Time LO20848

Winfried Dressler (winfried.dressler@voith.de)
Wed, 10 Mar 1999 10:45:32 +0100

Replying to LO20842 --

At de Lange wrote:

>Like all other physical quantities the time
>scale measured by a clock is linear. It means that clock time increases
>with equal intervals. Most probably this idea of regular time intervals
>developed about 6000 years ago by observing the motion of stellar clocks
>(galactic bodies like the moon, planets, sun and stars). But eventually
>humankind invented local clocks (sand glass, pendulum clock, fly wheel
>clock, atomic clock, quarts clock, etc.). But they kept on using a linear
>time scale for these local clocks.

Now I have two definitions of clocks:
1.) Linear increase of entropy
2.) A repeated, rhythmic event (such as heart beat, chemical clocks,
the four seasons, the "beat" of a production site - every x minutes
one unit,...)

I think both are closely related. Rhythm or music emerge (as order of
being) out of noise (as chaos of becoming). A clock may be a symbol of
the minimality requirement of entropy production in sparseness
("quantity-limit"). Without rythm, synchronisation (the opposite of
"time dissonance") could not occur. Synchronisation refers to
sparseness and fruitfulness.

Such a rhythm by means of various synchronisations is what we try to
achive in our assembly plant. Every beat is highly nonlinear in
entropy production - an active phase of high entropy production
(getting the work startet) and a recreational phase of low entropy
production (making the work perfect). The heart beat seems to be a
good analogy.

What have I done in my sketch above? I have learnt again about the
content (dynamics) / form (mechanics) issue. If entropy production is
fundamental to the dynamcis of time, then rhythm is fundamental to the
mechancis of time. If content and form falls apart with respect to
time, we may talk of "time dissonance". Clocks and entropy production
have two things common: 1.) They are fundamental, 2.) Both tend to
have a destructive effect when too much of it is imposed from outside.

>Now please try to understand the
>following shift in viewpoint. Use these phenomena as clocks and consider
>in them constant successive increases in entropy. These phenomena will
>then measure time nonlinearly.

May be I should add, that in using the word clock in my last paragraph, I
have gone through this shift in viewpoint.

Liebe Gruesse,

Winfried

-- 

"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>

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