Sometimes I think that there is more confusion about the nature of time than about anything else. Usually, when people talk about time, they are talking about a representation of time, not time itself. We represent time in so many ways, for example, in the form of clocks or more generally, by replacing time by the occurrence of change or the making of a choice. In the first case, time passes only if things change, so if nothing changed, no time would pass. This has been argued most forcefully in physics by the maverick physicist/historian Julian Barbour, in his excellent book
Unstructured Time
Unstructured Time
Unstructured Time
Sometimes I think that there is more confusion about the nature of time than about anything else. Usually, when people talk about time, they are talking about a representation of time, not time itself. We represent time in so many ways, for example, in the form of clocks or more generally, by replacing time by the occurrence of change or the making of a choice. In the first case, time passes only if things change, so if nothing changed, no time would pass. This has been argued most forcefully in physics by the maverick physicist/historian Julian Barbour, in his excellent book