Let’s talk about time.

Here’s a common philosophical question I ran across on the internet:

“Is time a construct of man or a rule of nature?”

From Wikipedia:

Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to compare the duration of events or the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change of quantities in material reality or in the conscious experience. Time is often referred to as a fourth dimension, along with three spatial dimensions. [Emphases mine]

So, in a nutshell, I’d say “time” means/is defined by “change”; change in any way of any thing, no matter how minuscule that change.  Even a change in one atom’s situation can validate/verify the existence of the phenomenon of time.

The phrase “intervals between them [events]” in the Wiki definition is interesting because it implies that, were the/our universe, and all that is it, should ever stop dead in its tracks, time could still exist in theory, awaiting the next interval of some change.  Okay, getting too deep into the weeds/hole here.  I’ll wrap this up. 

So, to you, what is time?  How do you define it? 

A man-made invention to keep track of our place in the universe? A relative scale? A calculation of existence? An ever-flowing river of events? A fourth dimension? The engine that prevents the universe from remaining static? An undefinable phenomenon that morphs depending on an infinite number of factors? A phenomenon/result of consciousness?  A scheme to sell watches? 😁 All of the above?  Other, and then some?  I really don’t care, why do you?

Thanks for posting and recommending.