Re: Rosen's concept of time and complexity

John J. Kineman (jjk@NGDC.NOAA.GOV)
Tue, 16 Feb 1999 13:11:27 -0700


At 09:13 AM 2/16/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Don Mikulecky replies:
>Time is labeled by a clock. What we can do is mark simultaneous instants.
We
>can also discern non-simultaneous events as prior or subsequent. that's the
>best we can do. This is a labeling, not measurement.
>Don Mikulecky
>
>Jack Martinelli wrote:
>
..... Although there is no absolute character to time, it
>> is farily easy to construct an
>> objective procedure for measuring it. Our sense of time is subjective.
>> If this is what you want to model, then good luck.

The implication of Rosen's perspective (and others, by the way) is that
time itself is subjective. Since time can only be quantified (labeled) in
terms of space, and vice versa, this implies that space too is subjective.

Yet I believe we need to account for the objective character of the
space-time world in terms that are not just individually referenced, but
shared by all observers. That shared view is incontrovertable; so what
accounts for its relative permanence? We need to see how the shared
objective "reality" is derived from the ultimately subjective one Rosen was
constructing. The problem has been that everyone has been assuming it would
work the other way around; that the subjective would be derived in some way
from the objective/computable. That makes no sense because one can't derive
the more general case from the more specific, yet the two can interact in
significant ways.

-----------------------------------------------
John J. Kineman, Physical Scientist/Ecologist
National Geophysical Data Center
325 Broadway E/GC1 (3100 Marine St. Rm: A-152)
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(303) 497-6900 (phone)
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jjk@ngdc.noaa.gov (email)