Re: Define a clock

From: jem (xxx_at_xxx.xxx)
Date: 10/19/04 

Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 08:27:45 -0400

AllYou! wrote:
> I'll try this one again:
>
> "jem" <xxx@xxx.xxx> wrote in message news:FoYbd.28493$UA.2860@lakeread08...
>

>>
>>What you're observing when you watch the blinking light or listen to the
>>ticking clock is "change" - light/no light, sound/no sound. "Change" is
>>the essence of these observations, and the details concerning how the
>>change is being produced aren't relevant to that. In your terms,
>>"change" is a fundamental aspect of Nature - not change in velocity,
>>change in displacement, or change in anything in particular, just change.
>
>
> To assert that the details of what makes a clock operate is irrelevant is to
> dismiss my theory out of hand. My whole point is that time is a derivative
> of the very real properties of distance and velocity. It's a concept only
> and it's measurement is fully dependent upon motion. IOW, all clocks depend
> upon motion to produce events. And so to say that the very property which
> is the underpinning of my proposition is irrelevant to the discussion is to
> end the discussion. If your point is to do so, then that's OK. We'll
> simply agree to disagree. However, if you wish to discuss the matter
> further, then we must consider what it is which drives any mechanism which
> we say measures time.
>
>
>>How can "change" be measured? By creating a device that produces it
>>(e.g. a blinking light), and registering the amount produced concurrent
>>with any other process in which something is changing. Obviously, such
>>a device is called a clock.
>
>
> Let's spend some time on what an event is. An event is a point having no
> dimension. It's like a point (in space) or a line or a plane in that it's
> imaginary and simply used for demarcation. You assert that it's a point of
> change. However, I'm not claiming that change occurs as a fundamental
> aspect of nature. I'm not claiming that the light on the clock blinks on
> and off as if produced by some mystical presence. Somewhere, at some level,
> a motion produced an event. Now, we can watch the hand of a clock pass by a
> mark on a dial and claim that this constituted an event. Or we can watch as
> a pendulum swings and listen for the ratchet to be released and say the
> resultant tick is an event. But no matter what you use, the production of
> events requires motion in some form or another. Whether this represents
> change in all cases is not a issue I'm prepared to debate.
>
>
>>It's probably correct to say that all changes are effected as motion,
>>and certainly all clocks have moving parts, but it's not the motion
>>that's of interest; it's the fact that the motion brings about change at
>>a single point (i.e. a swinging pendulum is at it's low point or it's
>>not, the second hand on a watch points to 12 or it doesn't).
>
>
> And now we agree. We judge the position of all things in the universe by
> the using the position of a given thing as our standard. But where we
> disagree is that motion was required to produce the event.
>
>
>>So what's "time" then? Well in one sense "time" refers to the
>>measurement of a clock (i.e. the quantity of standard change that a
>>clock produces), but the word is also used to refer to what the clock is
>>measuring, and in this sense, time is change.
>
>

OK, so it appears you want to continue with this space-motion idea, but
weren't you proposing that idea *because* you considered time to be
unobservable, and haven't I shown that time (aka change) *is* observable
(at least I don't interpret any of your above comments as taking
exception with that)? So why do you still want to develop this motion
based framework, which based on even a superficial analysis, would
require a major effort to build, assuming it could be built at all?

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