THE COURSE OF THE WORLD AND THE COURSE OF CLOCKS

Reinhard Folk (Personal webpage)

Time is measured by clocks, but what do they really indicate? In fact thisquestion is strongly connected with our understanding of the nature of theuniverse. Astronomy and physics have changed this understanding fromAristotle over Newton to Einstein and changed the properties of time (in factthe property of duration) from something absolute to a property dependingon the movement of the clock and its position. However the universalityof our physical laws together with the ‘history’ of the universe urge for aunification of the theory of gravitation and quantum theory. Some of thetheoretical approaches for this unifications create doubt in the fundamentalcharacter of time.