What Time Is it?

 

If someone asks you what time it is, you look at the clock on your watch, cell phone or computer screen  and exclaim "It's 12:00 o'clock". But the person who asked you that it was is blind and is therefore obliged to ask you if that is noon or midnight. To say "It's 12:00 o'clock" is only to say that the sun either is (more or less) directly over your head (noon) or the earth is (more or less) directly between you and the sum. The time of day only references your position on the surface of the earth relative to the sun as the earth rotates about its axis. It has no other meaning whatsoever. Indeed, if you are on the East Coast and talking to someone on  the West Coast you might say "It's 12:00 o'clock here" but the person on the West Coast would say "It's 9:00 o'clock here". Yet 12:00 o'clock on the East Coast is happens at exactly the same time as 9:00 o'clock on the West Coast. As such, the "time of day" is nothing but a number assigned to a position on a circle that surrounds the surface of the earth to indicate in what position YOU are relative to to the sun. The "time of day" does not change. Only your position relative to the sun changes.

But this number does have a use. The CHANGE in position equal to 1/24th of a rotation of the earth we designate as an hour. That is, the earth is a big clock that measures change in position of the earth relative to the sun and you are the hour hand of the clock . A complete rotation of the earth to bring you back to where you began with 24 1/24th of a rotation (1 full rotation)  and that complete rotation we designate as a day. And therein lies the utility. We use the ticks of the earth clock -- the fractions of rotations of the earth -- to measure other changes in in the material about us in  relation to -- relative to -- changes in position  changes in position of the earth as it rotates about its axis of rotation.

But did you notice that we never defined a thing call "time" itself? We used "time of day" to mean the physical position on the surface of the earth relative to the physical position of the sun. But that is a matter of distance which we can measure with a ruler. We used "clock" as something to count the number of "ticks"  of change in distance required for the earth to complete on revolution. But we never measured anything called "time".

And that's because what we think of as "time" simply does not exists. What we think of as "time" is actually change in the  physical world measure in "ticks" of distance.

But more about that later ...