> Everything we know about obey the rules of time
So we're talking here about human knowledge reflecting something that seems natural to humans -- not very surprising I'd say. More generally, I think that all of our perceptions of the world are strictly limited by our sense perceptions. Atoms aren't really the way they appear to us, any more than daisies are really white. Daisies look white because of the way our eyes work, and atoms have the properties they do because those are the properties perceptible to us via the tools and theories we've developed to understand atoms. We can't possibly know what they "really" are like.
> You also have oversimplified the theory of relativity
No doubt! I just started reading this book but it caught my eye cos I was thinking about time already.
>Did you read the Rebecca Goldstein biography of Godel? That's the one I remember reading, and I also thought he stopped eating because of paranoia. He thought everyone was trying to poison him, while he worked on the ontological proof for the existence of God.
No, I read a very short one. A World Without Time. It's been a while, and I think I still have it in a box somewhere. It's possible my memory failed or I read into a passage in the book and made more of it. But I'm certain the author wrote about Godel's low calorie diet. The author also did talk about his paranoia regarding food.
I mean, they were colleagues at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study and Jews who escaped Germany. If I remember correctly, it was Einstein who lobbied to get Godel into the U.S. (check that, I could be wrong).
Some references:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del#Mid-1930s:_further_work_and_U.S._visits
https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Time-Forgotten-Einstein/dp/0465092942
https://www.amazon.com/When-Einstein-Walked-G%C3%B6del-Excursions/dp/0374538425
https://www.amazon.com/Godel-Meets-Einstein-Travel-Universe/dp/0812694082
Sorry, should have been more explicit. I mentioned in another reply that I'm about to start on this book which claims that Godel proved that "In any universe described by GR, time cannot exist". A review that I read explains that G. was able to model a universe using E.'s mathematics in which "intuitive" time doesn't exit -- any two events are joined continuously, and G. concluded that time is another spatial dimension, despite the difference in the way we experience it. What I don't understand (not having read the book) is the inference that because GR describes a possible universe in which time "doesn't exist", then it can't exist. E. accepted the result "reluctantly" because he couldn't refute it. Godel was quite the genius eh?
It's a pop-sci book, I've never heard of this result before despite being interested in logic and philosophy myself, and after flicking through it the writing style is a bit sensationalist. But I just found an academic paper on the subject for you, published in a reasonably reputable outlet, might be a better place to look: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0ahUKEwj_tbjEsqnQAhVjB8AKHS4tCeQQFggiMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhrcak.srce.hr%2Ffile%2F19095&usg=AFQjCNHSsByQUAsaDyjoktOD7WEY6ETxVA