Re: Time and context

["Tim Gwinn" <***>]

I found some additional interesting comments by George Kampis, in his book
"Self-Modifying Systems in Biology and Cognitive Science" (1991). Kampis
presents a lengthy discussion of dynamics and mechanics and associated
formalisms, somewhat along the lines Rosen does in AS and LI, although
different enough that it is worth reading it separately.

This is a must-read book for any Rosenite. Unfortunately, like so many good
books, its nearly impossible to find. Kampis' homepage
(http://hps.elte.hu/~gk/) links to his books on Amazon, but I am not sure it
is available from Amazon anymore. I found my copy last year on the used book
market.

Regards,
Tim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of Tim
> Gwinn
> Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 11:14 AM
> To: ***
> Subject: Re: Time and context
>
>
> Continuing my thoughts on time....
>
> I've been pondering how else one might encode our dynamical universe other
> than by a 3+1 dimension system of space+time. At the moment, I
> can't come up
> with an alternative.
>
> I keep coming back to : what is our basis for "time"? And it seems to be
> that it rests on having some natural system (call it C) to act as a clock
> with one or more observables {c1,...,cn}, and it is the
> measurements of such
> an observable(s) which (when they generate distinct values) serve
> as labels
> of time. We have no way of considering "time" other than by choosing some
> system to act as C and choosing certain of its observables to act as the
> {ci}, and choosing certain of the equivalence classes of those
> measurements
> of the selected observables to serve as the "ticks" of time, and the
> relations between those ticks to serve as the "units" of time.
>
> (This is essentially also how Rosen describes it. As an aside, it also
> appears that Aristotle had a roughly similar view of time
> [Physics IV.11] ,
> where he states that "For that is what time is: number of change
> in respect
> of the before and after. So time is not change but is that in respect of
> which change has a number."  Except that for Aristotle, what he calls
> "numbering", rather than being merely labels, becomes identified
> with points
> on a line, and rather than this numbering scheme and the associated line
> being merely abstractions, seems to have for Aristotle some real meaning:
> "It is manifest then that time is a number of change in respect of the
> before and after, and it is continuous, for it is a number of what is
> continuous". This notion of the infinite continuous also leads him in the
> next section to his proposal for an "unmoved mover" - a first cause.)
>
> In this way, time is a rather arbitrary concept: it consists of a
> subjectively chosen relationship between two or more natural system, one
> being C, the clock system, and S (or {Si}), the system(s) under study.
>
> It then occurred to me that our penchant for "equal units" of time is,
> accordingly, also quite arbitrary since our choice of the clock
> system C is
> arbitrary. Rather than choose one second as "the period equal to
> 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation which corresponds to the transition
> between two energy levels of the ground state of the Cesium-133
> atom" as the
> NIST does, we could just as well have left it to be some fraction
> of a solar
> day. Because of variations in the solar day, the latter would
> mean that the
> meaning of one second would then vary as well.
>
> There is nothing erroneous about the latter choice, it simply seems to us
> cumbersome. Our preference for mechanistic systems leads us to find some
> system C like the NIST definition which is 1) context independent, and 2)
> has its basis in the microscopic. The latter is, I think, also part of a
> reductionist viewpoint as well: the idea being that if we could just find
> the most fundamental unit of time on the most fundamental
> microscopic level
> of physical reality then we will find that all other more macroscopic
> measures of time will be some multiple of this "primitive" unit
> of time. In
> this way, perhaps a reductionist hopes to not only reduce matter to some
> proposed fundamental entities, but also achieve a similar reduction of
> dynamics on the basis of a proposed universal fundamental unit of time.
> (This leads me to wonder if measuring/modelling the dynamics of biological
> systems, or complex systems in general, would benefit from the use of
> non-mechanistic clocks, which may have unusually varying and
> unequal "units"
> of time.)
>
> But if reductionism is false, then we cannot give any particular
> system C a
> preferred status. There is no truly objective character to time. In this
> way, we ought not make statements such as "the 'now' is always emerging",
> because such a statement presumes a god-like objective perspective of
> reality where time is endowed with metaphysical meaning beyond
> our reference
> to some subjectively chosen physical local system C. "Now" only
> has meaning
> with reference to some observer with some clock system C (which may be a
> system internal to the observer).
>
> Mach similarly says in "The Science of Mechanics":
> "Nay, we may, in attending to the motion of a pendulum, neglect entirely
> other external things, and find that for every position of it our thoughts
> and sensations are different. Time, accordingly, appears to be some
> particular and independent thing, on the progress of which the position of
> the pendulum depends, while the things that we resort to for
> comparison and
> choose at random appear to play a wholly collateral part. But we must not
> forget that all things in the world are connected with one another and
> depend on one another, and that we ourselves and all our thoughts
> are also a
> part of nature. It is utterly beyond our power to _measure_ the change of
> things by _time_. Quite the contrary, time is an abstraction, at which we
> arrive by means of the changes of things; made because we are not
> restricted
> to any one _definite_ measure, all being interconnected. A motion
> is termed
> uniform in which equal increments of space described correspond to equal
> increments of space described by some motion with which we form a
> comparison, as the rotation of the earth. A motion may, with respect to
> another motion, be uniform. But the question whether a motion is
> _in itself_
> uniform, is senseless. With just as little justice, also, may we
> speak of an
> "absolute time" - _of a time independent of_ change. This
> absolute time can
> be measured by comparison with no motion; it has therefore neither a
> practical nor a scientific value; and no one is justified in
> saying that he
> knows aught about it. It is an idle metaphysical conception."
> [ch. II.VI.2]
>
> Regards,
> Tim