It seems that you want to understand the essence of time, but
there is no such essence. Why should we care about what time
REALLY IS? It is sufficient to use various MODELS of time. For
many purposes, it is sufficient to use the Newtonean time; but
for other purposes it does not work and we can create other
models that suit us.
Apparently, most organisms have a model of time. But in simple
organisms, models of time are very simple (e.g., a sequence of
stages in a life-cycle). Humans are most advanced among animals
and have most sophisticated models of time, some of which are
formalized (e.g., in physics) and many of them are not
formalized. I agree that we need more formal models of
time. But first we need to understand what would be the purpose
of these models. Models are tools; and time and space are tools
too. There is no reason to develop useless tools. Can you
formulate your problems that you are going to solve using
non-standard models of time?
-Alexei
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Alexei Sharov Research Scientist
Dept. of Entomology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061
Tel. (540) 231-7316; FAX (540) 231-9131; e-mail sharov@vt.edu
Home page: http://www.gypsymoth.ento.vt.edu/~sharov/alexei.html