{"title":"物理时间和人类时间","authors":"George F. R. Ellis","doi":"10.1007/s10701-023-00738-2","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper is a comment on both Bunamano and Rovelli (Bridging the neuroscience and physics of time arXiv:2110.01976. (2022)) and Gruber et al. (in Front. Psychol. Hypothesis Theory, 2022) and which discuss the relation between physical time and human time. I claim here, contrary to many views discussed there, that there is no foundational conflict between the way physics views the passage of time and the way the mind/brain perceives it. The problem rather resides in a number of misconceptions leading either to the representation of spacetime as a timeless Block Universe, or at least that physically relevant universe models cannot have preferred spatial sections. The physical expanding universe can be claimed to be an Evolving Block Universe with a time-dependent future boundary, representing the dynamic nature of the way spacetime develops as matter curves spacetime and spacetime tells matter how to move. This context establishes a global direction of time that determines the various local arrows of time. Furthermore time passes when quantum wave function collapse takes place to an eigenstate; during this process, information is lost. The mind/brain acts as an imperfect clock, which coarse-grains the physical passage of time along a world line to determine the experienced passage of time, because neural processes take time to occur. This happens in a contextual way, so experienced time is not linearly related to physical time in general. Finally I point out that the Universe is never infinitely old: its future endpoint always lies infinitely faraway in the future.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":569,"journal":{"name":"Foundations of Physics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10701-023-00738-2.pdf","citationCount":"2","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Physical Time and Human Time\",\"authors\":\"George F. R. Ellis\",\"doi\":\"10.1007/s10701-023-00738-2\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"<div><p>This paper is a comment on both Bunamano and Rovelli (Bridging the neuroscience and physics of time arXiv:2110.01976. (2022)) and Gruber et al. (in Front. Psychol. Hypothesis Theory, 2022) and which discuss the relation between physical time and human time. I claim here, contrary to many views discussed there, that there is no foundational conflict between the way physics views the passage of time and the way the mind/brain perceives it. The problem rather resides in a number of misconceptions leading either to the representation of spacetime as a timeless Block Universe, or at least that physically relevant universe models cannot have preferred spatial sections. The physical expanding universe can be claimed to be an Evolving Block Universe with a time-dependent future boundary, representing the dynamic nature of the way spacetime develops as matter curves spacetime and spacetime tells matter how to move. This context establishes a global direction of time that determines the various local arrows of time. Furthermore time passes when quantum wave function collapse takes place to an eigenstate; during this process, information is lost. The mind/brain acts as an imperfect clock, which coarse-grains the physical passage of time along a world line to determine the experienced passage of time, because neural processes take time to occur. This happens in a contextual way, so experienced time is not linearly related to physical time in general. Finally I point out that the Universe is never infinitely old: its future endpoint always lies infinitely faraway in the future.</p></div>\",\"PeriodicalId\":569,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Foundations of Physics\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":1.2000,\"publicationDate\":\"2023-11-29\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10701-023-00738-2.pdf\",\"citationCount\":\"2\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Foundations of Physics\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"101\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10701-023-00738-2\",\"RegionNum\":3,\"RegionCategory\":\"物理与天体物理\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q3\",\"JCRName\":\"PHYSICS, MULTIDISCIPLINARY\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Foundations of Physics","FirstCategoryId":"101","ListUrlMain":"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10701-023-00738-2","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"PHYSICS, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
摘要
这篇论文是对Bunamano和Rovelli (Bridging the neuroscience and physics of time, arXiv:2110.01976)的评论。(2022))和Gruber等人(前面)。Psychol。假说理论,2022),其中讨论了物理时间和人类时间之间的关系。我在这里声明,与那里讨论的许多观点相反,物理学看待时间流逝的方式与心灵/大脑感知时间流逝的方式之间没有根本的冲突。相反,问题在于一些误解,这些误解要么导致将时空表示为一个永恒的块宇宙,要么至少导致物理上相关的宇宙模型不能有首选的空间部分。物理膨胀的宇宙可以被称为一个演化的块宇宙,具有依赖于时间的未来边界,代表了时空发展方式的动态本质,即物质弯曲时空,时空告诉物质如何运动。这个上下文建立了一个全局的时间方向,它决定了各种局部的时间箭头。当量子波函数坍缩到一个本征态时,时间就过去了;在这个过程中,信息丢失了。心灵/大脑就像一个不完美的时钟,它沿着世界线粗略地计算物理时间的流逝,以确定经验时间的流逝,因为神经过程需要时间才能发生。这是以一种情境的方式发生的,所以经验时间通常与物理时间没有线性关系。最后我指出,宇宙从来都不是无限古老的:它未来的终点总是在无限遥远的未来。
This paper is a comment on both Bunamano and Rovelli (Bridging the neuroscience and physics of time arXiv:2110.01976. (2022)) and Gruber et al. (in Front. Psychol. Hypothesis Theory, 2022) and which discuss the relation between physical time and human time. I claim here, contrary to many views discussed there, that there is no foundational conflict between the way physics views the passage of time and the way the mind/brain perceives it. The problem rather resides in a number of misconceptions leading either to the representation of spacetime as a timeless Block Universe, or at least that physically relevant universe models cannot have preferred spatial sections. The physical expanding universe can be claimed to be an Evolving Block Universe with a time-dependent future boundary, representing the dynamic nature of the way spacetime develops as matter curves spacetime and spacetime tells matter how to move. This context establishes a global direction of time that determines the various local arrows of time. Furthermore time passes when quantum wave function collapse takes place to an eigenstate; during this process, information is lost. The mind/brain acts as an imperfect clock, which coarse-grains the physical passage of time along a world line to determine the experienced passage of time, because neural processes take time to occur. This happens in a contextual way, so experienced time is not linearly related to physical time in general. Finally I point out that the Universe is never infinitely old: its future endpoint always lies infinitely faraway in the future.
期刊介绍:
The conceptual foundations of physics have been under constant revision from the outset, and remain so today. Discussion of foundational issues has always been a major source of progress in science, on a par with empirical knowledge and mathematics. Examples include the debates on the nature of space and time involving Newton and later Einstein; on the nature of heat and of energy; on irreversibility and probability due to Boltzmann; on the nature of matter and observation measurement during the early days of quantum theory; on the meaning of renormalisation, and many others.
Today, insightful reflection on the conceptual structure utilised in our efforts to understand the physical world is of particular value, given the serious unsolved problems that are likely to demand, once again, modifications of the grammar of our scientific description of the physical world. The quantum properties of gravity, the nature of measurement in quantum mechanics, the primary source of irreversibility, the role of information in physics – all these are examples of questions about which science is still confused and whose solution may well demand more than skilled mathematics and new experiments.
Foundations of Physics is a privileged forum for discussing such foundational issues, open to physicists, cosmologists, philosophers and mathematicians. It is devoted to the conceptual bases of the fundamental theories of physics and cosmology, to their logical, methodological, and philosophical premises.
The journal welcomes papers on issues such as the foundations of special and general relativity, quantum theory, classical and quantum field theory, quantum gravity, unified theories, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, cosmology, and similar.