I thought that it would be interesting to express my views on "time" before reading the article that Professor Johnson gave us, and seeing if my perception differs after reading it.
I have thought on the subject of time before, but not extensively. Being a bit of a Sci-Fi nerd gives me that predisposition, I suppose...I know that the concept of time as a twenty-four hour day with sixty minute hours is man-made, and I also know that man has been keeping a sense of time for thousands of years. Something that I have always wondered is why we feel the need to keep time in the first place. Who came up with the idea of a set time? I am sure there is an answer to that somewhere, if I only had the patience to look. If man created time, then there couldn't be time without man...but what about before man? Did the dinosaurs have some concept of time, even if it was only what time to eat or sleep? Time should be a simple thing. Wake up at 10:00 a.m. Go to class at noon. Eat dinner at 5:30. Go to bed at 11:30. But thinking more deeply into the concept of time reveals a unanswerable amount of questions that will boggle the mind. Going back to the Sci-Fi geek in me, does time travel exist? Is there some way to stop or bend time? Can people from the future come visit us in the present...or does the future even exist? If a human knew nothing of time or the possibility of growing old, would they still age in the same manner? All of these questions are almost impossible to answer.
I suppose my final statement on time for the present is this: Time is a measuremet created by humans for the purpose of maintaining a semblance of order and schedule. I suppose that will have to do until I look into the matter further.
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I think you might be giving to much credit to the abstruseness of physical time (though certainly it is abstruse). Indeed, the way we currently "keep" time is arbitrary and man-made; but certainly we are counting something, right? So long as, once you read this, I am obviously not writing it "now", I must have written it at some instance occurring before "now". Thus, as there is a difference in circumstance (stuff has moved), we can calculate that difference on a line labeled 'time', in whatever way we then choose to count it.
I think indeed animals have a conception of time, if only, as you suggested, the differences in time's passage that demand when they eat or sleep or migrate (and not merely, in all circumstances, their sensory reaction to environmental changes).
Time travel does indeed exist; it's very exciting, with the bending of space and time being linked (due to the influence of gravity or motion). I don't know about stopping time, though, but the best place to conceive of that happening is in the center of a black hole--where time would slow to near-stopping, but I'm not sure if that would be the same thing.
As of yet, it's seemingly impossible to travel into the past (sorry Michael J. Fox), and it's also the consensus (though not unanimous, of course) that the future doesn't exist merely because it hasn't happened yet (though certainly it is reasonable to say it will exist). I do think a human would still grow old even if they had no idea what time was.
I'm sorry if these were rhetorical questions or ones you weren't seeking answers for; I got excited, this material is very engrossing to me - I tend to blather.
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