ATDTDA (5.1) - The Etienne-Louis Malus

[Ya Sam]

So based on this, Monte, could you give your working definition of time? 
(this is a deadpan serious question).



>Like Augustine sez: "When someone asks me what time is, I know the answer, 
>but when he asks me to explain it, I no longer know.." There are suggestive 
>angles in cosmology/general relativity (arrow of time set by a 
>very-low-entropy Big Bang) and quantum theory (wave function collapse, 
>decoherence).
>
>Ooops, I did it again: "arrow of time" is pretty damn spatial, too.
>
>All I have to contribute in the AtD context is what I've tried to get 
>across in assorted Weird Science posts: that contrary to more than a 
>century of science-flavored spiritualism and science popularization and SF, 
>neither non-Euclidean geometry nor quaternions nor relativity provides 
>justification for "time as the fourth dimension" in the sense of 
>"past/future is really sorta kinda like up/down, left/right. and near/far." 
>Whatever time is, it isn't that.

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