ATDTDA (5.1) - The Etienne-Louis Malus

[Monte Davis]

John BAILEY wrote:

> I was about the write the same thing! Time is change, right? Any place 
> where there was no change at all, even in a body, would be outside of 
> time.
>  
> I tend to think of this less in a physics-y way (since I'm not much 
> chop with the science stuff) and more from a social/historical stance 
> - how time was "invented" by humans in order to make sense of change...

That last may (MAY) be a distinction without a difference. Galileo was 
big on distinguishing primary qualities (mass, position, motion, 
extension/boundedness) from secondary qualities (color, odor, sound). In 
his scheme, the former have their consequences no matter what; the 
latter require a sensing, sentient organism to register them. They could 
in principle be reduced to epiphenomena of primary qualities, and since 
G's time have been so reduced: color is wavelengths of light, odor is 
diffusing molecules and their chemistry in your nose, sound is 
compressed and rarefied air.

http://www.vernonpratt.com/211/galileoonsecondaryqualities.htm

So... is time primary, as science assumed for a long time? or secondary, 
in some way we have yet to suss out? I'm not saying it "doesn't exist" 
without consciousness, but wondering if at least some of what seem to be 
its attributes -- e.g. extension, continuity, one-wayness -- may be 
[something else, yet to be determined]  filtered through consciousness.
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