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Originally Posted by FAX
"Newtonian" time is basically a method of thinking of time as a "container" which holds events and stuff, Mr. mcan. Nothing to it, really. But, when you describe your view that time is measured in "units" that is very much like Newtonian time. It's all based on our perception of change ... sun, moon, dick size, etc. As change occurs, we think of the events as being "contained" in a unit of time. I did that then. I'll do this next, etc.
As for M-Theory, this is not the thread to go into all that because Mr. Simplex3 will most likely steal all my ideas (read Beryllium Spheres) and make a whole new thread anyway. Nevertheless, the basic concept of time as a body of water might go something like this ...
Imagine a big water planet. Big oceans and lots of rivers, creeks, and streams and stuff. The water is time. The water is the same in all the lakes and rivers and so forth. The only difference is that some water is in one place and some water is in another. Now, imagine that there are giant beavers who are constantly building dams and tearing down dams and changing dams all over the planet. We will call these our "Time Beavers".
Whenever a Time Beaver changes the flow of water, time itself is modified ... it flows a different direction, or stops flowing, or becomes agitated and eddys are created. The Time Beaver bastards are hard at work making changes, because that's what they do. We live in one of the streams that just so happens to run fairly smoothly in a particular direction so we "perceive" and "observe" time as coming from somewhere, existing in the "now", and moving past us down the stream. As long as we don't have to face the horrible possibility of Time Beavers, that's all we know and all we care to know. Beware the Time Beavers.
FAX
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The Wiki I just read about Newtonian time explained it a bit differently, but I think I get it. (they said that Newton saw time the same way we think of it on a timeline) Events are "contained" between a beginning and an hypothetical end and are infinately divisable much like space is infinately divisable on a line. But he saw "real" time as very much an entitity that all events had to pass through flowing from the future through the present and funneling into the past.
My personal belief is that this is an illusion at best, and is just plain stupidity at worst. That's how film works... Not life.
As for the Beaver analogy. The idea that there are more dimensions to ANYTHING, whether it be space or time is interesting for sure. It's tough to take thought like that out of the conceptual (spiritual?) and into the practical though. Basically, it could never be a valid theory because it's not falsifiable. You'ld just have to wait for some revalation to come along and prove it.