concept of space and time are basic elements of human experience of the world.

Consequently, the notions of space and time also form the basic elements of our
concepts of the world. In the following discussion, we want to identify how
aspects of our experiences of space and time can be made consistent with
our concepts of space and time. Ultimately, our theories of space and time
should be an abstraction which would include our experiences
of space and time to have any phenomenological significance, even as a limiting
case.
our basic notion of time is that it flows. we can see the hands of clocks
continuously turn to signal the passing of the day. this passing is associated
with what we call time. furthermore, we generally believe that we cannot go back
in time,
based on our experiences. we cannot do things which causes a
change in the past - a more technical way to say this is that we cannot perform
backwards causation. All these are based on our experiences here on earth.
suppose that time has "stopped" or "slowed down". as humans immersed in time, we
will not know that this is happening, since everything around us is immersed in
time.
Thus we will not find something to refer to that will tell us that time has slow
ed
down. Watching a video in slow motion is only possible since everything else is
not
in slow motion. If we are able to perceive that time has slowed down, then this
would be a
contradiction since even our mental faculties are presumably immersed in time.
Thus, it follows that we cannot perceive the flow of time.
Note that time perception is not of the same category as perception of objects
in the world using our senses. We can see or feel a book but not time. What we p
erceive are
changes of objects in time. Here we note parenthetically that it seems like we a
re asserting
that there exists a time dimension
where objects are abstractly speaking, immersed in. Technically we can do
this by hypothesizing that every event has a property of "when it has occured".
In Newtonian theory this is the so-called absolute time of any event. The notion
of when
something has occured is not as well-defined in relativistic physics where we ab
andon
the structure of absolute time. Another way to think about this is that objects
have so-called
temporal parts. Objects extend in time the same way they extend in space. We can
treat this
as either an abstraction or a model or more strongly as a statement about an ont
ological
property of the object, treating having temporal temporal part with the same sta
tus as
the object has spatial parts. Temporal parts allow for change by treating object
s as
being the same object whilst having different properties along their histories.

Note that the property of when something has occured is meaningful only when we
acknowledge
the existence of well-defined temporal relations between events. Our terrestrial

experiences
tell us that these are indeed the case. That A occured earlier than B is an abso
lute fact that
does not depend on who's observing the two events. *[In special relativity, due
to the failure
of simultaneity, temporal relations (locally, meaning for a small extension in s
pace and tiem)
to observers, become rather vague. Two events A and B may occur in the order A t
hen B for one
observer and B then A for another. However, even if temporal relations are arbit
rary, this
doesn't change the fact that there exists still temporal relations. So that the
notion of time
is still meaningful! We must be careful to distinguish between absoluteness of m
easurements and
the absoluteness of concepts.]
Here we are able to perceive the occurence of A as "earlier" than B by having a
memory. We use here
the word perceive... rather we are inferring the relation that A has occured ear
lier than B since
we have in our memory the occurence of A before B has occured. Also, what we des
ignate as an "event"
is something which occurs in a very small extent in time. Otherwise, we will hav
e trouble in describing
something that continually changes in time. By asserting that change in time is
smooth - that is, it
does not jump - then we can localize an event in time, taking smaller and smalle
r extent in time,
so that there is no noticeable change (to any desired accuracy), so that we we c
an completely and
ambiguously describe the event which occurs at "that" time.
This motivates the characterization in
physics of events as having no extent in space in time -- events are space time
"points". In the
same way as points in Euclidean geometry have no length, breadth, nor depth. The
y are zero dimensional
objects. [Cite an SR book]
The memory is a record of all past
events, these are events which has occured but has ceased to occur. There are te
chnical aspects to
the notion that something has occured. Consider a cup standing still on a tablet
op.
Suppose we clapped our hands, and ask, which has occured first, the
event of the "cup standing still on the tabletop" or our "clapping of our hands"
? Note that when
we clapped our hands, the cup was still standing still on the table top. So that
we can say that the
two events as described occured at the same time. However, there is also the iss
ue that before the
clap was made, the same event has already occured, so that the event as describe
d by "cup standing still on the tabletop" occured before the clap had so. Indeed
the problem seems to be that our description of the
two events had not been definite enough. Furthermore, our perception is also bou
nd in time, if we can
perceive two events that are temporaly separated simultaneously, then the proble
m is solved.

A contingent fact is that the cup at the microscopic level

can be assumed to be slowly rotting away, perhaps by radioactive decay or what h
ave you. So that we
describe an event regarding the cup more precisely. However, this does not solve
the
problem for all cases. For in a world without radioactive decay and, in general,
discarding all the contingent
facts of rotting away, as well as all other background events that can be used a
s a reference, i.e. that
can provide a deeper level of description, can we safely say that any event desc
ribed by "cup standing still on the tabletop" (supposing this suffices to defini
tely describe the event) has occured at the same time as the clap did?
The solution of just recording the time of the clap and of an earlier time where
the cup has stood on the table does
not work since it violates the hypothesis that we cannot use background events w
hich are in this case, ticks of clocks,
simply because they are not there. A more convincing solution is to assert the e
xistence of a time dimension where the
objects are temporally immersed in - an abstraction to the idea that things are
immersed in space, so to speak. Thus we
are asserting the existence of a background entity called time that exists beyon
d changes in objects.
The thought experiment suggests strongly that discarding all processes of change
destroys our distinction of
temporal order between events. Indeed a universe without objects can be hardly s
aid to progress into the future,
or more technically can be endowed with a notion of time. (In chapter 5, Rovelli
[cite paper] asserts that time
is only thermodynamic.) But we can unequivocally say time has flowed, in a Newto
nian universe, event without objects
changing. "When we remove objects in the Newtonian world there stll remain space
and time." [ROVELLI]

EMPHASIZE: GLOBAL AND LOCAL STRUCTURE

TEMPORAL PARTS:
PERSISTENCE THROUGH TIME