements itself, for that matter.

If you insist, without first being willing to discuss the exact cites here, that this treaty did define the second, despite no primary proof of it, and if you insist on incorporating such a claim into the article without such a discussion here first, then I must simply give up, and would then have to simply say "please do as you will". If you would prefer to first attempt to clarify here together with me so that a better mutual understanding might first be reached between us, then please list your supporting cites here on this talk page, and I would then be quite happy to discuss them with you here further, before we both agree to use them in the article. I get the sense that you may prefer to edit the article first. If that is your choice, then I will yield to you. The choice is yours, either:
 * 1) Discuss first, based on actual cite examples listed here on this talk page, then hopefully agree, then edit the article, or else...
 * 2) Edit the article first, without any prior cite-based discussion or agreement here on this talk page.

I will await your decision. Thanks, Scott P. (talk) 22:01, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Continuous
Regarding this and this, I agree that "continuous" is mentioned in some of the citations in the second ref, but as it is not mentioned in the first, and as at least in physics mathematical continuity is not required, I reverted to the original "continued". However, if this gets reverted again, no problem with me. - DVdm (talk) 09:51, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, the Harper-Collins dictionary says "The continuous passage of existence and events..." and the American Heritage Dictionary says "A continuous measurable quantity..." and "... non-spatial continuum...". In the previous lede (and in the citations), "continuous" was meant to be "not discrete".  And the use of "progression" was wikilinked to sequence to indicate a single dimension where elements of the set (that would be "events") are ordered in the manner as real numbers are (the "arrow of time").  At least regarding a single reference frame.
 * Now I sorta like to think about the possibility that time (and space) are discrete and all of these differential equations of action can be turned into simple discrete difference equations as in cellular automata. And, in my speculative opinion, I think that Planck units (except where $$4 \pi G = 1$$ and $$\epsilon_0 = 1$$ rather than how they are currently defined) would play a role, because the Planck length and Plank time is so small that no one can ever tell the difference between solutions from the continuous-time and continuous-space equations of actions and the discrete-time and discrete-space solutions.  And the other cool thing would be if these diff eqs. were discretized from their counterparts with $$ 4 \pi G $$, $$\hbar$$, $$c$$, and $$\epsilon_0$$ missing, corresponding quantities such like flux density and field strength are exactly the same thing.  Nature doesn't need to pull out of her butt these extraneous scaling factors to relate the quantities within cells and with adjacent cells.
 * But, of course, it is all speculative. As far as mortal human beings know, time and space are both continuous physical quantities and there is nothing measurable to indicate anything different.  And I think that the lede definition should reflect that.  Also, I think that the lede definition of time should reflect that, as best as we can tell in the common experience, that the arrow of time prevails, that events in time are ordered (at least within a single frame of reference) with one event preceding (and sometimes causing) another event, and that this arrow only points in one direction.  That's what "continuous" and "progression" (or maybe a better word is "succession") is supposed to convey.  And does the word "continued" even mean anything in this context? 71.184.228.118 (talk) 18:44, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Maybe this lede is the best we can hope for. It is, as best as I can tell, the clearest, most neutral, and least parochial lede paragraph to this article of an extremely fundamental topic that I have seen so far.  In two or three sentences, it covers all of the important bases.  Maybe it's best to leave it alone, but I think that "... and continuous ..." maybe should be appended to "continued".  I dunno, maybe not. 71.184.228.118 (talk) 19:08, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 November 2016
The importance of the number 12 is due to the number of lunar cycles in a year and the number of stars used to count the passage of night.

184.177.172.90 (talk) 22:26, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Doesn't appear very actionable, sorry. WP:NOTFORUM? Where should this passage go? Also, please back suggested changes with reliable sources as well. — Andy W. ( talk ) 00:18, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

introduction
Time is the measurement of change — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.207.116.134 (talk) 08:47, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 November 2016
If time gets slower because of speed or gravitation, is it logical to say that time has physical properties ? is time is some sort of energy moving at a speed of light ?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.117.128.250 (talk) 20:33, 26 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Interesting question, but not suited for an article talk page—see wp:Talk page guidelines. Please ask at our wp:Reference desk/Science. - DVdm (talk) 22:29, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Progress?
The 1st sentence uses a source that says time is "the progress...". Progress in most cases suggests or implies IMPROVEMENT. There is no consensus that things are always improving. Also "progress" is hyperlinked to article on "sequence". I seem to remember 1st sentence that did not have these 2 problems.--JimWae (talk) 11:26, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Time is a parameter in which events are sequenced, have comparative durations and intervals between them; rates of change are quantified using time. The position of events with respect to the transitory present is continually changing; events happen, then are located further and further in the past, while anticipated events in the future get closer & closer to the present. --JimWae (talk) 11:39, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

It seems the great majority of the sources for the lede use "sequence", not "progress" - and so far I see only one having progress (which wiki article links to sequence, not progress). I see no reason to prefer that one (or 2?) source over the others - and several reasons not to prefer it.--JimWae (talk) 12:14, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

What is INDEFINITE progress?--JimWae (talk) 12:21, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

I do not think we generally need a measured quantity to sequence events - we usually have before & after. We can compare durations quantitatively - with longer & shorter - or with numbered units--JimWae (talk) 12:25, 4 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I might suggest that you look at the Google definitions of the words "progress" or "progression". There is nothing in there about "IMPROVEMENT". But there is something in there about "advancement". They ain't the same thing.


 * That Wikipedia does not have a decent page of the root definitions of "progress" or "progression" is a different problem. Those are the correct words. "Parameter" is not specific enough.


 * "Indefinite" means what the dictionary says.


 * This really isn't that hard. Nor a radical nor unorthodox a definition. And the lede should not be that. 96.237.136.210 (talk) 05:09, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * It seems to me the links you provided for progress & progression are chock-filled with talk of improvement & of advancement to a higher level. Let's take the adjectives out for a moment & examine what nouns are used. Is time to be identified with the progress of events or even the progression of events? Even if we consider the more neutral succession of events or sequence of events, I do not think we would be justified in saying "there is time". The present 1st sentence has picked an outlier from among the many sources.--JimWae (talk) 06:45, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Indefinite is modifying progress, but I think the purpose of it being there is to convey something about the undetermined extent of time, not the type of "progress".--JimWae (talk) 06:49, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Looking up "parameter", it actually seems to work quite well - as an aspect of events. "Dimension" could also work. --JimWae (talk) 06:56, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * It's not about what seems to you. Wikipedia is about what it is.  Some things progress from a beginning to an end.  Even though there is a physical theory of the beginning of time about 13.8 billion years ago, both that theory isn't the only one (some theories consider the possibility of before the big bang), and in common use time is understood to have no beginning nor end.  That's what the indefinite is.  Why not just stick with the common concepts and definitions we get in the various dictionaries rather than synthesize some definition that exists nowhere else? 96.237.136.210 (talk) 07:08, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * OK. I will be more blunt. Contrary to your assertion, the links you provided for progress & progression ARE definitely chock-filled with talk of improvement & of advancement to a higher level. That outlier definition pretends it is saying something profound, but it is just a bunch of sophisticated-sounding words that are just vague or misleadingly presumptive when examined closely.--JimWae (talk) 21:47, 14 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Which Definition of continued for "continued" "indefinite" "progress"? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/continued
 * lasting or extending without interruption
 * resumed after interruption --JimWae (talk) 21:54, 14 December 2016 (UTC)


 * The job of a wikipedia definition is to present a non-presumptive NPOV explication of a concept. It is better to say less than too much.
 * Space is a 3-dimensional parameter of space-time in which events (& objects) have relative location and extent. The intervals between events (and objects) in space are quantified as distance.
 * Time is a uni-dimensional parameter of space-time in which events have a relative location, are sequenced, and have a relative duration, and in which there are relative intervals between events. Rates of change are quantified using time. The relative position of events with respect to the transitory present is continually changing...


 * Now, I am entirely aware there is no source that says exactly that & I do not expect that to be the exact lede. However, there are many definitions sourced in the lede that contain many elements of such a definition. There is only 1 source that has the presumptive "continued" "indefinite" "progress" - which vaguely pretends that the many philosophical issues regarding time have been resolved.--JimWae (talk) 22:37, 14 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Okay. So I can be blunt, too. The one link uses the word "improved" for an example: "as the century progressed, the quality of telescopes improved.". Some things improve in time somethings don't, e.g. "as the century progressed, the quality of air in Beijing deteriorated."  In fact the Google definition for deteriorate uses a word derived from progress.  But it doesn't mean improve.  Not always.  Sometimes it's become progressively worse but the worse came after the better.  Or if it's the state of art of telescopes, the better comes after the worse.  But the progress is that something comes after something else, improved or deteriorated.  Your insistence that "progress" means "improvement" does not wash at all.  I think "progression" is a better word but either is okay.  There is no other reference to the word "improved".  And there is no reference to "advancement to a higher level".  Only "advance" or advancement.  That's what time does.  There is this thing they call the arrow of time.  Beijing's air quality advanced to a lower level, not a higher level.  Chock-filled with talk of what?
 * So Jim is proposing changing the lede from a nearly verbatim quotation of extremely authoritative sources like OED and Webster and Collins and American Heritage, in a sentence that reflects something from each of those sources, and change it to something that "no source ... says exactly"? The existing lede simply states what is the most common understanding of a phenomenon every person experiences.  The first sentence is the most philosophical (but with very uncontroversial philosophical notions of time) and the second sentence starts hitting on the way scientists and practitioners deal with time (as measurement) and even hits a little on time as perception in the conscious mortal being. Two sentences lifting a lot of salient and commonly understood content.  I am curious why you want to break a lede that does such a good job and reflects the authoritative sources and replace it with something Jim is cooking up and doesn't really reflect any source. 173.48.60.68 (talk) 02:11, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Regarding the use of the word "continued", it's the first meaning, "lasting or extending without interruption ", not the latter meaning about resumption after interruption, that is applicable to time. Time continues into the future indefinitely and, from the perspective of mortal beings, has continued from indefinitely in the past.  "Continued", "indefinite", and "progression" in regard to "events" occurring in "existence" are all very fundamental notions applicable to the concept of time. 96.237.136.210 (talk) 06:58, 16 December 2016 (UTC)


 * OK, besides progress that is improvement, there is progress that is deterioration. That does not alter my point. Things get progressively worse or progressively better. Progress is a value-laden concept, and there is no consensus that time IS a change in status with regard to things we value. Less value-laden words would be "development" or "succession" -- but identifying time with the development of events and/or the succession of events is mistaking a feature of a concept for the concept itself (& may bring in causality - a related, but different topic). Most of the sources for the 1st sentence (and the definition given in the wiki article some time ago) talk about duration & sequence & intervals without saying time IS any single one of them. The source that says almost exactly what the present 1st sentence says is an outlier (and confuses part with whole).--JimWae (talk) 06:38, 25 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Progress, development & succession are all fundamental notions that involve time, yes - because they are temporal concepts. However, there can be no progress without a difference in time, while there CAN be a difference in time without progress. Thus identifying time as progress or as a progress of events is unsupported. There is no consensus that time itself is any kind of process. --JimWae (talk) 10:30, 25 December 2016 (UTC)


 * OED:"1 The indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole: ... 1.1 The continued progress of existence as affecting people and things:"
 * Webster: "1. indefinite, unlimited duration in which things are considered as happening in the past, present, or future; every moment there has ever been or ever will be."
 * Collins: "1. The continuous passage of existence in which events pass from a state of potentiality in the future, through the present, to a state of finality in the past."
 * American Heritage: "1. A continuous, measurable quantity in which events occur in a sequence proceeding from the past through the present to the future." or "1. a. A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future."
 * I don't know why there are different on-line AH references. Now somewhere in the primary definition there needs to be the notion of the succession, progression, procession, sequence of time marching on.  I still think that "progression" is better than "progress", but someone (not me) changed that.  The OED is pretty authoritative, hardly an outlier.  Words are words.  All words have some kind of "value", but there is nothing in "progress" that means anything other than progressing, i.e. "marching on".  Doesn't have any other value than that.  We need a primary definition of time as a thing, a phenomenon.  And we need a definition of time as something that is measured and experienced.  But time existed long before there was anyone around measuring or experiencing it, so the "timeless" definition should go first. 96.237.136.210 (talk) 07:32, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 December 2016
Please change the "Length, duration and size" for the item, "Lifespan" under the table called "List of units", from "85 or 82 years" to "85 to 84 years". This seems more appropriate as many human's lifespans vary and not all of them are just 85 or 84 years, even though they could live to be that age. Thank you for reading this request. 2602:306:8BAB:2320:F5AE:350F:CD07:2DDA (talk) 23:06, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. - Mlpearc  ( open channel ) 23:13, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 January 2017
In the phrase "Greece around 250 B.C. with a water" please replace "B.C." with "BC" because we normally don't put periods after the letters. 208.95.51.115 (talk) 13:56, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done  JTP (talk • contribs) 14:11, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Julian Barbour
I reverted these edits. The thoughts of Julian Barbour are already discussed - much more briefly - in the section headed "Time as 'unreal'". Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:37, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed. The addition was 90% wp:synthesis and wp:original research. What we have in the article already is on the edge of wp:UNDUE. I don't think we need more of that. - DVdm (talk) 22:07, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Just curious, what else in the article is on the edge of WP:UNDUE that maybe should be pushed over the edge? 96.237.136.210 (talk) 17:53, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Small change in wikilink in lede sentence.
Hello. In the first sentence of the lede, the word "irreversible" is wikilinked to Irreversible process. I wonder if it would be better to wikilink that word to Arrow of time. So it would look like
 * Time is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.

Would that be better? 96.237.136.210 (talk) 04:32, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I think that a link to arrow of time might create a bit of an wp:EASTEREGG here. - DVdm (talk) 09:46, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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I don't like the lead paragraph at all
I am finding it very unsatisfactory, uninformative. Crude. It is generally agreed that a definition is not allowed to use the word being defined, in the definition. Also, the definition should not have words in it that cannot be understood, without first understanding the word. The lead paragraph breaks this rule. You cannot understand "succession from the past through the present to the future" without first understanding "time." What is "past"? What is "present". What is "future"? They are simply points in time. One does not define a "straight line" by saying it is a sequence of previous points, current points, and further points. One defines a straigt line by saying it is the shortest distance between any 2 points. Two points.

Can time have qualities of being straight, or curved? I'm not sure. I would prefer to see the lead sentence define time in terms of an object that moves in space at a constant speed. One "day" is the unit of time between 2 events: the event where the sun is at maximum height in the sky until the next event where the sun is at a position of max height in the sky. Time is what happens when 2 events are not simultaneous. Another definition of time might of called a "second" and be the amount of time it takes light, in a vacuum, to move between 2 points in space when those points are 299 792 458 meters apart. Perhaps we should lead off by defining time in terms of space, and changes in space. Then again, perhaps we are we being circular here - defining time in terms of distance, yet defining distance in terms of time? Yet not understanding the essence of either. Nomenclator (talk) 01:17, 20 June 2017 (UTC)


 * The article you want is likely Spacetime; that article is currently undergoing significant revisions and may need improvement. Power~enwiki (talk) 01:27, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I agree there are copy-editing problems with a few of those phrases. However, the body of the article needs more work than the lede at this time. Power~enwiki (talk) 01:31, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Removed "Time and the Big Bang theory" section.
This is too much like a personal essay to be moved to a separate Mainspace page. The contents are below if anyone wants to try. Power~enwiki (talk) 01:34, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Stephen Hawking in particular has addressed a connection between time and the Big Bang. In A Brief History of Time and elsewhere, Hawking says that even if time did not begin with the Big Bang and there were another time frame before the Big Bang, no information from events then would be accessible to us, and nothing that happened then would have any effect upon the present time-frame. Upon occasion, Hawking has stated that time actually began with the Big Bang, and that questions about what happened before the Big Bang are meaningless. This less-nuanced, but commonly repeated formulation has received criticisms from philosophers such as Aristotelian philosopher Mortimer J. Adler.
 * == Time and the Big Bang theory ==

Scientists have come to some agreement on descriptions of events that happened 10−35 seconds after the Big Bang, but generally agree that descriptions about what happened before one Planck time (5 × 10−44 seconds) after the Big Bang are likely to remain pure speculation.


 * === Speculative physics beyond the Big Bang ===



While the Big Bang model is well established in cosmology, it is likely to be refined in the future. Little is known about the earliest moments of the universe's history. The Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems require the existence of a singularity at the beginning of cosmic time. However, these theorems assume that general relativity is correct, but general relativity must break down before the universe reaches the Planck temperature, and a correct treatment of quantum gravity may avoid the singularity.

If inflation has indeed occurred, it is likely that there are parts of the universe so distant that they cannot be observed in principle, as exponential expansion would push large regions of space beyond our observable horizon.

Some proposals, each of which entails untested hypotheses, are:
 * Models including the Hartle–Hawking boundary condition in which the whole of space-time is finite; the Big Bang does represent the limit of time, but without the need for a singularity.
 * Brane cosmology models in which inflation is due to the movement of branes in string theory; the pre-big bang model; the ekpyrotic model, in which the Big Bang is the result of a collision between branes; and the cyclic model, a variant of the ekpyrotic model in which collisions occur periodically.
 * Chaotic inflation, in which inflation events start here and there in a random quantum-gravity foam, each leading to a bubble universe expanding from its own big bang.

Proposals in the last two categories see the Big Bang as an event in a much larger and older universe, or multiverse, and not the literal beginning.

Time explained here
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-time-john-gabriel 67.106.126.3 (talk) 01:53, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 October 2017
Last sentence, first paragraph under History of the calendar These calendars were religiously and astronomically based, with 18 months in a year and 20 days in a month, plus five epagemonal days at the end of the year.[24]

Change epagemonal to epagomenal

Cciolli (talk) 20:03, 2 October 2017 (UTC)


 * ✅: . Thanks! - DVdm (talk) 20:11, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Lead
"Progress" is fancy. The idea of universal physical transformation, or simply, "change," is needed at this point. -Anam — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1:9A0F:FB6C:7D43:7889:5F6E:B606 (talk) 21:49, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 May 2018
In the World time section, can you please add the image Standard World Time Zones.png to show the time zones of the world and how Earth is split up into time zones? Thank you. 2601:183:101:58D0:9C3A:41A8:F09D:1BC8 (talk) 22:09, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: See Time_zone, which is already linked from this article. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 22:23, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Where in the article is it linked to? 2601:183:101:58D0:9C3A:41A8:F09D:1BC8 (talk) 23:07, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: In the Time section. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 23:28, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Direction of time's "flow"
Wikipedia is not a place for original ideas so I'm asking if anyone is familiar with acceptable sources that may present an alternative to the lead sentence's (common) description as "from the past through the present to the future." Some popular web pages suggest that the current of time brings the future into the present and the present into the past in that objects are not carried by but resist time's flow. Dates on the other hand ride the current of time keeping pace with its flow. Tomorrow's date yields no resistance being suspended in time and so moves with the current and eventually arrives not at a point further into the future but at the present and then it will be carried into the past. The current of time eventually sweeps our entire earthly lives back into the past. Time is not carrying us forward but we are resisting its backward flow. Of course though the perception that "times flows forward" is nearly ubiquitous. Anyone know any such sources? Bob Enyart, Denver KGOV radio host (talk) 02:31, 22 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Time is fundamental movement. Space is fundamental form. Everything of space exists because of the presence of a quantum point object at every fundamental position in space, and time exists because there is action in that quantum point that stretches it in the time direction, the energy direction, and in the contained time-space object form, namely atoms (matter). Regards, -Inowen (talk) 04:00, 14 May 2018 (UTC)


 * you might have given me notice of this. - DVdm (talk) 08:29, 25 May 2018 (UTC)


 * It didn't seem proper that you simply removed my short comment. I asked at the Village Pump and they pointed me to the policy, which states clearly that I may object and the remover must desist. -Inowen (nlfte) 23:30, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * It would have been proper to have notified me of your question at the village pump. - DVdm (talk) 07:16, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Rovelli book
Twice have I removed  a book from the books list, added  by user, whose edits  all are related to this author Rovelli—see wp:SPA. The book is not cited as a content reference, so it looks like wp:refspam. Any thoughts? - DVdm (talk) 20:55, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Reference?
I think this sentence "This view is shared by Abrahamic faiths as they believe time started by creation, therefore the only thing being infinite is God and everything else, including time, is finite." should have a reference, or at least specify who it refers to, because 'Abrahamic faiths' is an enormous amount of groups of people over a very long time. They don't all presently have this exact view on time, nor would they have in the past all had this same specific view. Waylah (talk) 07:59, 26 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Please put talk page page messages at the bottom. Thanks.
 * ✅ the sentence as wp:unsourced, likely wp:OR. Feel free to put it back with a source. - DVdm (talk) 08:11, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Please add the following content in the section of See also.......

 * ISO 8601 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.111.26.30 (talk) 00:16, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Section 7.1 Biopsychology: Speeding up or slowing down of time.
Section 7.1 states:

Such chemicals will either excite or inhibit the firing of neurons in the brain, with a greater firing rate allowing the brain to register the occurrence of more events within a given interval (speed up time) and a decreased firing rate reducing the brain's capacity to distinguish events occurring within a given interval (slow down time).

Aren't the perceptions of time speeding up or slowing down being reversed here? If the brain speeds up, time appears to slow down, and if the brain slows down, then time appears to speed up.

If the brain registers more events within a given interval, then subjectively one would perceive that time slowed. An interval of 1 actual (as measured by a clock) second might feel like 4 seconds. Hence the experience of an accident unfolding in slow motion.

On the other hand, reducing the brain's capacity to distinguish events occurring within a given interval, makes it feel as if things are happening faster than they actually are, in other words it feels as if time is speeding up. e.g.: under the effect of alcohol, reaction times slow, and a driver might not be able to avoid a sudden obstacle. To the driver, it is as if time sped up, leaving them insufficient time to react.

If you concur, then I recommend replacing the original text with:

Such chemicals will either excite or inhibit the firing of neurons in the brain, with a greater firing rate allowing the brain to register the occurrence of more events within a given interval (slow down time) and a decreased firing rate reducing the brain's capacity to distinguish events occurring within a given interval (speed up time). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andrew seligman (talk • contribs) 05:37, 18 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Please sign all your talk page messages with four tildes ( ~ ) — See Help:Using talk pages. Thanks.
 * Yes, stimulants increase the firing rate, and that results in overestimating time intervals. That part is sourced. So stimulants make things take longer to happen, so time slows down. I don't know what Rita Carter's The Human Brain Book says on pages 186,187 though. Can someone verify? - DVdm (talk) 09:12, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

Note
The phrase "de-Christianize time" appears. The French revolution might have imagined that its efforts would de-Christianise time. The factor 60, often appearing in the current version, such as 60 seconds to the minute, goes back to Sumeria, before Christianity was founded. Of course, the Revolution did not know about the Sumerians. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.15.21.214 (talk) 13:55, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The Revolution's calendar was an attempt to de-Chritianise every-day life. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.15.21.214 (talk) 14:01, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
 * This is under the heading "History of the calendar". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.15.21.214 (talk) 11:28, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Apparently wrong information.
"This view is shared by Abrahamic faiths as they believe time started by creation, therefore the only thing being infinite is God and everything else, including time, is finite." This line under the sub-heading 'Philosophy' appeas to be illogical or inconsistent with the paragraph above it. Kindly review it. EVeRYTHiNG 22 (talk) 20:25, 20 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Removed as unsourced. Thank you, -  FlightTime  ( open channel ) 20:29, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Grammatical mistake
"Modern philosophers asked: is time real or unreal, is time happening all at once or a duration, If time tensed or tenseless, and is there a future to be?"

Review this line under the sub-heading 'Philosophy' for grammatical mistake. EVeRYTHiNG 22 (talk) 04:16, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Apparently wrong information.
Even the sources of nearly all eastern content appears to be a western book or website.

"The Vedas, the earliest texts on Indian philosophy and Hindu philosophy dating back to the late 2nd millennium BC, describe ancient Hindu cosmology, in which the universe goes through repeated cycles of creation, destruction and rebirth, with each cycle lasting 4,320 million years.[63]"

This line under the sub-heading 'Philosophy' has a western source and according to source maybe the information is correct but how authentic the source is?! I have not specifically studied about this from original texts but in the wikipedia article about Hindu units of time and many other sources, the cycle of the universe according to Hindu cosmology is aproximately 3.11 trillion years not 4,320 million years as mentioned in the above line. Kindly research about this and review it. Thanks. EVeRYTHiNG 22 (talk) 04:26, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

First sentence (again)
Recent edits:, , , , have resulted in a change of the first sentence of the article from this:


 * (1) "Time is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future."

to this:


 * (2) "Time is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession through the past, in the present, and the future."

Which version is preferred? Note that this subject has been abundantly discussed before:

Attic Salt (talk) 13:11, 14 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Let's go back to the original, per the original and multiple discussions. I have put a 3RR warning on user 's talk page: . - DVdm (talk) 14:58, 14 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Okay, I will revert to "original with multiple discussions". Attic Salt (talk) 13:56, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Time for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Time is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Time until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 11:55, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Time philosophy
Hi guys, there is a need to rewrite this topic even-though it seems comprehensive it is lop sided and doesn't reflect the entire world, going to divide this into western philosophy and eastern philosophy (religious time text would be under eastern philosophy), if you are watching this page and want to discuss or contribute please do this here now , rather than edit warring at later stage --Shrikanthv (talk) 13:50, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
 * It's interesting that the article mainspace is "View source". I guess the thing to do is propose what you want added and what is changed. 2601:600:8880:5496:1075:F842:2924:30F4 (talk) 04:20, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

History link
The word "history" in the chronology section could use a link to its page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lmstevens5947 (talk • contribs) 17:19, 5 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Please sign all your talk page messages with four tildes ( ~ ) — See Help:Using talk pages. Thanks.
 * ✅, thanks!. See . - DVdm (talk) 22:01, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 August 2020
Original version: With current understanding of Physics and General Relativity, time can described as a fourth dimension with three spacial dimensions and time, with time being a mathematical constant, this is defined in Milwoskini Space Time. Time as the Forth Dimension is not be confused with a Forth Spacial Dimension in which there is a theoretical W axis.

1. The noun phrase current understanding seems to be missing a determiner before it. Consider adding an article. 2. The verb described after the modal verb can does not appear to be in the correct form. Consider changing the verb form. 3. It appears that the phrase a fourth dimension does not contain the correct article usage. Consider making a change. 4. The word spacial doesn't seem to fit this context. Consider replacing it with spatial. 5. The name Minkowski is incorrectly spelled as Milwoskini. Consider correcting the spelling. 6. The words Space Time does not seem to fit the context. Consider changing to Space-time. 7. The word Forth doesn't seem to fit this context. Consider replacing it with Fourth. 8. The words Forth Spacial Dimension do not seem to fit this context. Consider changing to Fourth Spatial Dimension.

Corrected Version: With the current understanding of Physics and General Relativity, time can be described as the fourth dimension with three spatial dimensions and time, with time being a mathematical constant, this is defined in Minkowski Space-Time. Time as the Fourth Dimension is not to be confused with a Fourth Spatial Dimension in which there is a theoretical W axis. DonDeem (talk) 20:49, 25 August 2020 (UTC)


 * ✅ I have removed the entire poorly worded content. It was added yesterday. There were even more problems with it. Thanks for having noticed. - DVdm (talk) 23:21, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 01:53, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Swatch Irony angle below.jpg

Correction suggestion
The article states that General Relativity is the framework for spacetime when in fact it should read Special Relativity. General Relativity is the framework for gravity. Adam2aces (talk) 19:37, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think it's entirely correct to say that general relativity is the framework for understanding how spacetime works, when spacetime refers to the model of our physical world, which of course includes gravity. On the other hand, special relativity is the framework for understanding how a hypothetical empty spacetime works, or, in the limit, a (likewise hypothetical) spatially and temporally infinitesimally small part of the physical world, where gravity effects can be ignored - DVdm (talk) 00:59, 23 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Let me perhaps expand, if I may, on my reasoning for propounding such correction to paragraph 4 of the main article, "Time".
 * Wikipedia's main article, "Spacetime," reads as follows:
 * "Until the 20th century, it was assumed that the 3-dimensional geometry of the universe (its spatial expression in terms of coordinates, distances, and directions) was independent of one-dimensional time. However, in 1905, Albert Einstein based a work on special relativity on two postulates:
 * The laws of physics are invariant (i.e., identical) in all inertial systems (i.e., non-accelerating frames of reference)
 * The speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of the motion of the light source.
 * The logical consequence of taking these postulates together is the inseparable joining together of the four dimensions—hitherto assumed as independent—of space and time."
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime
 * Although you could argue that the special theory is a subset of General Relativity there is only one theory that is the "primary framework" for spacetime and it is Special Relativity.
 * In Brian Greene's book, "The Elegant Universe", page 421 Glossary of Scientific Terms it defines spacetime as follows: "A union of space and time originally emerging from special relativity."
 * Ergo, if spacetime emerged originally from Special Relativity it must in fact be the primary framework as General Relativity was secondary.
 * Wiki article "Time" under physical definitions paragraph 3 states:
 * "The theory of special relativity finds a convenient formulation in Minkowski spacetime, a mathematical structure that combines three dimensions of space with a single dimension of time." This mathematical structure is the "primary framework."
 * I will supply more in depth quotes from experts if this remains unconvincing. Adam2aces (talk) 04:58, 24 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Please indent your talk page messages as outlined in wp:THREAD and wp:INDENT — See Help:Using talk pages. Thanks.
 * You don't need to look for more quotes from experts. Indeed, as Brian Greene says: "A union of space and time originally emerging from special relativity," (emphasis mine), and later fully embraced by general relativity, modelling gravity as curvature of spacetime, and leaving for special relativity a hypothetical empty spacetime (aka Minkowski spacetime) as a special (or limiting) case.
 * I have added a source in the article for the current wording. - DVdm (talk) 10:54, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

History of Time Measurement
Can you please add a timeline of Time measurement history such as by natural events - atomic clocks.

Please also write dates, when they are invented Shikhar3968 (talk) 06:11, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

the importance of managing our time effectively
an essay pls 112.134.40.66 (talk) 14:01, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Time is the measurement of duration, how an event is relative to another event(s) in a non-spatial dimension.
MODERATOR: This article should begin with... Time is the measurement of duration, how an event is relative to another event(s) in a non-spatial dimension. 2601:589:4800:9090:1553:35D3:2532:1139 (talk) 00:28, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Time of universe
It's quite unbelievable that the mother of all times, supreme time of universe is not mentioned in the writing, and moreover it got thrown out when tried to add such one. All kind of beliefs, myths and theories in great detail, whether scientific or not, seems to be ok.

The basic definition used "Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future" witnesses well the existence of the time of the universe.

So, adding a chapter of it would improve the Time article significantly. Yoxxa (talk) 10:57, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

"Indefinite" in the lead section
I see in the archives that the word "indefinite" has been disputed multiple times in the past. It seems editors who supported it interpreted it to mean beginning at a fixed point (presumably, the Big Bang) but without a fixed or known end-point. This interpretation certainly didn't spring to my mind and I doubt that it's clear to other readers. Can we use another somewhat clearer word like "unlimited" or "unending"? (We can even modify that with an adverb like "seemingly" or "presumably," though I personally wouldn't recommend doing so.) Wolfdog (talk) 12:28, 31 May 2021 (UTC)


 * But some word should be used if "indefinite" is not. We know that from the perspective of physics, general relativity, and cosmology that time has a definite beginning.  But in this article and for the lede, it should not be solely from the physics POV.  In our everyday experience of time, there is always some time that comes before and will always be some time that comes after any given moment.  That meaning of "indefinite" should be included in the lede definition. 69.5.112.154 (talk) 04:50, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Books: The Order of Time
I do not think the book "The Order of Time" by Rovelli must be deleted from the list of books here. The book is an international best seller, and because of this book, Rovelli has been included in the list of the most influential global thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine. The book summarizes scientific discoveries about time and advances ideas. It is definitely a voice in the debate and should be included. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Temugin (talk • contribs) 01:33, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Thomasky1.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:23, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 January 2019 and 24 April 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): NathanielGorman.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:23, 17 January 2022 (UTC)