Interesting stuff, Tim. What my father said in the
passage you referenced about time was more a discussion about what we don't
know, than a discussion about what we CAN know.
To me,
what your father said about "time" in AS pgs. 50-51 did seem to me to say
'what is time'. He says near the end of those pages, "If we take the
familiar step of imputing relations between percepts to corresponding
relations in the external world, the above considerations suffice to
characterize time in that world." That seems pretty direct to
me.
And once
one accepts those considerations he gives, then the notion of "time" is just
the use of a system to generate labels which have no special import
or significance on their own: "a clock does not "measure" anything; it
simply exemplifies the mentally constructed relation of simultaneity between
percepts in a particularly convenient form." Or, as Mach says, time is
just an abstraction.
In his
view, biology was already telling us things about time. What biology was
telling us is that time is very much more than a clock suggests. It is not
linear and it is not unidirectional and it is not a constant rate, unchanging.
If anything, his observations suggested that there may be no such
thing as "rate" with time, only with how material systems relate TO
time. Now do you see why I was so
anxious for him to really focus his attention on this and see what
developed?!
Maybe we
are using different language. To me, "time" is this abstraction constructed
from the relation of percepts and labels. Since it is an abstraction
and not physical, it deserves no further
explanation. Certainly, acknowledging that time is an abstraction
means that the idea of a linear "dimension" of time, for example, is but
an abstraction that has no physical basis as a preferred formal
representation.
But I am
reluctant to say that "time" is therefore not linear or not
unidirectional, etc. since to me the word "time" refers to any
kind of situation where one natural system is considered to generate
temporal labels which are represented in some formal representation. Such
a system could be linear and uniform, or it could be nonlinear or perhaps,
non-unidirectional.
To me
then, "time" does not refer to a singular kind of quality in Nature to be
studied, but rather refers to the entire class of relations
between systems where we have subjectively promoted one of those
systems (and one or more of its observables) to be the generator of
time-labels. And no member of this class has preferred status as representing
something more fundamental about the physical world than
another.
So, then, I see the exploration of "time" as the
exploration of this class of relations. Heretofore, we have historically been
interested in very mechanistic kinds of timeclock systems. But a broader view
of this whole class of relations which constitute "time" would include
such time systems that are linear, nonlinear, unidirectional,
not unidirectional, and so on. [Note that even the designations
'linear', 'nonlinear', etc. must be by comparison to some other natural
system. Along the lines of Mach, to ask whether a timescale is linear or not
in itself is a senseless
question.]
To me, the question is: Since we can subjectively
choose any system and any of its observables as the
time-label generator, which kinds of clock systems might be useful in
modelling complex (especially biological) systems? And are there
instances when it is fruitful to use combinations of more than
one clock system in order to model complex
systems?
His work
up to his death really only illuminated that time wasn't what Einstein was
defining, or at least that's not ALL it is. My father's work showed
us what time ISN'T, but he never got around to seeing if he could sort out
anything else about what it IS.
However, he did leave the door wide open for others
to follow, using the unique perspective he discovered that biological
organisms have afforded us if we look at it from that
perspective. In the book, Mind Over Matter,
that I had started to write on Rosennean ideas (which generated the
now-infamous "Levels of Complexity" that caused such a kerfuffle on the other
list), I compared the kind of perspective change my father achieved to
the change in perspective that allowed Copernicus to see that the
Earth was not a flat place at the center of the universe. The reason the sun
came up in the east and set in the west in an orderly way wasn't because
Apollo (as one example) was a punctual sun god who showed up for work on
time every day to drive his chariot across the sky, or some other equally
reasonable explanation that made "sense" to the folks up to that time. How
strange it must have sounded to those people to hear the suggestion that the
reason the sun rose in the east and set in the west was because it wasn't
moving at all, WE WERE. That the Earth was a round ball,
floating, suspended in vast, empty space-- spinning (on an imaginary
central axis) in such a way that the sun, which doesn't move at all in
relation to us, looks like it's rising in
the east and setting in the west.... and then the further explanations that
developed; that the planet is tilted on its imaginary axis, that it isn't just
spinning but also moving through space in a wide circle around the sun, which
is what gives us the seasonal change every year.... I mean, it sounds crazy,
doesn't it?
Judith
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 11:13
AM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] 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