Dear Organlearners,
John Gunkler <jgunkler@sprintmail.com> writes:
>I sympathize with Glen's confusion about time. As far as I know,
>everyone is confused about the nature of time. We don't even have
>a good consensus about what we mean by "time."
Greetings John,
People use time all the time (grin). But the pumpkin hits the fan when
you ask them to articulate their concept of time.
Here is an interesting articulation. In my own mother tongue Afrikaans
a watch (clock) is called a "horlosie". Unlike most other Afrikaans
words, this word is derived through French from the Latin words "hora"
(time, hour) and "logeum"/loge" (lodge, booth). Thus the literal
translation of "horlosie" into English is "hourlodge". Does this not
tell us a little bit about time -- namely something which exists in a
watch? How does it exists in a watch? Since it exists in a watch, does
it also exists outside the watch?
Funk and Wagnalls describe time as follows:
According to the necessary conditions of human thought,
events are contained in time as objects are contained in
space, time existing before the event, measuring it as it
passes, and still existing when the event is passed.
The far majority of people think about time in this way. They use
space as a mental model to base their concept of time. However, they
do not realise how important light (electromagnetic waves) is for them
to create their mental model of space. Without light or without sight
they have difficulty in forming even the concept of space -- it
becomes that which can be touched, nothing more.
How should we think about light or any form of electromagnetic
radiation? Well, I can take you on a fast trip through the theory of
optics, the theory of electromagnetism and the theory of quantum
mechanics. You can also study the relevant textbooks in physics
yourself. But, bearing in mind that we want to know how light and
emwaves in general contribute to our conception of space, we will find
very little there. We will rather find more in psychology textbooks.
However, there is one theory which I have not yet mentioned and which
can play an important role in thinking about space. It is Einstein's
Theory Of Relativity (TOR), the theory which gave birth to, among
other things, nuclear technology such as bombs and reactors.
Einstein's TOR have consequences of paramount importance to our
cognitive processes. One is that we should not think independently of
3D space and time, but always think of them together as 4D
space-time. It entails that we should stop using space as a mental
model to picture time! Should we use space as a mental model to
conceptualise time, we impair the essentialities of creativity with
devastating consequences -- immergence upon immergence. Allow me some
meandering thoughts on the issue rather than trying to make them
plausible. If you lose me along the way, please forgive me for wasting
your time.
Newcomers to the list may browse through our dialogues on the
esentialities. One way is to connect to my last contribution in a
series of commentaries on them:
Essentiality - "quantity-limit" (spareness) LO20541
<http://www.learning-org.com/99.02/0009.html>
Liveness ("becoming-being").
Reality is complex. Time is used to express its becoming while space
is used to express its being. By beginning with space (being) as the
mental model we are inclide to consider time (becoming) and all other
things related to time (called processes) of lesser importance.
Eventually people develop a way of thinking which the philosophers
ratified as the ontological status of reality -- reality is the being
and to be sought while all changes are temporary and to be feared.
Sureness ("identity-categoricty").
Reality is becoming-being rather than being or becoming. When people
identify reality as being, this identification leaves an opening for
others to identify it as becoming because the former identification is
uncategorical. This creates immense confusion because those who think
of reality as something which begins and ends with being cannot
understand those who manage reality ontogenically in terms of
processes and methods. One tragic consequence is that some people
begin to believe that the goals (space bounded) sanctify the means
(time bounded).
Wholeness ("associativity-monadicity")
Reality is one whole made up by a diversity of monads connected
horisontally and vertically. When people begin to fragment the 4D
space-time property (which itself is a monad or "whole") of reality
into space and time, they set themselves unknowingly on a course of
fragmentarism. Thus they begin to fragment space itself, thinking only
locally or globally and not also cosmoligically. They also being to
fragment time which ultimately results in thinking of "snapshots of
time" (monentous events) rather than time intervals, however short.
Fruitfulness ("connect-beget")
Reality is continuously transforming itself revolutinary and
evolutionary. To do so monads of reality have
to connect effectively. When people are not able to reconnect
effectively their original fragmentation of space and time, they begin
to think that order occurs merely in space and not also time. Thus
they fail to see that chaos and order are connected to each other
through time.
Spareness ("quantity-limit")
Reality without light (emwaves) is unthinkable. When observers measure
the velocity of light, they get a constant value independent of their
own motion. When different parts of reality commute (communicate)
with each other, the ultimate velocity at which it can happen is the
velocity of light. When people look at the stars, they think in terms
of now because they perceive only space and not also time in the light
coming from the stars. Thus they cannot believe that by looking at the
stars they connect to billions of years of their past history.
Otherness ("quality-variety")
Reality is an increasing diversity. The only diversity in space is its
threefold dimensionality. By conceptualising one dimensional time on
it, people get accustomed to reductionstic thinking rather than
complexifying their thoughts. Thus, while not capable of understanding
it, they often view mathematics as extreme reductionism whereas it is
actually an art of complexity. Since physics and chemistry depends on
fluent mathematical thinking, they also exclude themselves from
understanding how diversity develops in the material world. Eventually
they view the development of diversity in the spiritual world as a
theory at its best rather than as essentail to reality.
Openness ("paradigm-open")
Reality is not only Creation, but also manifests the Creator. When
people think of 3D space as the "emergentless" background against
which first time and then the rest of reality are bonded to like paint
on a canvas, many of them begin to lose sight of the past and future
while staring only at the present. By putting their thoughts into a
"time box" (a short time interval containing the present), they close
themselves from experiencing the full glory of the Creator.
Consequenly their own creativity suffers immensely until death itself
imprisons it.
I myself now think much more in terms of energy rather than space as
well as entropy rather than time. Perhaps we should use energy-entropy
as the background in which we live rather than 4D space-time. Or
perhaps we should use structure-process as ur-given rather than
energy-entropy. But of one thing I am now quite sure -- we cannot
persist in using 4D space-time as the only complementary duality to
direct our minds. Needless to say, using space and time in an
independent sense has no value as a complementary duality.
Now, let us get back to something which John wrote:
>So, in general, anything that is "regular" (or "rule based" or
>"deterministic" or ??? -- sorry I don't have a better term right
>now) can serve as a standard for measurement.
John, perhaps the word "regularity" is the best existing one. It makes
me happy that you have set up a careful argument, coming to the same
conclusion as I did in:
Time LO21070
<http://www.learning-org.com/99.03/0310.html>
Measurement requires regularity to be of any use.
Many researchers in the material world measure left, right and centre
because they now have the technology (measuring instruments which can
be standardised) to do so. They fill scientific journals with
information so obtained, causing what may be called information
pollution. It was not always like this. Five hundred years ago people
could measure mostly space, angle, time, mass and volume, usually in a
crude manner. In those days people thought more on what they wanted to
accomplish with it before they actually began to measure. Today people
usually begin to measure and afterwards begin to think what they
should do with their measurements. Thus they view these measuring
instruments as extentions of their senses rather than as mental aids
which originated from creative minds and which require creative usage.
Sadly, I think that many researchers in the humanities follow the same
crazy course. But what is even worse, they do not even make sure that
their measuring techniques can be standardised. To be able to
standardise a measuring technique, they have to identify a regular
pattern which will serve as the base for comparing related patterns to
it. Then they have to code that basic pattern into an arithmetic. When
Kurt Goedel did it for logic, he discovered his famous incompleteness
theorem, namely that there are theorems which cannot be proved by any
formal system of logic. (Its like admitting that tacit knowlege and
formal knowledge are not the same thing.) This theorem made
intuinionistic logic (a creation of Lutzen Brouwer) more plausible to
other logicians.
My own empirical discovery (1982-83) that the Law of Entropy
Production operates even in the abstract world of mind also came as a
result of "identifying a regular pattern which will serve as the base
for comparing related patterns to it" and then "coding that basic
pattern into an arithmetic".
What we should be very careful of, is to "read a pattern" into the
construction of some measuring technique by making use of statistics.
It is then when the saying "there are lies, damned lies and
statistics" become so true. The reason is that statistics make use of
patterns to identify patterns. We must take care that the "dog does
not bite its own tail" -- that statistics do not confirm our
assumptions. If the measuring technique does not have an inherent
regularity itself, we can forget about standardising it. This
regularity defines the identity of the technique. The role of
statistics is rather to refine this regularity into a categorical
identity as well as to categorise the data of future measurements
obtained by that technique.
Here are some interesting questions to end with? Have you noticed that
of the more than a hundred phsyical quantities which can be measured,
time is the one which is the most refered to in the scientific
literature of the humanities? If we want to bridge the abyss between
the material and the abstract worlds, should we not use time (or
whatever we measure by a watch ) to do the bridging?
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>