Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'An American Indian model of the Universe' and 'Meaning and Necessity'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / d. Time as measure
Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus]
     Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness.
     From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42
     A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / e. Tensed (A) series
The Hopi have no concept of time as something flowing from past to future [Whorf]
     Full Idea: A Hopi has no general notion or intuition of time as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at an equal rate, out of a future, through a present, into a past.
     From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (An American Indian model of the Universe [1936], p.57)
     A reaction: If true, this would not so much support relativism of language as the view that that conception of time is actually false.