There is a peculiar belief, misconception or perhaps even lazy lapse, that many people have (including academics who should know better), that time causes change. “We age because of time” is essentially the idea.
What do people mean when they say ‘We age because of time’. Do they mean that time causes ageing? Ageing (e.g. of the human body) is a complex series of bio-chemistry events that occur in a sequence, with series dependencies, which lead to the eventual breakdown of our bodies. We age because of complex bio-chemistry – and that bio-chemistry is caused essentially by energy differential. So time doesn’t cause it.
And don’t all events (a change of state or a change of position) always have a cause (other than time)?
Julian Barbour in The End of Time (Phoenix, London, 1999), says (p231):-
All true change in quantum mechanics comes from interference between stationary states with different energies. In a system described by a stationary state, no change takes place.
So, energy differentials cause events / change. Then time can be considered to be the measurement of the effect of realised energy differential – measuring and calibrating change rate.
So, if we can determine change causation without reference to time, we know that time doesn’t cause change. So, time isn’t a force (or at least if it is, there is no manifestation or outcome of it that I know).
What is Time? 