>> Time is thought to exist whether we are conscious or not. That is,
>> time is supposed to exist by its own efforts. It pulls itself up by
>> its own bootstraps. Time for us is a thing in itself, it is as at the
>> very least as it seems to be. We have another thought: we think that
>> once time was kicked into play, time 'endured' absolutely and
>> accompanied all things. The existence of time seems beyond reasonable
>> doubt, indisputable. My position is that there is no species we call
>> time.
>> But I have a difficulty. I cannot describe time as something which is
>> 'not existing absolutely', without constructing out of this something
>> an object that takes the place of time, an 'it' that goes proxy for
>> time. This something or 'it' which arises from the expression 'time
>> does not exist absolutely' would seem to offer us an alternative time,
>> perhaps a 'relative' time or a time that is 'hidden' or 'absent' in
>> some way.
>> I haven't finished this. Bed-time.
>
> If we believe that logical theory of "necessity" is true and we blieve
> in theories about time, then it appears that the combined theories
> reflect change in the relationships of energy.
>
> The assertion that one statement is a necessary ...condition of
> another means that the former statement is true if and only if the
> latter is true. ...The assertion that P is necessary for Q is
> colloquially equivalent to "Q cannot be true unless P is true."
>
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_and_sufficient_conditions
>
> One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the
> universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence, and time
> itself is something that can be measured. This is the realist's view,
> to which Sir Isaac Newton subscribed, and hence is sometimes referred
> to as Newtonian time.
>
> A contrasting view is that time is part of the fundamental human
> intellectual structure (together with space and number) within which
> we sequence events, quantify the duration of events and the intervals
> between them, and compare the motions of objects. In this second view,
> time does not refer to any kind of entity that "flows", that objects
> "move through", or that is a "container" for events. This view is in
> the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant, in which time,
> rather than being an objective thing to be measured, is part of the
> measuring system used by humans.
>
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time
>
> - Classical Thermodynamics, Shuffling Cards, Times Arrow, Un-boiling
> an Egg
>
> The underlying principle is clear enough: If the laws of
> thermodynamics seem to conflict with the evidence of your senses,
> believe your senses and take a long hard look at the thermodynamics.
> Got that? Good; let's think about the conflict between the second law
> and the phenomenon of life. You're alive, so it's the appeal to
> thermodynamics that must be shaky. Where? It's obvious that any
> resolution of the conflict must depend upon a careful analysis of what
> thermodynamicists mean by "order" and "disorder." It's much less
> obvious that the central issue is quite different: not what they mean
> by disorder increasing, but in what context they can demonstrate that
> it will.
>
> The second law is usually stated in terms of a quantity called
> entropy, which measures the amount of disorder in a system; the law
> states that entropy must continually increase. This finds dramatic
> expression in the scenario of the "heat death of the universe," in
> which the entire universe becomes a lukewarm gas with no interesting
> structure whatsoever. Entropy increase is often explained using the
> image of a pack of cards being shuffled. Suppose, for example, that
> the pack is arranged so that all the red cards occur together on top
> and all the black ones below--an "ordered" state. Now shuffle them
> repeatedly. You'd expect them to end up mixed together randomly, in a
> "disordered" state, so shuffling increases the amount of disorder in
> the pack. Analogously, suppose that at some moment all the oxygen
> molecules in a room are concentrated at one end and all the nitrogen
> molecules are at the other. This is an ordered thermodynamic state.
> After a very short period, however, random collisions will mix all the
> molecules together, more or less uniformly throughout the room. This
> is the orthodox picture of the relentless increase of entropy, and it
> is the standard interpretation of the second law.
>
> #####################################
>
> Time seems to flow in one particular direction; it has a well-defined
> "arrow." However, it seems logically and mathematically possible for
> time to flow backward instead--a possibility exploited by such novels
> as Martin Amis's Time's Arrow and the much earlier Counter-Clock World
> by Philip K. Dick. So why doesn't it? Thermodynamics offers a simple
> explanation for the arrow of time: it is the direction of entropy
> increase. Thermodynamic processes are irreversible: Oxygen and
> nitrogen will spontaneously mix, but not spontaneously unmix. There is
> a puzzle here, however, because any classical mechanical system, such
> as a room full of molecules, is time-reversible. In the mathematical
> equation for classical (that is, nonquantum) dynamics, if at some
> instant the velocities of all particles are simultaneously reversed,
> then the system will retrace its steps, back to front in time. The
> entire universe can "bounce" in time. For example, since boiling an
> egg is a dynamical process consistent with the laws of mechanics, so
> is unboiling an egg. Why, therefore, do we never see an egg unboiling?
>
> #####################################
>
> The thermodynamicist's answer is that a boiled egg is more disordered
> than an unboiled one, entropy increases, and that's the way time
> flows. But in that case, how did the chicken ever create the ordered
> egg from the disordered chicken feed? A common explanation is that
> living systems somehow "borrow" order from their environment by making
> it even more disordered than it would otherwise have been. Then they
> use their extra "negative entropy"--order--to build an egg. There's a
> certain amount of truth to this, but it seems that chickenkind has
> been borrowing an awful lot of negative entropy over the millennia.
>
> How does life create order, despite the second law? One answer is that
> the law applies only to closed systems in thermodynamic equilibrium--
> systems that are isolated from external influences and have settled
> down into a balanced state. (In the dynamical language of chapter 6,
> they are systems that have reached their attractors, instead of still
> being in a transient state, heading toward the attractor but not yet
> there.) There are two loopholes that allow life to be consistent with
> the second law. Either it can be viewed on its own as an open system,
> one that is subject to outside influences, driven by energy from the
> sun. Or it can be viewed as a transient state of a closed system--life
> plus its environment--that is ultimately heading toward equilibrium.
> But life looks too persistent to be a transient state, and mere
> openness of the life-plus-environment system does not explain the
> richness of life. There ought to be a better explanation.
>
> We contend that the entire question is bogus, even for closed systems
> that are in thermodynamic equilibrium. The card-shuffle image gives
> the wrong impression of entropy; the entropy of the universe does not
> increase over time; and there is thus no special direction with which
> to identify the arrow of time. Life contradicts nothing, since there's
> nothing to contradict. On the other hand, the arrow of time then
> requires a nonentropic explanation.
>
> STANLEY: Neeplphut, you seem to be having problems with this idea of
> entropy increase.
>
> NEEPLPHUT: No, I think you are confused about what order and disorder
> are.
>
> STANLEY: Let me demonstrate. Do you have a pack of cards?
>
> NEEPLPHUT: Certainly. I regret/must inform you (delete whichever is
> inapplicable) that they are not entirely like your terrestrial packs.
> In particular, there are only eight cards. We call them things like
> the Squirm of Weirds, but it may be easier if I number them from one
> to eight with a felt-tip pen. [Scribbles on cards]
>
> STANLEY: Okay, Neeplphut my old buddy, let's have them. Thanks. I'll
> arrange them in an "ordered" state. [Lays cards so that their faces
> read 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 in numerical order] You agree this is ordered? It
> has a definite pattern?
>
> NEEPLPHUT: I wish to reserve judgment at this time.
>
> STANLEY: You won't give an inch, will you? Oh, very well. After a
> shuffle or two, the order becomes . . . hmmm, 7 5 3 1 8 6 4 2. That
> looks pretty random to me. Order to disorder, yes?
>
> NEEPLPHUT: I hate to contradict, but what I see is the initial state 4
> 8 3 7 2 6 1 5 becoming 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Disorder becoming order.
>
> STANLEY: What?
>
> CAPTAIN ARTHUR: I think Neeplphut is looking at the other side of the
> cards. Didn't you see him writing numbers on both sides?
>
> NEEPLPHUT: Remind me not to play poker with you, Captain. Yes. I wrote
> the numbers 4, 8, 3, 7, 2, 6, 1, 5 on the back of the cards that you
> see as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. So my final order is 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8.
>
> STANLEY: But that's cheating. If you'd chosen any other way to number
> the cards on the back, my particular shuffle wouldn't have led to 1 2
> 3 4 5 6 7 8 when looked at from your side.
>
> NEEPLPHUT: True; but you have now learned that your intuitive notion
> of order is sensitive to coding of the data. Incidentally, your
> alleged ...
>
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>
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