User:NathanielGorman/sandbox

Ancient Philosophy
In Philosophy, time was questioned throughout the centuries; what time is and if it is real or not. Ancient Greek philosophers asked if time was linear or cyclical and if time was endless or finite. These philosophers had different ways of explaining time,  for instant ,  ancient Indian philosophers had something called the Wheel of Time. It is believed that there was repeating ages over the lifespan of the universe. This lead to beliefs like cycles of rebirth and reincarnation. The Greek philosophers believe that the universe was infinite,  and was an illusion to humans. Plato believed that time was made by the Creator at the same instant as the heavens. He also says that time is a period of motion of the heavenly bodies. Aristotle believed that time correlated to movement, that time did not exist on its own but was relative to motion of objects. he also believed that time was related to the motion of celestial bodies ;  the reason that humans can tell time was because of orbital periods and therefore there was a duration on time.

17th and 18th Century Philosophy
Philosophers in the 17th and 18th century questioned if time was real and absolute, or if it was an intellectual concept that humans use to understand and sequence events. These questions lead to realism vs anti-realism; the realists believed that time is a fundamental part of the universe, and be perceived by a events happening in a sequence, in a dimension. Isaac Newton said that we are merely occupying time, he also says that humans can only understand relative time. Relative time is a measurement of objects in motion. The anti-realists believed that time is merely a convenient intellectual concept for humans to understand events. This means that time was useless unless there were objects that it could interact with, this was called relational time. Rene Descartes, John Locke, and David Hume said that your mind needs to acknowledge time, in order to understand what time is. Immanuel Kant believed that we can not know what something is unless we experience it first hand.

Modern Philosophy
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? There is a theory called the tenseless or B-theory; this theory says that any tensed terminology can be replaced with tenseless terminology. For example “we will win the game” can be replaced with “we do win the game”,  taking out the future tense. On the other hand, there is a theory called the tense or A-theory; this theory says that our language has tense verbs for a reason and that the future can not be determined. There is also something called imaginary time, this was from Stephen Hawking, he says that space and imaginary time are finite but have no boundaries. Imaginary time is not real or unreal, it is something that is hard to visualize. Philosophers can agree that physical time exist s  outside of the human mind and is objective, and psychological time is mind dependent and subjective.