"Is Time An Illuson?" (Or Just an Abstract Concept?)

A current article in New Scientist (see excerpt below) suggests that our concept to time may be pure social construction, well what they essentially say is that there is no such thing as time in a meta-physical sense - this idea is expressed quite well in Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time", which I highly recommend.

However, this perspective does not spell doom for research on protensity, consideration of future consequences or intertemporal choice. We know that the "tick tock" is socially constructed from human imagination and a common need to order our society for mutual benefit. Time may be labelled as an illusion - but I think its more accurately described as an abstract concept.

"It is the invisible presence that governs your world. Trailing you like an unshakeable shadow, it ticks and tocks incessantly - you can sense it in your heartbeat, in the rising and setting of the sun, and in your daily rush to make meetings, trains and deadlines. It brings order to our lives through the categories of past, present and future.

Time. There is nothing with which we are so familiar, and yet when you try to pin it down you find only a relentless torrent of questions. Why does time appear to flow? What makes it different from space? What exactly is it? It's enough to make your neurons misfire, then sizzle and smoke.

You are not alone. Physicists have long struggled to understand what time really is. In fact, they are not even sure it exists at all..."