Why do they teach time, if it doesn't truly exist?

Question

As some of you know, the Earth orbits the sun (or whatever), but there are no days, hours, minutes; no past, future...then why teach something that isn't real? Why the make-believe idea that time exists? Or why not teach it in a method that one doesn't go on living that time travel is a possibility, because that's a riot! Does anyone understand the significance of knowing that everything is synthetic to a point? Opinons welcomed along with suggestions.

Answer 1

It is the most pragmatic way to do it.

Answer 2

Time exists-it's just relative to the user exactly HOW it exists. If you choose to define time as the fourth dimension (linear, along with the first three), then it becomes an easier concept. We just don't have any control over WHERE we are in Time. We have freedom along the other three axes, but not the fourth.

Here's something to think about: we all know that no two oblects can occupy the same space at the same time, right? If we combine space and time into a set of coordinates, then we can simply state that no two objects can occupy the same set of four coordinates in spacetime. Any three can match as long as the fourth one is different. If time didn't exist, we couldn't say any of that.

Answer 3

well the reason they teach us time is so that people can have more organized lives and less complicated.

Also we want to be able to predict things for our safety. (like if a hurricane only happens at a certain "time")

Another thing we have to make our own past, even if it doesn't exist, so that history wont repeat itself.

Answer 4

Time is a branch of physics, arguably the one most closely related to mathematics because of its nature (the idea of measuring).  Whereas Physics uses mathematics a lot, many of the equations do not necessarily deal with measurements, including time but time more than others.  Time is an interpretation for our limited perspective and understanding.

What makes the human brain unique, is that whereas computers need to have data inputed into them, through the senses the brain can make its own data.  Not even that, but through its own imaginative powers.  Therefore what time can be said to be is data formulated by the brain to quantify the processes of the universe and how we creatures relate to it.

Time flowing like a river is a bad analogy, or at least, the majority of Physics types would say so.  The Prince of Persia from the Sands of Time video game series had a definition more Physics professors would agree with;

"you think time is like a river, flowing sure in its course, but let me tell  you, time is like an ocean and a storm..."

Arguably, The Prince of Persia, gave the best definition of time, in simple, layman's terms, without all the mathematical mumbo jumbo.  Like all analogies it limps, but its easily the best and most acurate one.

Answer 5

To quote John Archibald Wheeler, the recently deceased great physicist at Princeton, "If there were no time, everything would happen all at once."