• Question: who came up with the idea of time and when was it first invented?

    Asked by koonertwh to David, Helen, Ian, rhysphillips, Sarah on 24 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Rhys Phillips

      Rhys Phillips answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      We don’t know who exactly came up with it but some people have claimed that the moon was used to tell the time as far back as 6000 years ago.

    • Photo: Ian van der Linde

      Ian van der Linde answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Even though humans have explicit knowledge of time, with special words and devices for describing and measuring it, I would say that animals have implicit knowledge of time too. When a squirrel buries nuts so that he can collect them later, or a bird flies south for the winter, or a bear hibernates, those behaviours relate to time. So, implicit knowledge of the passage of time is engrained into living creatures rather than having been invented.

    • Photo: Helen Fletcher

      Helen Fletcher answered on 24 Jun 2011:

      The idea of ‘time’ is quite a philosophical one! Some people think it is a concept made up by humans that enables us to put events in an order, and is just how we choose to represent things. Other people would argue that time is a fundamental part of the universe, and that events can only occur in a sequence, where everything happens at some ‘time’ relative to when other things happen. I think physicists these days tend to agree that ‘time’ is as real as ‘space’ is. Time might not be a fixed thing though- how we view it and how we measure it might be different in different dimensions.. confusing! In terms of measuring it, the first device was probably a sundial-type thing in ancient Egyptian times. And an interesting fact about time- the smallest unit of time we can measure is about 1/18th of a second!

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