What is time?

Question

What is time?

Answer

One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence, and time itself is something that can be measured. This is the realists view, to which Sir Isaac Newton subscribed, and hence is sometimes referred to as Newtonian time.brbrA contrasting view is that time is part of the fundamental human intellectual structure together with space and number within which we sequence events, quantify the duration of events and the intervals between them, and compare the motions of objects. In this second view, time does not refer to any kind of entity that quotflowsquot, that objects quotmove throughquot, or that is a quotcontainerquot for events. This view is in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant, in which time, rather than being an objective thing to be measured, is part of the measuring system used by humans.