Abstract
The best way to a better understanding of the notion time might be to benefit in practice from getting rid of illusions. This essay is presumably the first attempt to elucidate a lot of enigma by attributing causality to the past but merely expected determination to models. It considers ordinary time having lost its natural zero due to abstraction from elapsed time. Fourier analysis of one-sided variables like elapsed time and distance is known to require a trick by Heaviside. It looks as if the also required care in step by step using the related complex calculus was sometimes missing, in particular when quantum mechanics was invented. The strange time-symmetry, which is known to be exclusively attributed to the microscopic world, can be explained as a result of improper interpretation. Heisenberg’s canonical quantization condition is also claimed to be an admittedly reasonable artifact for a simple reason that was further substantiated by performing a spectral analysis not as a complex Fourier transform with -oo0. Already tangible benefits are reported from the application of cosine transform in particular for mimicking the function of the inner ear. A more natural spectrogram was obtained by means of simple but uncommon methods. In addition to more practical suggestions concerning mathematical methods, food for meta-mathematical thought is added. It relates not just to Buridan’s donkey and v. Neumann’s confession to not believe in Hilbert space any more but also to the numbers thought to completely constituting a continuous time scale. Hopefully, a suggested introduction of “irreal” numbers can contribute to a clarification.
Eckard Blumschein