Yes that's correct. Abstract mathematical points have no physicality or time. The number 2, for example. It has no physicality and no time. You are confusing math and physics, two different but related things.
Oddly enough, we had, not long ago, a visit from someone calling themselves "amber" who used to make the identical mistake. See post 179 of this this thread: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/maths-to-explain-time.160516/page-9 Amber, supposedly female, was in time banned for being a sockpuppet of the male Theorist (a.k.a. Antoine, Dylan etc etc, see here for a partial inventory of past sockpuppets: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/is...ion-caused-by-heat.160007/page-7#post-3480113) , a notorious attention-seeking timewaster. The modus operandi of this person is to ask a daft, or badly phrased, physics question and then to respond to answers in such a way as to give a tiny bit of hope that progress is being made towards understanding, while simultaneously bleeding in a stream of fresh silly or wrong ideas, requiring further dialogue, the idea being to keep it going as long as possible, but ultimately leading nowhere. But soft! Let us see how the dialogue progresses on this thread, started by our new ("female") friend loverbal. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
This forum seems really paranoid about somebody and people are posting none related stuff taking the thread off topic. I am lost where I was now with my questions. To recap , a point is a mathematical abstract with zero dimensions and zero physicality. A group or set of points has dimensions of xyz but no dimension of time? Space-time is an abstract and arbitrary? Is that right so far?
You're butting up against problems with infinities and infinitesimals here. Consider a mathematical line, for example. It has one dimension, but it's supposedly made up of zero-dimensional points. How do you get something one-dimensional from a bunch of things that are zero-dimensional? The short answer is that you stack infinitely many zero-dimensional points alongside one another to make a line. Each zero-dimensional point is infinitesimally small, but if you use an infinite number of them that's not a problem. I already discussed this with you, didn't I? Space is physical. Volume is a mathematical property we assign to space. Volume is a measure of how much space there is. It's a conceptual way of putting a useful number on a physical thing. And yes, we can do maths with the numbers, whereas we can't do maths with a physical space.
Oh I see. I don't keep up with the social register. Can barely keep track of my own handles, let alone others'. Thanks for the heads up. All clear now.
Thanks for acting so quickly, James. A further thought: my previous characterisation of Theorist as essentially random does not seem to be accurate in one respect, at least. Theorist does seem to have one theme that he returns to, namely a reluctance to acknowledge the role of the time dimension, as used in relativity. Hence the sockpuppet "xyz" that he previously used, and hence the nature of his "questions" now. This facet of his behaviour could possibly be useful for identifying the next sockpuppet, when it inevitably Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! arrives......
As I understand it, in geometry, a point is not a thing, but a spacetime coordinate without needing dimensional properties. But for clarity: does every line consist of an infinite number of dimensionless points regardless of size of the line?
I think there may be (deliberate) confusion between dimension-magnitude and dimension-er, dimension. Take centre of of an A4 sheet of paper (assumed flat) - this is by definition a point with two dimensions x,y which (by the definition of a point) have zero magnitude. Take the centre of a tennis ball (assumed spherical) - this is by definition a point with three dimensions x,y,z which (by the definition of a point) have zero magnitude. We can map the path of a tennis ball through time and x,y,z (and t) using coordinates for the centre of the ball because the centre is a point and doesn't have a 'left side' and/or a 'right side'.