What is time? Understanding time in a novel way.

Following is a part from the book "What is time ?". Hope you would enjoy reading. It is about understanding time in a novel way, so we are one step closer to the truth.

London skies, where there are more airplanes than buses on roads.

I was sitting on a park bench in south london, looking at the skies. Noticed an airplane running over my head, above the clouds making a shadow on clouds, took a sharp turn at the edge of the cloud and toward horizon, progressively lowering itself towards the airport and vanished from sight after flying into a faint shadow above low lying tree tops. Before it disappeared, I noticed another airplane, joining its path coming from the north from the far corner of the sky. Before it disappeared, another plane followed, one by one each following its path there were many each minute passing by. It seems that Gatwick is a busy airport over the weekend. It's a three day holiday and people are traveling. Even the skies are busy !

Fig 28. Even the skies are busy

It brought back memories from my past. When I was a little boy, I used to play with my brother in a nearby playground. Among many games we used to play there was one in particular. We used to catch leaves which fall down from nearby trees into the playground. It usually happens prior to a rain, when clouds are roaring up, winds blow, signs of a typical monsoon rain, all the other kids who play on the ground have gone home leaving the whole ground to us ( we were living closest to the ground !). The old leaves of different sizes and shapes from tall trees start to fall one by one loosened from the gales. We jump here and there trying to catch these leaves, which is of course very difficult as it is very unpredictable to follow their path before they hit the ground. It was very challenging and exciting, as kids jumping here and there following a leaf is all that was needed to bring happiness and smiles. Since when has life become so complicated?

Fig 29. Since when has life become complicated?

This brings back to the question of linearity of the time. If we describe events of the ‘leaf catching game’ according to time someone would say, at time (event 0) the leaf got separated from the tree, and it traveled through air x amount of time until it landed on the ground (event 1 )or caught by the kid  ( which is myself and my brother ). It gives a good picture of what happened, we can use it to describe it or write it down. But if we look at the time line there are a lot of seconds that we do not describe. And we can say something happened to the leaf at each and every second, and it did, otherwise it will never land on the ground. 

Fig 30. Leafline and numberline

If we compare this to a number line, as you can see there are many other numbers between 0 and 1, an infinite amount of numbers. So, there should be an infinite amount of time intervals between events 0 and 1. If there is an idealist who wants to describe an event he should describe an infinite amount of information which happened over an infinite amount of time intervals. Which is impossible as we see ( it will take an infinite amount of time to describe what happened in half a second ), so whatever the descriptions we make about events which happened over time is fundamentally not the  absolute truth. Its relative, its useful, it is necessary but it is not absolute truth because the leaf from the tree detached at time 0 and landed at time 1 are just two fixed points in a continuum. Is it a continuum?

This gives us a novel perspective to explain. Let's imagine me and my brother observing the same leaf detached from the tree at time 0 (event 0). Until it lands on the ground at time x (event 1) there are an infinite amount of observations about the leaf which could be made by an observer. However I only made y amount of observations ( which takes k time ) and my brother made z amount of observations ( which takes l time ). If there is a finite amount of time my brain takes to make an observation and if y > z does that mean i have felt time passed more slowly than my brother? Does that mean time which we feel is dependent on the number of observations we make? And what does my brain do all the rest of the time, which is not observing. ( x- k). Did the time exist during that period of time?

Fig 31. Leaflines for two observers

What is time?

Time is created in mind as a side effect of comparing two events in mind, in now. 

If the above is true, the more events we observe between two fixed events the more time ( gaps ) there will be. That can partially explain why children ( who are good observers ) will have more time than adults who do everything that has become routine rather than novelty. There are less and less fixed events in our days when we get older as we hardly pay attention to everyday occurrences around us. And it will explain why a traveler feels he has long fulfilled life as he has created opportunities to become more observant in what is happening in the world by traveling and its novelty creating more and more observations per day. But his grandfather in the garden doing some gardening creates the same number of new observations about his fresh vegetable plot and feels fulfilled about his day. Who can argue which is better. Either is relative. 

Fig 32. Grandpa in the Garden.

If youLook at your life, when you describe your life to someone else. You will notice that we do the same. We describe fixed events from our life to give a picture of what happened. Which is never the truth. There is no system to exactly record all the events accurately and there never will be a perfect such system as infinity is unachievable. Although we feel time is continuous when we carefully examine time, we see it's just a feeling, we never feel a continuum, to experience time we have to jump from event to event, describe each event then the illusion of continuous time creates in our minds. The truth is we would never know whether it is a continuum, in the first place we are the creators of time. So if it is not continuous for us should it be not?

Looking at the falling leaf simile, we can try to describe what is happening in the mind. When we get thoughts as the day unravels, jumping from one thought to the other, is the only way we can understand what is happening. We can never understand thoughts as a linear continuum.(Actually there is only a finite amount of thoughts happening during one day, and scientists estimate this number to be around 6200, it may be bigger or smaller but the fact remains it is finite ) It is impossible because there would be an infinite amount of information necessary to describe each day otherwise. Only way to understand it is to jump from one thought to another. Just like describing a falling leaf. But that is not the truth. That is not the true picture of what happens. We can never know what truly happens when a thought is processed in the brain. Fundamentally it is relatively true when we say we think, one thought and another. It is not absolute truth because that is not what happened exactly. It should be continuum but understood as fixed frames.

(Recently I discovered that "time bending" is similar to above argument. Popularized by French Philosopher Henry Bergson, as pointed out by one of my readers. However, there are Suttle differences.- Part 2)

Link to the book.