Quote:
Originally Posted by coberst
Movement Gives Meaning to Time
Long, long ago, I took a course in physics at Oklahoma Agriculture and Mechanical College now called Oklahoma State University. That physics course defined speed to be equal to the distance traversed by an object in a unit of time. For the initiated that is s=d/t. It was assumed that distance and time were more primitive concepts than was motion.
...I discover every time such an incident occurs that motion is number one and time is not supreme...
What, if anything, is time ‘in itself’? I suspect no one can answer that question because such a thing, I guess, does not exist. We are able to talk of time only with metaphors.
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I think time is the more primitive concept than motion.
Your equation is spot on and quite revealing s=d/t or speed(motion) equals change in distance over change in time.
This is the most primitive definition we can give motion: change in space over change in time. Motion is therefore a relationship between those two concepts (space and time) and must depend on both. If we graph it, it would look like so:
I would submit that a concept which must rely on the comparison of two other concepts is by definition less primitive than the two concepts it compares - I can think of no situation where that is not true. In other words, comparing time and space with motion is less primitive than either time or space.
I don't think there would be a good argument that our brains consider motion more primitive than time. I can imagine what five minutes is like without going through a process such as "one mile is the distance I can run in five minutes therefore I can imagine five minutes as one mile in time". The brain can understand time without referencing motion. It is therefore at least as primitive a concept to the brain as motion.
~modest
