Re: Its about Time again

Gavin Ritz (garritz@XTRA.CO.NZ)
Tue, 18 May 1999 22:19:59 +1200


Dear Alexei
To answer why we should care about time?
Very simple in the any human system " organisation " there is a direct
link between psychological time and tension. There is also a direct link
between tension, profits and success, motivation. That is a very good
reason to understand psychological time. It is the grease that runs
companies. Everything is first created in the mind before it is created
in the material form with a psychological time attached to it. And most
of all there is a direct link between human capabilty and our temporal
horison. See 25 years of research at BIOSS, Brunel Institute of Social
Studies, and Elliot Jaques Requisite Organisations.

Kindest
Gavin

Alexei Sharov wrote:

> Comments to the message of Gavin Ritz:
>
> 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
> -------------------------------------------------
> 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