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For the foreseeable future, I am going with time.
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Read
The Invention of Time and Space by
Patrice F. Dassonville
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Chapter 3 digs deeper into these issues, which are related to the failure of
dialectics. It outlines the confusion between time and event, and describes the
semantic disorder concerning the duration of the ongoing (or present) time,
countless metaphors, aphorisms, sophisms, truisms, and so forth, including artifacts
(i.e., conceptions based on an idea, such as a clock or a clepsydra, used to evaluate
the duration between two events).
A clock is a device whose functioning is correlated with the configuration of the
Sun and Earth (Fig. 3.1). When used as clocks, the rhythms of nature do not
generate time. A clock does not produce time and it does not consume time; the time
displayed is subject to strict international conventions. The idea (concept) of
measuring changes (phenomena) is made concrete by the invention of the clock
(artifact): this is conception or design, i.e., the materialization of a concept through
the gnomon, sundial, clepsydra, and clock. Consider what Petronius (?–65 AD)
said: … a clock near which a “bucinator” (latin word for a “trumpet player”) warns
us of the flight of the days, and time gone by ([11]: XXV).
Days and hours cannot be measured; it is changes that are measured.
Chapter 3
The Failure of Dialectics
Abstract The failure of the dialectics of time and space has various origins:
• The confusion between time and event, e.g., the confusion between past time
and past event.
• The non-rigorous use of language, e.g., questions like the duration of present
time.
• The difficulty in understanding the difference between a phenomenon which
belongs to physical reality, and the corresponding mental construct or concept,
e.g., we measure changes instead of hours.
• The dichotomy between time and space, attempting to make time, space, and
spacetime, physical realities.
• The countless metaphors in which time has an active role (dynamics of time,
action of time, arrow of time), and in which space has a materiality.
The Invention of Time and Space by
Patrice F. Dassonville
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The extracts do not do it justice
Read if you can