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2 ideas
20820 | 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. |
3915 | 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. |