Essentialities and self-learning LO17797

Winfried Dressler (winfried.dressler@voith.de)
Thu, 16 Apr 1998 16:53:06 +0100

Replying to LO17717 --

Heidi and Dan Chay suggested

>a distinction I ran across years ago made, as I
>recall, by Henri Bergson. He distinguished between "time" and
>"duration." If it was, indeed, Bergson, he referred to time as you and
>Doc have in this thread, which I liken to At's recollection of
>Eddington's phrase "(increase in) entropy is the arrow of time."
>Bergson distinguished "duration" as our experience of time.

I was thinking about "objective time" as something outside me, even
controlling me by given tasks to be accomplished within a given timeframe
etc. and "my time" as my personal experience of my life when you offered
this distinction which helps me to express my point.

There is a paradox in experiencing "duration":

If you have nothing to do than looking at your watch, time seems to be
endless. But a few years later, you just don't know where the time has
gone - a kind of timelessness (nearly reversible, low entropy production).

On the other hand, when you are fully commited to your tasks, the days
just past very fast. But few years later, you will remember a rich and
long time - a few weeks like this can be remembered as a few years
(irreversible, high entropy production).

I guess, that entropy production provides not for "objective" time, but
for experience of duration - my entropy production is what I experience as
the duration of my time. The constant entropy production of a watch does
not provide for a more real time. It depends on the culture you live in
whether the authority of watches is accepted. This outside-time tend to
impair creativity as well as other outside forces: Emergences don't take x
minutes but entropy saturation while all seven essentialities are paired.
What is the interest in the number of minutes it takes for you or for me?

Yes, Doc, time can not be managed. But I can manage my time (and the time
of others!) by taking care of or influencing or manipulating the process
of entropy production. It is most easily done by just asking a question.

Do you enjoy this day? What did you learn today?

Liebe Gruesse
Winfried

-- 

Winfried.Dressler@voith.de

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