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What is time? What do we mean when we say that time is the fourth dimension in our four dimensional universe? We are well aware of three dimensions of space -length, width, and height of any object in this universe and the universe itself. In this article, I will try to walk with you through a thought experiment about the whole shebang of time as our fourth dimension of existence from a philosophical point of view. Before you cast your vote, I beg you to bear with me and the logic behind this thought experiment in order to see the point.

Let's start with your powerful imagination. Imagine that you have been frozen cryogenically for 300 years and you were 20 years old when you got into your cryogenic capsule. Imagine once again, that after 300 years, you are unfrozen and brought back to life. Now, in terms of time, you can say that you are still 20 years old based on the biological timescale on Earth, or 320 years old based on the cosmological timescale of this universe. But what about philosophical timescale?

To me, “time” is “change”. We live in a dynamic universe where change is the only constant; therefore, “time” is “the universal factor of change”. As you know, if you travel with the speed of light, time will slow down for you. Another good example is the event horizon of a black hole where time slows down dramatically. In other words, the rate of change of your immediate environment including your body slows down when you travel with a high speed i.e. the speed of light or when you reside in the event horizon of a black hole. Obviously, this would remind you of the whole notion of General Relativity.

Consequently, you can categorize your age biologically or cosmologically. For instance, biologically speaking, a woman at age 30 is fertile and could bear a child. Having said this, a woman who is cryogenically frozen at age 30 cannot reproduce regardless of her cosmological age just because she is biologically inactive (frozen).

Cosmological and biological ages can be consistent or inconsistent with each other. What do we mean by consistency anyway? Well, the consistency state between biological and cosmological time brings the third notion of time which I call “philosophical timescale”. Since time is the rate of change of anything, you can travel through time within the same biological and/or cosmological block of time more, if you can change philosophically with a higher and faster pace. Let me elaborate on this issue with our previous analogy.

In our analogy, although you are 320 years old cosmologically, biologically speaking, you have a body of a 20 year-old. In this case, there is 300 years of inconsistency between your cosmological and biological ages. I call these 300 years of biological inactivity, the negative philosophical age where you did not grow biologically to be able to enhance your philosophical state of your human existence if you were going to.

Therefore, if you want to live longer within the same period (block) of time, you need to change more and faster philosophically. This has a great philosophical application in which you can claim that you are 150 years old at age 80 because you have gone through many life experiences with positive change and intellectual endeavors much more than, let's say, the average religious Joe. If this is the case, then those who are fixed with one doctrine (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any other religion/ideology), they are almost frozen in time with no rate of philosophical change. This means that religious people live a very short life within the same block of time as you and I live as skeptical atheists who explore life at any stage. That is why you can say that the Pope is about 15 years old or Usama Bin Laden is a 3 year-old boy who wants to destroy everything in his reach. This would be for sure.

Now it is your turn to tell me how old you are. Happy measuring! Did I tell you how old I am? I let you guess.

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

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