WESSbook, June 8, 2002. The Nature of Time

From: <[email protected]>
Date: Thu 06 Jun 2002 - 18:44:19 CEST

Dear WESSbookers:

We will discuss the "Nature of Time" from 12:00 to 4:00 PM (or
later!) on June 8, 2002 in room 284 of the Reiss Science Building of
Georgetown University. We plan to start PROMPTLY at 12:00.

Our objective is to examine the metaphysical basis of time as it
relates to emergence of complex systems and biological evolution. We
would like to address such questions as:

Is the concept of time a singular construct?
What is the nature of the reference for measures of time?
Can the metaphysical construct of time be organized into a
taxonomical relation corresponding with natural structures of
emergence?
If a temporal taxonomy exists, what are the references for the
correspondence relations?

Three members have volunteered to present "Early" talks. Other
members have volunteered to present "Late" talks. The submissions are
reproduced below.

Each early talk will be given 35 minutes with a five minute break
between talks.

Each late talk will last up to 15 minutes. The remainder of the time
will be used for ad hoc comments and open discussion.

A one hour lunch break is scheduled between 2:00 and 3:00 PM.

Our next WESSbook discussion will be in the Fall. I suggest we
continue this line of inquiry and discuss the Nature of Matter.

Participants are invited to dine at a local restaurant after the
meeting. As usual, friends and guests are invited to enjoy the
afternoon with us.

Cheers

Jerry LR Chandler
703-790-1651

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WESSbook
June 8, 2002
Order of presentations:

12:00 Richard Khuri
12:40 John Gray
1:20 Andy Vogt

3:00 George Farre
3:15 Stan Palumbo
3:30 Open contributions and discussion.

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Richard Khuri

A Brief Ontology of Time

Richard Khuri

The definition: Time is the movement of the outward turn of Pure
Inwardness. (It would help to read Plotinus, Ennead, III:7).

The outward turn of Pure Inwardness gives temporality two aspects:

1. regularity which is guaranteed by a transcendental law - like
character (the motions of the planets). Order, structure,
organization.

2. the arrow of time by which Outwardness successively embodies more
and more Inwardness.

Regularity relates to practical life, now mostly the
computational/algorithmic understanding of the world that enables us
to do well materially. Clocks and apportionment/keeping of time.

The arrow of time relates to poetic life: value - morals, beauty,
contemplation/meditation/spiritual growth - the fullness of time in
relation to the plenitude of being.

Scientific evocations.

A. How dogmatic materialism has lead to the inseparability of matter
from mind at the subtlest levels of subatomic physics (Mind was there
all along).

B. How evolutionary theory has re-enforced the acknowledgement of
temporal irreversibility (the arrow of time) and the hierarchy of
being, not only with regard to greater and greater complexity but
also a greater capacity to embody and express Inwardness (from no
sensation in the inanimate world, to primitive sensation in plants,
to consciousness in animals, to self-consciousness in humans with
subjectivity, art, science, philosophy and religion).

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John Gray

Simultaneity and the Notion of a Clock
John E. Gray
Code B-32
Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division
grayje1@nswc.navy.mil

One of the most important concepts that underlie the notion of a clock
is that of simultaneity. This concept almost disappeared in the
formulation of special relativity. Einstein defined synchronous or
simultaneity as
“The latter can be determined by establishing by definition that the
time required to travel from A to B is equal to the time to travel from
B to A. For suppose a ray leaves from A to B at “A-time” tA is reflected
from B toward A at “B-time” tB and arrives back at A at “A-time” t’A..

Furthermore, he also stated the following definitions of synchronous
behavior of clocks:

“1. If the clock at B run synchronously with the clock at A, the clock
of A runs synchronously with the clock at B.

2. If the clock of A runs synchronously with the clock at B as well as
with the clock at C, then the clocks at B and C also run synchronously
relative to each other.”

If we write equations with t written as a parameter then implicit is an
assumption of continuous evolution. The passage of time implies an
ordering relation between instants of time into “before” and “after” so
that one has t’<t and t’’<t’ ----> t” <t

Note that even biological systems can be fit into this framework, though
the ‘clock’ in biology is cyclic to some extent. If one could come up
with a different framework for these two properties, then one would be
well on the way to proposing a new analytical basis for time. When we
consider biological or other complex systems, the normal concept of
simultaneous goes away. In some fashion, one can retain the notion of
simultaneous, but at a cost Whitehead:

“You can find a meaning for the notion of the simultaneous instant
throughout all of all nature, but it will be different meaning for
different notions of temporality.”

While the subject of time is vast within biology, we limit ourselves to
a single area, the biological or circadian clock. At what level of the
multiple levels of internal operation that occurs within the organism
does the clock operate on. There are advantages and disadvantages to
studies based on such types of clocks. On the one hand, they exhibit
mutational invariance with respect to the background. This means two
useful things. The period of the clock is fixed relative to the
background environment that the clock is operating within. The clock is
temporally (translation) invariant across some epoch. This would mean
a no-interaction theorem between the clock and the environment it
operates within. There is no Darwinian advantage or disadvantage gain by
the usage of such a clock.

The question of scale is also relevant to a discussion of biological
organization. The time scale for biological process does not follow a
universal clock, so that many internal processes have their own
individual clocks. These clocks do not necessarily scale to form a
universal clock for an organism clock such as the corporation clock or
of the business cycle for that matter. A degree of harmony must drive
the operation of the entire system so that the components are
synchronized, otherwise failures arise. Any complex organization needs a
measure of consistency related to its clock operations. In well designed
artificial organizations, these are such measures of consistency. (Real
time systems have synchronization signals to maintain data flow.).
Clocking mechanisms that allow the organism to adapt “exactly” has
evolutionary advantage. Thus an internal metric simulation of one of the
world’s external clock allows the organism to synchronize its behavior
with some naturally periodic behavior. This has a definite evolutionary
advantage for some types of natural clocks. However, not all
environmental processes are exactly periodic, but instead are
quasi-periodic. They exhibit an essentially random driving mechanism
such as a sinusoidal wave driven by random noise. Another possibility
would be to have a process that appears to be chaotic (or completely
random with on quasi-periodic nature). We discuss the underlying
mathematics for measuring “clock distances”.

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Andy Vogt

Title: Clock Time

 The speaker will discuss the concept
of time used in science, addressing such issues as:
time in relation to matter and space, time as an
abstraction from multiple clocks, standards of time,
Newtonian time, relativistic time, time reversal and
thermodynamic time, big-bang time, and the local
and global nature of time.

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Late Speakers

George Farre

Quantum physics contemplates two distinct notions of time, one due to
Schroedinger, the other due to Heisenberg. The difference have
consequences, and I'd be happy to talk about them briefly

Stan Palumbo

(No title submitted)

Ad hoc volunteers?
Received on Thu Jun 6 18:46:02 2002

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