Abstract

Existence of time, separate from human awareness or processes or happenings as proposed by Plato and nurtured by later intellectuals is reviewed. The nature of our present time-keeping is studied by a contemplative analysis of the structure and manifestation of time as understood in physics, chemistry, biology, evolution and cosmology. Physical quantities and physicochemical processes constructing and manifesting time, such as speed, phase, frequency, acceleration, energy, entropy, atomic and nuclear transitions, chemical reactions, ageing, evolution, origin of universe, etc., are used to correlate such a presentation with expressions of time currently available. Such an analysis yielded three kinds of time-- classical, quantum and cosmic and they are further discussed and contemplated together with expressions on mental time. This contemplation is used to consolidate the existing ideas about ‘mathematical time’, the notion and experience of passage of time and our universal time keeping. The absence of an all including and all influencing universal time is suggested. The primacy of time as a fundamental physical quantity is suggested to be reviewed.