Ah - I do have a copy of Bergson's "Laughter - An Essay on the Meaning of the
Comic" here ( slim book, 98 pages) but I have yet to sit down an read it: been
too busy Photoshoping my photo archive!
Yet, I must disagree on the essential nature of time. As Bergson pointed out
in his critique of Einstein's relativity, it is a philosophic mistake to
consider time to be another dimension of space, to be measure on a scale and
divided in to identical units. That is not how we experience time at all: that
is how we experience the devices we construct to simulate and represent the
passage of time.
As Bergson so eloquently demonstrated in "Matter and Memory", our experience
of time is dependent upon our ability to remember. So: if I divide a piece of
paper into two pieces, the measure of each will add up to the previous total;
that is a spatial division in kind. But if Moose receives his package in good
order, I can compare a photo of him checking his mailbox the previous day, and
finding nothing, to one taken at the moment when his hands lift his new piece
of equipment out of the shipping container and into his sight for the first
time. In this comparison, we see two completely different kinds of Moose; and
were we to have a third photo of him intently focused upon employing his new
piece of equipment for on an initial trial run, then nothing of this third
photo would speak to us of what had been in the previous two. Even having the
middle photo exclusively would not prepare us for the content of the other two:
we might infer their existence but could not establish
their content with the same degree of certainty that we found with the piece
of paper we had cut into two pieces.
I would even go so far as to say that, without time to distinguish between
kinds of things, we would not be able to distinguish degrees of variance within
these things. To my mind, then, the multi-dimensionality of time exceeds that
of space and may very well encompass it (creating the illusion that time is a
fourth spatial dimension).
John M.
When I mentioned to your therapist that I specialize in the works of Gilles
Deleuze and Felix Guattari, he ran screaming from the room. What's up with that?
>>>><<<<
From: Andrew Fildes <afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [OM] Re: OT equipment excitement time
Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2007 17:42:21 +1100
I'd agree in part but only in a microcosmic or personal sense - on a
larger scale where events come to have only a more local
significance, then time can be seen to divide coherent periods of the
a similar nature - much as any other form of measurement. Indeed,
even with the specific personal event in question, it is likely that
Moose will be engaged in essentially the same task but hopefully with
a slightly better and more rewarding tool. The event itself has not
divided one kind of thing from another but qualities of the same kind
of thing. Thus, as with spacial distinctions, it is a division by
degree and not kind.
Of course, if one regards time as a thing in itself rather than
merely the container of 'things', then all bets are off.
(Now if all this sounds sensible to you after three readings or less,
then I can recommend my therapist...)
Andrew Fildes (who prefers Bergsson on 'the Comic')
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 10/11/2007, at 4:39 PM, John Morton wrote:
> Henri Bergson, extending the investigations undertaken by G.F.B.
> Riemann, expressed the concept of duration in terms of the
> multiplicity which most characterizes it. While space divides by
> degree - with two extensions of measure resulting when one
> extension is divided - time divides in kind: an event which
> separates two durations distinguishes the before from the after as
> different kinds of things.
>
> Having been party to Moose's grand expectations, we shall have a
> chance to assess this theory for ourselves upon the event of the
> arrival of the item in question...
John Morton
http://OriginOfWriting.com
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