Dear elephant...you have a way with the same words you deem to be of little
value. You're right though, words seem so inadequate so often. ("In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God..."
no wonder we do it...)
Just to add my 2 cents, I can almost get my arms around "time" when I
realize that a mountain range and an ocean wave are the exact same physical
phenomenon. I credit Einstein with envisioning a law that would "predict"
(past/cause = future/effect) the behavior of planets, sub-atomic particles
and everything in between (including human sociology and psychology) which
leaves us the responsibility of searching our own consciousnesses for the
equivalents of gravity, heat, motion, relativity, time, infinity, and
sharing the universe with others bigger and faster than us.
Enjoyed your eloquence....
----- Original Message -----
From: elephant <moqelephant@lineone.net>
To: <moq_focus@moq.org>
Sent: June 10, 2001 7:27 PM
Subject: Re: MF Entropy, information and time
> A short comment. Simplicity and complexity are features of our picture of
> the world rather than of the world (which is continuous and therefore not
> individuated, and so neither simple nor complex). For this reason I do
not
> find *definitions* of the passage of time in terms of entropy movement on
> the complex - simple axis terribly plausible. Time passes, and there's an
> end on it. This is as much as we can say, this is what time is.
>
> One might also point out that it is a *moment* of time that passes, not
time
> itself, and that moments, like simplicity and complexity, are features of
> our pictures, not of the world itself.
>
> Specify a moment - it is gone. Facts grow old and die on our tongue as we
> speak them. You need no theory to know this. You need no treatise on
times
> arrow, no deep appreciuation of Zeno's paradox. You just need to listen
> quietly, and to feel the failure of words to catch up with things, the
> strain and effort of poetry, the nearness and the almost but not quite
> hitting the mark. The absence of any mark.
>
>
> "
> Time Passes. Listen. Time Passes.
>
> Come closer now.
> Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt
> and and silent black, bandaged night.....
> "
> Time passes. Welsh time, English time, American time. Time passes.
>
> And
>
> "things fall apart
> the center cannot hold"
>
> - but only because the falling apart and the center are part of our
> pictures, and those pictures are rushing forward, we are rushing them
> forward, refining and abandoning them in pursuit of quality. Purposes and
> projects: these are natural conditions of consciousness and what govern
the
> perception of time as a flow of moments, but they are also conditions of
> consciousness that themselves *require* the flow of time, for which the
flow
> of time is a priori. If we could abandon all purposes and projects,
perhaps
> we could experience some strange and timeless directionless eternity. And
> this is what some report - though I have not glimpsed it myself I can
> recognise it as a theoretrical possibility. In all other situations time
is
> an arrow, a river, an avalanche, a train. It is headed somewhere, we know
> not where, and it is headed there because we are too. Slowly, quickly,
> calmly, angrily, we move on.
>
>
>
>
> > From: Magnus Berg <McMagnus@hem.passagen.se>
> > Reply-To: moq_focus@moq.org
> > Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 07:59:39 +0200
> > To: MOQ focus <moq_focus@moq.org>
> > Subject: Re: MF Entropy, information and time
> >
> > Hi Jonathan
> >
> >> Let me interject an inversion . . .
> >> . . . AS ENTROPY/DISORDER INCREASES, TIME IS PERCEIVED SAID TO PASS".
> >> It may be an aside to Magnus's main point, but let's not forget that
TIME and
> >> not entropy is the topic of the month.
> >
> > Forgive me if I draw the wrong conclusion here but I thought that the
"Time's
> > arrow" theme you mentioned a few days ago suggested that time and
entropy was
> > more or less the same thing?
> >
> > I'm not too keen on that idea myself I'm afraid. I'm sure the equations
of
> > thermodynamics are watertight enough but it feels like defining one week
as
> > "the time it takes for my desk to become cluttered with printouts".
> >
> > I don't mean to make fun of the second law, and maybe I'm just
old-fashioned
> > about this time concept, but time seems to be a more basic concept than
the
> > rest of the second law.
> >
> >> Magnus, I don't think that there is any such beast as a "quantum
particle".
> >> Particles are particles and belong squarely in Pirsig's inorganic
level. The
> >> problem with isolated particles is that they cannot exhibit population
> >> behaviour! This makes it very hard to talk about thermodynamics and
entropy
> >> which - those "properties of state" are essentially descriptions
populations
> >> of particles. It thus makes sense to me that IF TIME IS A CONSEQUENCE
OF
> >> ENTROPY INCREASE,then when we try and look at single particles we lose
sense
> >> of both entropy and time.
> >
> > But time is still *there*! Granted, it's difficult to measure it because
our
> > methods to measure time are based on entropy increase, but that doesn't
mean
> > time just vanished. Imagine hundreds of radioactive isotopes, take one
at a
> > time and measure the time it takes for it to disintegrate. Even though
each
> > isotope is a population of only one particle and consequently, the time
it
> > takes to disintegrate will vary quite a bit, the average time will still
be
> > very close to the decay rate of that particular isotope. Right?
> >
> > This means that single, lonesome particles still have a quite good grasp
of
> > time. It does *not* mean that the different isotopes had different time
> > scales... methinks, I think it means that they simply disintegrated at
> > different
> > times according to the decay probability of the isotope. They don't have
to
> > hide in large populations to average out the individual differences. As
long
> > as it's an inorganic pattern, time will be defined.
> >
> >
> >> It is little wonder that time has strange properties
> >> in those "quantum" experiments.
> >
> > What I meant with quantum "particles", quantas, whatever, hmm... quantum
> > patterns
> > of course. :) I'll take that again.
> >
> > What I meant with quantum patterns having no sense of time is something
> > completely
> > different than small populations of inorganic particles. These guys
travel
> > through
> > time like it was up, left, or forward.
> >
> > Magnus
> > ------- End of forwarded message -------
> >
> >
> > MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
> >
>
> ------- End of forwarded message -------
>
>
> MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
------- End of forwarded message -------
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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