We study the space geometry of a rotating disk both from a theoretical and operational approach; in particular we give a precise definition of the space of the disk, which is not clearly defined in the literature. To this end we define an extended 3-space, which we call “relative space:” it is recognized as the only space having an actual physical meaning from an operational point of view, and it is identified as the “physical space of the rotating platform.” Then, (...) the geometry of the space of the disk turns out to be non Euclidean, according to the early Einstein's intuition; in particular the Born metric is recovered, in a clear and self consistent context. Furthermore, the relativistic kinematics reveals to be self consistent, and able to solve the Ehrenfest's paradox without any need of dynamical considerations or ad hoc assumptions. (shrink)

Modal interpretations constitute a particular approach to associating dynamical variables with physical systems in quantum mechanics. Given the “quantum logical” constraints that are typically adopted by such interpretations, only certain sets of variables can be taken to be simultaneously definite-valued, and only certain sets of values can be ascribed to these variables at a given time. Moreover, each allowable set of variables and values can be uniquely specified by a single “core” projector in the Hilbert space associated with the (...) system. In general, the core projector can be one of several possibilities at a given time. In most previous modal interpretations, the different possible core projectors have formed an orthogonal set. This paper investigates the possibility of adopting a non-orthogonal set. It is demonstrated that such non-orthogonality is required if measurements for which the outcome can be predicted with probability 1 are to reveal the pre-existing value of the variable measured, an assumption which has traditionally constituted a strong motivation for the modal approach. The existing framework for modal interpretations is generalized to explicitly accommodate non-orthogonal core projectors. (shrink)

The Reign of Quantity gives a concise but comprehensive view of the present state of affairs in the world, as it appears from the point of view of the 'ancient wisdom', formerly common both to the East and to the West, but now almost entirely lost sight of. The author indicates with his fabled clarity and directness the precise nature of the modern deviation, and devotes special attention to the development of modern philosophy and science, and to the part played (...) by them, with their accompanying notions of progress and evolution, in the formation of the industrial and democratic society which we now regard as 'normal'. Guénon sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality) toward Matter (or Quantity); but after the Reign of Quantity-modern materialism and the 'rise of the masses'-Guénon predicts a reign of 'inverted quality' just before the end of the age: the triumph of the 'counter-initiation', the kingdom of Antichrist. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon's texts of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works. (shrink)

The 1968 My Lai Massacre in South Vietnam and shocking events at Abu Graibh prison in Iraq in 2003 show that the behaviour of some in the American military has descended into barbarism. How strong is the military's commitment to avoiding misconduct and atrocity? This timely and compelling book asks critical questions and raises sobering issues the Australian Army can't ignore. Leading military personnel, aid workers, commentators and scholars discuss the Australian Army's commitment to behaving ethically and the challenges associated (...) with contemporary warfare. With chapters on social media and inciting violence, cyberweapons, and special operations and humanitarian deployments, 'Ethics Under Fire' offers a rare insight into the key issues facing the modern army, from technology and tactics to terrorism"--Back cover. (shrink)

Classical electron theory with classical electromagnetic zero-point radiation (stochastic electrodynamics) is the classical theory which most closely approximates quantum electrodynamics. Indeed, in inertial frames, there is a general connection between classical field theories with classical zero-point radiation and quantum field theories. However, this connection does not extend to noninertial frames where the time parameter is not a geodesic coordinate. Quantum field theory applies the canonical quantization procedure (depending on the local time coordinate) to a mirror-walled box, (...) and, in general, each non-inertial coordinate frame has its own vacuum state. In particular, there is a distinction between the “Minkowski vacuum” for a box at rest in an inertial frame and a “Rindler vacuum” for an accelerating box which has fixed spatial coordinates in an (accelerating) Rindler frame. In complete contrast, the spectrum of random classical zero-point radiation is based upon symmetry principles of relativistic spacetime; in empty space, the correlation functions depend upon only the geodesic separations (and their coordinate derivatives) between the spacetime points. The behavior of classical zero-point radiation in a noninertial frame is found by tensor transformations and still depends only upon the geodesic separations, now expressed in the non-inertial coordinates. It makes no difference whether a box of classical zero-point radiation is gradually or suddenly set into uniform acceleration; the radiation in the interior retains the same correlation function except for small end-point (Casimir) corrections. Thus in classical theory where zero-point radiation is defined in terms of geodesic separations, there is nothing physically comparable to the quantum distinction between the Minkowski and Rindler vacuum states. It is also noted that relativistic classical systems with internal potential energy must be spatially extended and can not be point systems. The classical analysis gives no grounds for the “heating effects of acceleration through the vacuum” which appear in the literature of quantum field theory. Thus this distinction provides (in principle) an experimental test to distinguish the two theories. (shrink)

QUALITY AND QUANTITY are fairly generally regarded as complementary terms, although the profound reason for their comple- mentarism is often far from being understood, this reason lying in the 'polar' correspondence referred to toward ...

A naive introduction of a dependency of the mass of a black hole on the Schwarzschild time coordinate results in singular behavior of curvature invariants at the horizon, violating expectations from complementarity. If instead a temporal dependence is introduced in terms of a coordinate akin to the river time representation, the Ricci scalar is nowhere singular away from the origin. It is found that for a shrinking mass scale due to evaporation, the null radial geodesics that generate the (...) horizon are slightly displaced from the coordinate singularity. In addition, a changing horizon scale significantly alters the form of the coordinate singularity in diagonal (orthogonal) metric coordinates representing the space-time. A Penrose diagram describing the growth and evaporation of an example black hole is constructed to examine the evolution of the coordinate singularity. (shrink)

‘Framing the Refugee’ looks at the power of representation of liberal political theory with regard to refugees. In the author’s view, legal and political arbitrariness lies in the representing of refugees as lacking agency. His key point is that liberalism fails to conceive of refugees as politically capable actors, and he is thus complicit in the arbitrary neutralisation of their emancipatory potential and participatory powers. This paper emphasises the moral justifiability of that state of affairs by seeking some answers to (...) the question of why liberal political theory construes a concept of the refugee that does not contain any element of political agency. Most obviously, the author acknowledges that refugees perform a significant social role in contemporary societies and are hence active members in them. Nonetheless, they remain neglected in their political role by most political theory. What does it mean to have political agency for the author? It means to have the power of self-representation, that is, of being allowed and even enabled by a given legal system to bring about change in the political order, or at least to participate in that change. But the author also calls attention to the role of ‘theory’ in addressing this downside of the contemporary liberal democratic order. Theory becomes even more crucial at times of urgency, that is, when theorists have a moral responsibility to deepen their philosophical imagination, as Hannah Arendt so forcefully noted. The theoretical task of ‘re-framing’ the refugee entails reconfiguring political philosophy and its traditional categories of sovereignty, citizenship and nationality. The liberal inability to accommodate the political agency of many members of the political community – especially of non-nationals – is a sign of the historical contingency of the current rules of political membership. This inability makes evident the imperative of rethinking politics in ways that avoid the arbitrariness of treatment and aim instead at equality and justice. If political leaders can re-write the rules of membership to suit their own ideological agendas, the same demand should be addressed by – indeed demanded from – political and legal theorists. However, this is not as easy as it seems, according to the author. In his view, political theory is confronted with fundamental challenges, the most obvious one being that ‘theory’ is usually unequipped to defeat its own ‘topology’. Note that in saying this the author is raising a more pressing concern about arbitrary law-making: it may be that arbitrariness – especially the arbitrary treatment of aliens by the sovereign state and by liberal democracies in particular – is inscribed in the very DNA of liberalism. No matter how odd this may seem, the author advances the view that ideas, however creative of a new order, or transformative of a given status quo, never appear in "free form", and are instead deeply rooted in a structure that constrains our imagination. The challenge is thus to develop a meta-theory that reconceptualises the very way liberal political theory frames marginalised sectors of society – such as the "poor" – as a product of an international economic order that robs those sectors of their agency as the very condition of its internal functioning. We must therefore question how the very idea of the refugee is produced, because it symbolises the construction of an inside and an outside that is complicit with the arbitrary play of legal statuses involved in migration policy. The author’s main point regarding this is that certain groups are sidelined by economic, political and social systems because they are already excluded from theoretical systems to start with. Keywords: refugees, agency, political theory, migration. (shrink)

As many philosophers agree, the frame problem is concerned with how an agent may efficiently filter out irrelevant information in the process of problem-solving. Hence, how to solve this problem hinges on how to properly handle semantic relevance in cognitive modeling, which is an area of cognitive science that deals with simulating human's cognitive processes in a computerized model. By "semantic relevance", we mean certain inferential relations among acquired beliefs which may facilitate information retrieval and practical reasoning under certain epistemic (...) constraints, e. g., the insufficiency of knowledge, the limitation of time budget, etc. However, traditional approaches to relevance—as for example, relevance logic, the Bayesian approach, as well as Description Logic—have failed to do justice to the foregoing constraints, and in this sense, they are not proper tools for solving the frame problem/relevance problem. As we will argue in this paper, Non-Axiomatic Reasoning System (NARS) can handle the frame problem in a more proper manner, because the resulting solution seriously takes epistemic constraints on cognition as a fundamental theoretical principle. (shrink)

The emergence of nanotechnology, with all its promises of economic, social, and medical benefits, along with dire predictions of environmental, health, and safety threats, has occasioned an active debate in the Science and Technology Studies field, in which we have seen five distinct conversations that frame the discussion. The topical threads include ethics, regulation, opportunities and threats including utopian/dystopian visions of the future, public perception, public participation. These conversational distinctions are not absolutes with firm borders as they clearly overlap at (...) many points. Nonetheless, common to all is a strong sense that control and consequence are significant problems that have yet to be addressed adequately by the promoters of nanotechnology. A final section addresses articles on nanotechnology that exemplify the social construction theory of technology. We include herein a selective summary of this recent body of science, technology, and society (STS) journal literature focused on the social and ethical interactions of nanotechnology (SEIN) that has emerged in the last few years. The intent is not to be encyclopedic in coverage, but rather to seek to understand, in a general way, the key issues and concepts STS scholars are discussing. It is clear that STS-oriented scholars are well poised to grapple explicitly with the cultural, socio-political, and ethical dimensions of nanotechnology. Drawing on understandings of earlier socio-technical areas of interest and concern—nuclear power, genetically modified organisms, the human genome—such scholars have moved well beyond the questions of whether and where nanotechnology intersects society. More important is their effort to seek an understanding in depth of exactly how they are socio-politically, culturally, and ethically interconnected. In doing so, SEIN studies have at the same time become increasingly diverse and more sophisticated and mature over the course of the past decade. Scholars have quite rightly recognized the inadequacies of blanket ideas of moratoria versus non-regulatory environments, utopian versus dystopian futures, and whether or not the public has a role to play in nanotechnology decision making. Rather, a more sophisticated, often case specific, flexible understanding of the societal context of a given issue or concern is called for. (shrink)

We examine the link between the growing emphasis on corporate social responsibility at the organizational level and beliefs about social responsibility at work (SRW) expressed by individuals. Drawing from theories of professionalism and diffusion of innovations (including practices and beliefs), we advance hypotheses about beliefs of managers and non-managers in 11 countries at two time periods, and use a unique international data set to test our hypotheses. Our general prediction that managers would score higher than non-managers on a measure (...) of SRW was not supported. However, further analysis revealed a more complex relationship moderated by the contextual factors of time frame and country inequality level. We discuss implications and extensions for future research. (shrink)

We examine the link between the growing emphasis on corporate social responsibility at the organizational level and beliefs about social responsibility at work (SRW) expressed by individuals. Drawing from theories of professionalism and diffusion of innovations (including practices and beliefs), we advance hypotheses about beliefs of managers and non‐managers in 11 countries at two time periods, and use a unique international data set to test our hypotheses. Our general prediction that managers would score higher than non‐managers on a measure (...) of SRW was not supported. However, further analysis revealed a more complex relationship moderated by the contextual factors of time frame and country inequality level. We discuss implications and extensions for future research. (shrink)

Globalization processes imply the self-deconstruction of the hierarchy of legal norms. Thus, legal pluralism is no longer only an issue for legal sociology, but becomes a challenge for legal practice itself. Traditionally, rule making by `private regimes' has been subjugated under the hierarchical frame of the national constitution. When this frame breaks, then the new frame of legal institutions can only be heterarchical. The origin of global non-state law as a sequence of recursive legal operations is an `as if', not (...) only a founding myth as a self-observation of law, rather the legal fiction of concrete past operations. This fiction, however, depends on social conditions outside legal institutions, on a historical configuration in which it is sufficiently plausible to assume that in earlier times, too, legal rules were applied. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to analyze the social circulation of discourses on non-hegemonic cultural practices, in particular, on what is called “trash TV”, and how they are connected to struggles over cultural and social hierarchies. To do so, it takes a specific event as starting point: the injunction that the CNMC filed against Mediaset to adjust the contents of Sálvame Diario to the requirements of what is known as the “child protection time slot”. This paper uses (...) constructionist framing to analyze how this event was discussed by different social actors. Our analysis shows that while the CNMC and the press painted the conflict as a legal issue, Sálvame and social media users focused their discussion on the social acceptability of celebrity gossip media and their viewers. (shrink)

The frame associated with a classical point particle is generally noninertial. The point particle may have a nonzero velocity and force with respect to an absolute inertial rest frame. In time–position–energy–momentum-space {t, q, p, e}, the group of transformations between these frames leaves invariant the symplectic metric and the classical line element ds2 = d t2. Special relativity transforms between inertial frames for which the rate of change of momentum is negligible and eliminates the absolute rest frame (...) by making velocities relative but still requires the absolute inertial frame. The Lorentz group leaves invariant the symplectic metric and the line elements $ds^{2} = -dt^{2} + \frac{1}{c^{2}} dq^{2}$ and $d \mu^{2} = dp^{2}-\frac{1}{c^{2}}de^{2}$ . General relativity for particles under only the influence of gravity avoids the issue of noninertial frames as all particles follow geodesics and hence have locally inertial frames. For other forces, the question of the absolute inertial frame remains.) Born conjectured that the line element should be generalized to the pseudo-orthogonal metric $ds^{2} = -d t^{2}+\frac{1}{c^{2}} dq^{2} + \frac{1}{b^{2}}(dp^{2}-\frac{1}{c^{2}}de^{2})$ . The group leaving this metrics and the symplectic metric invariant is the pseudo-unitary group of transformations between noninertial frames. We show that these transformations also eliminate the need for an absolute inertial frame by making forces relative and bounded by b and so embodies a relativity that is shape reciprocal in the sense of Born. The inhomogeneous version of this group is naturally the semidirect product of the pseudo-unitary group with the nonabelian Heisenberg group. This is the quaplectic group. (shrink)

The paper investigates the kind of dependence relation that best portrays Machian frame-dragging in general relativity. The question is tricky because frame-dragging relates local inertial frames to distant distributions of matter in a time-independent way, thus establishing some sort of non-local link between the two. For this reason, a plain causal interpretation of frame-dragging faces huge challenges. The paper will shed light on the issue by using a generalized structural equation model analysis in terms of manipulationist counterfactuals recently (...) applied in the context of metaphysical enquiry by Schaffer (2016) and Wilson (2017). The verdict of the analysis will be that frame-dragging is best understood in terms of a novel type of dependence relation that is half-way between causation and grounding. (shrink)

This paper explores the difference it makes to incorporate the multi-focal conception of violence that has emerged in peace studies over recent decades into the discourse of non-violent direct action (Galtung 1969, 1990; Uvin 2003; Springs 2015b). I argue that non-violent action can and should incorporate and deploy the distinctions between direct, cultural, and structural forms of violence. On one hand, these analytical distinctions can facilitate forms of self-reflexive critical analysis that guard against certain violent conceptual and practical implications of (...) non-violence, however inadvertent those may be. At the same time, these lenses help reconceptualise non-violent action in ways that open up an array of strategies and tools not previously prevalent among activists committed to non-violence. Non-violent action may itself be either complicit in, or might be enabled to illuminate and cut against, forms of violence that infuse social, political, and economic structures (i.e. structural violence). Appeals to non-violence and the actions with which they interweave may be complicit in, or might be enabled to illuminate and cut against, religious, ideological, aesthetic, and even scientific understandings and conceptual frames that underpin and support structural violence (i.e. cultural violence). In each case, non- violence must be critically examined with all these possibilities in mind. I first define and contextualize a multidimensional account of violence in terms of direct, structural, and cultural violence. I then consider two examples of how it challenges thinking about non-violence. (shrink)

The experience of time and temporally extended events is a fundamental property of mind, and of time-based media arts. In dealing with properties of time, does the operational logic of contemporary media production tools cohere with philosophical views on the experience of time? This article considers a range of views on the phenomenal experience of time as they relate to the production of time-based media. Embedded within our production technologies, the artist is faced with (...) a new philosophical instrument: the production timeline. The timeline utility in most time-based media software (and non-digital precursors) adopts the cinematic model as its operating metaphor; a series of frames, assembled one after the other in sequence. But the timeline brings new temporal complications such as reversibility, hierarchy and modifiability. The timeline also contorts time into a spatialized dimension, represented as a linear vector within the software interface. Automatic adoption of the linear timeline and the frame as the base unit of temporal thinking is problematic. J. M. E. McTaggart’s argument for the unreality of time based on contradictions within a range of possible temporal modal logics is compared with approaches to animation and editing software, and also interactive media software and their unique approach to time as potential events is considered. (shrink)

The aim of being able to reason about quantities, time or space has been the main objective of the many efforts on the integration of propositional planning with extensions to handle different theories. Planning modulo theories are an approximation inspired by satisfiability modulo theories that generalize the integration of arbitrary theories with propositional planning. Parallel plans are crucial to reduce plan lengths and hence the time needed to reach a feasible plan in many approaches. Parallelization of actions relies (...) on the notion of interference, which is usually determined syntactically at compile time. In this paper we define a semantic notion of interference between actions in PMT. Apart from being strictly stronger than any syntactic notion of interference, we show how semantic interference can be easily and efficiently checked by calling an off-the-shelf SMT solver at compile time, constituting a technique orthogonal to the solving method. (shrink)

Introduction: Non-violent resistance, carried out by healthcare workers, has been a common phenomenon. Despite this and despite the issues this type of action raises, we know little about the healthcare workers who engage in this action and their perspectives about its justification. This exploratory study sought to address this gap, examining these fundamental questions amongst a sample of healthcare workers who have engaged in acts of resistance, exploring their understanding of non-violent resistance, its justification and the barriers they faced in (...) engaging in such action. Methods: Participants were recruited through Medact's ( https://www.medact.org/ ) member database and directed to an online survey hosted on Qualtrics. While participants were unlikely to be representative of the broader UK healthcare community, participants were in an advantageous position to comment on non-violent resistance. Descriptive quantitative analysis and a content analysis were conducted. Results: The majority of participants felt that non-violent resistance could be justified dependent on its cause and/or the action in question. Within this, most felt that if action were non-violent, that if it didn't harm patients and that if the issue in question had to do with health being compromised, action was often justified. A number of others framed their justification as being a right or duty to engage in non-violent resistance. In relation to barriers to engaging in non-violent resistance, these fell into three categories: personal, professional and broader concerns related to society or the general culture found in healthcare. Within these, time and concerns about registration or the consequences of engaging in action were cited as the greatest barriers. Conclusions: These results suggest that healthcare workers who regularly engage in non-violent action carefully thought through their actions, acknowledging the diversity of actions and issues that could be challenged, for many patient care remained a primary concern. There is a need for clarity from regulatory bodies and in particular the need for dialogue between healthcare bodies and healthcare workers who continue to engage in acts of non-violent resistance. (shrink)

A recent paper by Jakl, Jung and Pultr succeeded for the first time in establishing a very natural link between bilattice logic and the duality theory of d-frames and bitopological spaces. In this paper we further exploit, extend and investigate this link from an algebraic and a logical point of view. In particular, we introduce classes of algebras that extend bilattices, d-frames and N4-lattices to a setting in which the negation is not necessarily involutive, and we study (...) corresponding logics. We provide product representation theorems for these algebras, as well as completeness, algebraizability results for the corresponding logics. (shrink)

We define and study the notion of an indexed frame. This is a bi-dimensional structure consisting of a Cartesian product equipped with relations which only relate pairs if they coincide in one of their components. We show that these structures are quite ubiquitous in modal logic, showing up in the literature as products of Kripke frames, subset spaces, or temporal frames for STIT logics. We show that indexed frames are completely characterised by their ‘orthogonal’ relations, and (...) we provide their sound and complete logic. Using these ‘orthogonality’ results, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for an arbitrary Kripke frame to be isomorphic to certain well-known bi-dimensional structures. (shrink)

This article conducts a mixed-method content analysis of Chinese and American news media coverage of Google DeepMind’s Go playing computer program, AlphaGo. Drawing on humanistic approaches to artificial intelligence, combined with an empirically rigorous content analysis, it examines the differences and overlap in coverage by the Chinese and American press in their accounts of AlphaGo, and its historic match with Korea’s Lee Sedol in March, 2016. The event was not only followed intensely in China, but also made the front page (...) of The New York Times. This article finds that the Chinese press was more likely than the American press to frame AlphaGo as non-threatening, which the authors attribute to cultural differences and the two countries' different understandings of Go. In addition to quantitatively identifying similarities and differences in the framing of AlphaGo, this paper also investigates the underlying and evolving contestations over what constitutes the “human” and the “machine.” It concludes by discussing the implications of the study’s findings as well as outlining avenues for further research. (shrink)

Introduction Jamie Allen Time, of all the dimensions readily presented to experience, seems to do so most readily through things. Stuff, in supposed counter-valence to the negentropic resilience of living things, appears to us as that which degrades through time, and demarcates a more technical chronometry of sequential events. Situated outside the rotting of fruit and the ticking of clocks, a “deep time” persists. Like the ultra-hearing of the bat, and the infra-vision of the boa-constrictor, there exist (...) living and non-living agents and entities capable of revealing the fixity and finitude of our own perceptual frames for thinking and understanding. The recordings presented here consist of four extracts of documents made in deep geological repository sites (for the storage of nuclear waste). Here re-presented are the Yucca Mountain Repository; HADES, in Mol, Belgium; Gorleben in Germany and a further recording from Forsmark in Sweden (pretty much inaudible behind a loop of a pop song). These recordings are imagined acoustic amplifications of deep time, just as the astronomer’s telescope is (thought of a certain way), also a time machine. Stars and nuclear waste are unapparent objects of temporal thought. Andy Weir is an artist from London researching effects of deprioritised subjectivity and contemporary art. This project draws on work developing sonic fictions, stealthy earworms, and micropolitical agencies. Prompted for further thoughts about the recordings presented here, he offered up the interspersed discussion included. —JA Yucca Mountain Repository, Nevada, USA by continent I became interested in these sites originally as spaces that allude to a time outside of the human (‘deep time’) as they are designed to store waste ‘without future maintenance’. The very fact of thinking about these spaces or working on them—engineering etc.. (as I’m particularly interested them in a kind of practice rather than just an object of thought), in other words, forces a confrontation with thought of the extinction of humanity. I was interested in this as a production of affect at odds with the expected ‘ironic, can be whatever you like’ interpretive condition of contemporary art (art under the condition of neoliberalism, say, where the individual subject is prioritised as a free autonomous producer of the meaning of the work) When I thought about this a bit though it ran into paradoxes—yes, I could allude to deep time, but in doing so I just allude to its un-representability, drawing attention to the limits of representation and so reaffirming it—I was stuck in a representation/non-representational negative dialectic. In trying to somehow create a figure for deep time I was either reducing it to my description of it, or presenting it as irreducible. HADES Facility, Mol, Belgium by continent I don’t think I’ve escaped this in the work but my response to it was to create a sonic-fiction. This was based on the idea of a viral transmission of the affect of deep time (this is the ‘pyroclastic-soaked chrono-dread’) through receiving apparatuses, transforming the screen into an intercessor or mediating lure for the outside, a site of exposure multiplying virulently through its dissemination, invoking as much as trying to represent these spaces, the sounds as durations of exposure to contagious materials, and fictions as a way of excavating the strangeness of a world opaque to subjective reconfiguration... Testing out I suppose ways that art could start thinking about figuring the reality of ecological crisis. Gorleben Repository, Lower Saxony, Germany by continent While everything remains at the level of fiction I think the work is problematic. It doesn’t really model anything, giving too much authority to either romantic abandonment or the recuperation of romantic abandonment under its description by theory/philosophy, all contained and controlled by me within a fairly limited condition of what art can do. Deep Time Contagion is precisely a materialisation of and transmission of this paradox (i.e. with screen-media can only present deep time as unrepresentable or draw attention to an inability to present it) taking the comfort/panic induced by this paradox as its material. I’m working now on some new projects that take this as a point of departure. Forsmark Repository, Sweden (Robitussin Mix) by continent. (shrink)

In recent times, Evans’ idea that mental states could have non-conceptual contents has been attacked. McDowell (Mind and World, 1994) and Brewer (Perception and reason, 1999) have both argued that that notion does not have any epistemological role because notions such as justification or evidential support, that might relate mental contents to each other, must be framed in conceptual terms. On his side, Brewer has argued that instead of non-conceptual content we should consider demonstrative concepts that have the same fine (...) grainess of non-conceptual contents while having conceptual structure. In what follows I will argue that, first, that the notion of demonstrative concept is not viable and, second, that there is an epistemological role for non-conceptual content. (shrink)

The veiled recession frame has served several times in the literature to provide examples of modal logics failing to have certain desirable properties. Makinson [4] was the first to use it in his presentation of a modal logic without the finite model property. Thomason [5] constructed a (rather complicated) logic whose Kripke frames have an accessibility relation which is reflexive and transitive, but which is satisfied by the (non-transitive) veiled recession frame, and hence incomplete. In Van Benthem [2] the (...) frame was an essential tool to find simple examples of incomplete logics, axiomatized by a formula in two proposition letters of degree 2, or by a formula in one proposition letter of degree 4 (the degree of a modal formula is the maximal number of nested occurrences of the necessity operator in ). In [3] we showed that the modal logic determined by the veiled recession frame is incomplete, and besides that, is an immediate predecessor of classical logic (or, more precisely, the modal logic axiomatized by the formula pp), and hence is a logic, maximal among the incomplete ones. Considering the importance of the modal logic determined by the veiled recession frame, it seems worthwhile to ask for an axiomatization, and in particular, to answer the question if it is finitely axiomatizable. In the present paper we find a finite axiomatization of the logic, and in fact, a rather simple one consisting of formulas in at most two proposition letters and of degree at most three. (shrink)

Hypersequent calculi can formalize various non-classical logics. In [9] we presented a non-commutative variant of HC for the weakest temporal logic of linear frames Kt4.3 and some its extensions for dense and serial flow of time. The system was proved to be cut-free HC formalization of respective temporal logics by means of Schütte/Hintikka-style semantical argument using models built from saturated hypersequents. In this paper we present a variant of this calculus for Kt4.3 with a constructive syntactical proof of (...) cut elimination. (shrink)

A completely Lorentz-invariant Bohmian model has been proposed recently for the case of a system of non-interacting spinless particles, obeying Klein-Gordon equations. It is based on a multi-temporal formalism and on the idea of treating the squared norm of the wave function as a space-time probability density. The particle’s configurations evolve in space-time in terms of a parameter σ with dimensions of time. In this work this model is further analyzed and extended to the case of an (...) interaction with an external electromagnetic field. The physical meaning of σ is explored. Two special situations are studied in depth: (1) the classical limit, where the Einsteinian Mechanics of Special Relativity is recovered and the parameter σ is shown to tend to the particle’s proper time; and (2) the non-relativistic limit, where it is obtained a model very similar to the usual non-relativistic Bohmian Mechanics but with the time of the frame of reference replaced by σ as the dynamical temporal parameter. (shrink)

The non-credit bearing and ongoing education and development of mid- to late-career corporate executives is known by the compound term executive education. Reductively stated, executive education, for its corporate consumers and its business school providers, is predicated on the relationship between an order and its execution ; a relationship I call the “order-execution cognate”. With the word execution derived from Greek for sequence, and with the sequence of an execution following-on from its corresponding order, sequentiality is the essence of execution, (...) and the cognate. Executive education involves the amelioration of this order-execution cognate, to the ends of increased profits and competitiveness for the corporation concerned, and increased career prospects for the individual executive. Concerning sequentiality, and as a thesis on the philosophy of executive education, I apply a strand of ontological reflection to examine this cognate, namely philosophy concerning time and temporal succession. To aid in this task I use the English translations of writings on time by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Emerging from Heidegger’s thought are two temporal types that acknowledge and critique temporal succession; chronological time and Kairotic time respectively. By associating Heidegger’s philosophic method with that of early German Romantic philosophy, I articulate how it is possible to reconceive the temporal sequence of the order-execution cognate as a productive oscillation between chronic and Kairotic time; I call this oscillation “ironic temporality,” and its productivity “ironic productivity”. My philosophical analysis of commercially lucrative and neoliberal executive education is at odds with traditional knowledge-based analyses, affording a critique of the capitalist order which the educative event serves. Disrupting temporal notions of that event then becomes a dangerous political act; becomes the means to frame the educative event for the management of our age; and becomes the new orders for executive education. (shrink)

This collection focuses on the ontology of space and time. It is centred on the idea that the issues typically encountered in this area must be tackled from a multifarious perspective, paying attention to both a priori and a posteriori considerations. Several experts in this area contribute to this volume: G. Landini discusses how Russell’s conception of time features in his general philosophical perspective;D. Dieks proposes a middle course between substantivalist and relationist accounts of space-time;P. Graziani argues (...) that it is necessary to provide an account of the “synthetic procedures” implicit in the recourse to diagrams in Euclid’s Elements, while E. Mares comes to the conclusion that in Euclid’s Elements we should treat the parallel postulate as empirical and the postulate that space is continuous as a priori. M. Arsenijevi?/M. Adži? present an important formal result concerning two theories of the infinite two-dimensional continua, which sheds new light on the current dispute between gunkologists and pointilists; F. Orilia discusses two problems for presentism, one regarding the duration of the present and the other related to Zeno’s paradoxes. A. Iacona delves deep into logical matters by focusing on the so-called T×W modal frames in order to deal with the deteterminism-indeterminism controversy. D. Mancuso outlines a non-standard temporal model compatible with time travel, andV. Fano/G. Macchia discuss time travels in the light of an important foundational principle of modern cosmology, Weyl’s Principle. (shrink)

The electronic and muonic hydrogen energy levels are calculated very accurately [1] in Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) by coupling the Dirac Equation four vector (c ,mc2) current covariantly with the external electromagnetic (EM) field four vector in QED’s Interactive Representation (IR). The c -Non Exclusion Principle(c -NEP) states that, if one accepts c as the electron/muon velocity operator because of the very accurate hydrogen energy levels calculated, the one must also accept the resulting electron/muon internal spatial and time coordinate operators (...) (ISaTCO) derived directly from c without any assumptions. This paper does not change any of the accurate QED calculations of hydrogen’s energy levels, given the simplistic model of the proton used in these calculations [1]. The Proton Radius Puzzle [2, 3] may indicate that new physics is necessary beyond the Standard Model (SM), and this paper describes the bizarre, and very different, situation when the electron and muon are located “inside” the spatially extended proton with their Centers of Charge (CoCs) orbiting the proton at the speed of light in S energy states. The electron/muon center of charge (CoC) is a structureless point that vibrates rapidly in its inseparable, non-random vacuum whose geometry and time structure are defined by the electron/muon ISaTCO discrete geometry. The electron/muon self mass becomes finite in a natural way due to the ISaTCOs cutting off high virtual photon energies in the photon propagator. The Dirac-Maxwell-Wilson (DMW) Equations are derived from the ISaTCO for the EM fields of an electron/muon, and the electron/muon “look” like point particles in far field scattering experiments in the same way the electric field from a sphere with evenly distributed charge “e” “looks” like a point with the same charge in the far field (Gauss Law). The electron’s/muon’s three fluctuating CoC internal spatial coordinate operators have eight possible eigenvalues [4, 5, 6] that fall on a spherical shell centered on the electron’s CoM with radius in the rest frame. The electron/muon internal time operator is discrete, describes the rapid virtual electron/positron pair production and annihilation. The ISaTCO together create a current that produce spin and magnetic moment operators, and the electron and muon no longer have “intrinsic” properties since the ISaTCO kinematics define spin and magnetic moment properties. (shrink)

What does it mean to teach, live, and imagine one’s futures amidst a global pandemic? How to respond to the reality of unequal and overlapping crises, COVID-19 being one of them? Can alternative understandings of time help us create a more just post-pandemic university? Drawing on environmental humanities, disaster and critical time studies, in conversation with qualitative data, this article theorizes a ‘pedagogy of scale’: a practical and conceptual centering on multiple temporalities and diverse interpretative frames. The (...) analysis argues for the need to attend to overlapping, non-linear, and changeable scales of time, reference, and meaning that students draw on in order to make sense of crises: every crisis, even as unprecedented as COVID-19, is embedded in environmental processes, long-term vulnerabilities and injustices. These overlooked and overlapping scales interweave personal, planetary, and theological notions of time—from ecological deep time to the divine time—meaning, and self. In its focus on asynchronicity, overlap and multiplicity, the analysis extends current theorizations of temporality and crisis in higher education, challenges paradigms of mastery, advocates for epistemic plurality, and embraces decolonial notions of human subjectivity, providing a much-needed critical model for the post-pandemic university. (shrink)

During a showing of the video Some Everybodies, which observes tourist behaviour at a non-tourist site in Bath, the work will be discussed as evolving through non-dualist processes of film-making (enabled through new technology), whilst also attempting to create a non-dualist filmic experience for the spectator. Shot with a fixed-frame camera at a corner scene (which is the site of a minor accident), the film does not possess a traditional narrative structure or design, and has been described as a moving (...) painting. There is no central character (people are viewed more as moving bodies), and the momentum (rather than linear progression of scenes) has been made entirely in the editing suite, rather than on-site through a directorial eye. Dialogue from the site has been included as a multivalent communal poem that scrolls as subtitles beneath the images. Here the traditional understanding of subtitles is, once again, questioned, and they no longer exist as semiotic colonizers of othered national experiences, but evolve as asides from the passers-by themselves. Time-as-intervention will be discussed through the bleached colouration of the pictorial image, reminiscent of old postcards. This visual sense of well-worn familiarity is juxtaposed against a soundtrack that has been slowed down, creating primal groans and utterances. The significance of still-images within film-making will be explored, as the narrative freezes whilst the tourists themselves freeze, or snap, their own narratives. These mementos are also included on postcards and posters as part of a larger installation. The walk-through, yet high-walled cross design of the installation creates corners (said to be the places where people meet), and optimal viewing points a tourist leit-motif. The site is designed to illustrate the dislocation of time and place, where images of the video site (as posters and postcards) are seen before the video itself. Reference will be made to film-maker Joseph Robakowski, artist Barbara Kruger, the scientist Dirk Helbing (with particular reference to dynamical flow and pilgrim crowd behaviour at Mecca) and film theorist and film-maker Professor Laura Mulvey. (shrink)

The present study used eye tracking methodology to examine rereading benefits for spatially transformed text. Eye movements were monitored while participants read the same target word twice, in two different low-constraint sentence frames. The congruency of perceptual processing was manipulated by either applying the same type of transformation to the word during the first and second presentations , or employing two different types of transformations across the two presentations of the word . Perceptual specificity effects were demonstrated such that (...) fixation times for the second presentation of the target word were shorter for the congruent condition compared to the incongruent condition. Moreover, we demonstrated an additional perceptually non-specific effect such that second reading fixation times were shorter for the incongruent condition relative to a baseline condition that employed a normal typography during the first presentation and a transformation during the second presentation. Both of these effects were similar in magnitude for high and low frequency words, and both effects persisted across a 1 week lag between the first and second readings. We discuss the present findings in the context of the distinction between conscious and unconscious memory, and the distinction between perceptually versus conceptually driven processing. (shrink)

We investigate in detail the electromagnetic fields of a uniformly accelerated charge, in order to ascertain whether such a charge does ‘emit’ radiation, especially in view of the Poynting flow computed at large distances and taken as an evidence of radiation emitted by the charge. In this context, certain important aspects of the fields need to be taken into account. First and foremost is the fact that in the case of a uniformly accelerated charge, one cannot ignore the velocity fields. (...) This then leads to other equally vital points. The net field energy turns out to be exactly the same as that of a non-accelerated charge having a uniform velocity equal to the instantaneous velocity of the uniformly accelerated charge. Further, the Poynting vector, seen with respect to the ’present’ location of the uniformly accelerated charge, during the deceleration phase, possesses everywhere a radial component pointing inward toward the charge, becoming nil when the charge becomes momentarily stationary, and during the acceleration phase, points away from the charge position. Last, but not least, when the leading spherical front of the relativistically beamed Poynting flux, advances forward at a large time t to a far-off distance \, the charge too is not lagging far behind. In fact, these relativistically beamed fields, increasingly resemble fields of a charge moving in an inertial frame with a uniform velocity \, with a convective flow of fields in that frame along with the movement of the charge. There is no other Poynting flow in the far-zones that could be termed as radiation emitted by the charge which, in turn, is fully consistent with the absence of radiation reaction and is also fully conversant with the strong principle of equivalence. (shrink)

This article reports the findings of a one-year project examining British press coverage of the genetically modified food debate during the first half of 2003, and both expert and non-expert reactions to that coverage. Two pro-GM newspapers and two anti-GM newspapers were selected for analysis, and all articles mentioning GM during the period in question were stored in a machine readable database. This was then analyzed using corpus linguistic and discourse analytic techniques to reveal recurrent wording, themes and content. This (...) text analysis was complemented by 12 interviews with experts involved in the communication of GM issues, and 12 focus-group sessions in which members of the public reacted to selected newspaper texts and other GM material. Both in the press and in public reaction, the issue of GM was found to be intimately associated with other political events of the time, notably the invasion of Iraq. Except among experts, there was little awareness of the official national debate and issues were approached in more general terms. Pro-GM characterization of the issues as primarily scientific, both by newspapers and experts, was rejected by the anti-GM press and campaigners, and by the focus-group participants. They assessed the issues in a more global frame, rejecting scientists and companies as unreliable. In addition, they linked both US and British GM policy to the invasion of Iraq, and, by analogy, rejected pro-GM arguments as untrustworthy. (shrink)

The formulation of the second law of thermodynamics in the frame of general relativity is reconsidered in the case of an istotropic homogeneous universe. We show that there appears then a direct link between the cosmological state of the universe, as expressed in terms of conformal coordinates, and quantities such as energy density, pressure, and entropy associated with the description of nature. In the early universe there appears a kind of phase transition due to transfer of gravitational energy to matter (...) associated with the cosmological expansion if the universe starts with a non-Euclidian (space) state. As a result, we may envisage the possibility of a “cold big-bang model,” in which the universe would start at zero temperature and entropy. The temperature goes then through a maximum before entering the present area of cooling related to adiabatic expansion. (shrink)

For the most part, current reflections on the social seem to overemphasize either homogeneity (society/nation-state, modernization/globalization) or heterogeneity (sociality, cosmopolitanism). Against this, here the argument is put forward that it is appropriate to think of the social as consisting of aspects of homogeneity or shared frames of reference and aspects of heterogeneity at the same time. This thought is developed particularly in contrast to normative concepts such as Bauman's sociality—republicanism nexus or Beck and Grande's ideas on European cosmopolitanism. (...) With the help of concepts such as sociation, glocalization and conflict, a basis will be developed for the elaboration of particular socials (e.g. Europe) as a general social theory. This avoids falling into normative traps, which are usually risky when starting out from a historical particularity to explain current and future structures and features of notions such as European society. (shrink)

Heidegger’s engagement with the poet Friedrich Hölderlin often dwells on the issue of temporality. For Heidegger, Hölderlin is the most futural thinker (zukünftigster Denker) whose poetry is necessary for us now and must be wrested from being buried in the past. Heidegger frames his reading of Hölderlin in terms of past, present, and future and, more importantly, describes him as being able to poetize time. This paper examines what it means to poetize time and why Hölderlin’s poetry (...) in particular allows us to understand temporality as the interplay of presence and non-presence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:After Extinction ed. by Richard Grusin, and: Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones and Extinction by David FarrierChris CrewsRichard Grusin, editor. After Extinction. University of Minnesota Press, 2018. 272pp.David Farrier. Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones and Extinction. University of Minnesota Press, 2019. 176pp.Thinking Critically and Poetically with the AnthropocenePublished within a year of each other, Richard Grusin’s edited collection, After Extinction, and David Farrier’s Anthropocene (...) Poetics offer two valuable perspectives on the themes of extinction and the Anthropocene. Most readers are likely familiar with some version of the Anthropocene by now, and its usage in these books (with a few exceptions) follows a common refrain in the humanities and social sciences, where it is used as an umbrella term to describe a wide range of (mostly negative) impacts to the Earth associated with industrial civilization and human activities.The topic of extinction is a much older issue, but increasingly frequent (and alarming) reports about biodiversity loss and extinction from bodies like the United Nations, combined with activism from groups like Extinction Rebellion, have raised its profile. Elizabeth Kolbert’s 2014 book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, which performs a sort of Derridean hauntology throughout the pages of After Extinction, further reinforced this trend. As Richard Grusin notes in his Introduction to After Extinction, the book emerged from a conference hosted by the Center for Twenty-First Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee which focused on the question of what comes after extinction. Each chapter is thought-provoking, but at times they sat uneasily together, producing a sort of Chthulucenic cacophony drawn from multiple disciplines and themes, from entangled humanism and the power of photography to a rethinking of disability and Indigenous languages in the Anthropocene. [End Page 156]I found David Farrier’s Anthropocene Poetics harder to pin down, despite being a more cohesive text. The book offers a series of ecocritical musings that engage with a series of poets and authors whose work Farrier uses to draw out a poetic imagination of the Anthropocene. Farrier develops this Anthropocene poetics through a dizzying array of textual and artistic examples that draws inspiration from queer ecology and New Materialism (e.g., Elizabeth Grosz, Timothy Morton, Jane Bennett, Quentin Meillassoux) to problematize the liminal spaces and borders between human and non-human agencies and affect, animacies and intimacies, while suggesting that poetry is well suited (perhaps best suited?) to help us rethink our relationship to deep time and geologic agency. While reading Farrier’s book, I could not help but think of Bruno Latour’s comments about how we need a new geostory to help us make sense of the Anthropocene.Farrier engages widely with Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing to develop some key themes, yet there is no attempt to force the concept of the Anthropocene into any prefigured box, despite his study’s grounding in ecocriticism and his stated sympathy with the fledgling field of Anthropocene studies. As Farrier notes, “I pursue a more inclusive approach to defining the Anthropocene, that is, that each discipline must do so according to its own terms and, by implication, that each discipline must reappraise its boundaries and assumptions in the Anthropocene’s shadows” (3). Farrier’s familiarity with both the scientific basis and cultural debates around the Anthropocene allows him to pull this off successfully.A key aim for Farrier is to explore what an Anthropocene poetics might look like, and to show how such a poetics can allow for more fluid engagements with the Anthropocene. He does this through three framing devices: intimacy (deep time), entanglements (sacrifice zones), and swerve (kin-making), each of which allows him to think more deeply about our growing awareness of deep time (past and future) and our entanglements with a changing planet. Farrier suggests this awareness is creating a deeper appreciation for how the human project is (and always has been) deeply bound up with other than human beings and non-human agencies. As Farrier argues: “One of the most striking and unsettling aspects of the Anthropocene is the newly poignant sense that our present is in fact accompanied by deep pasts and... (shrink)

Previous studies exploring mental time travel paradigms with functional neuroimaging techniques have uncovered both common and distinct neural correlates of re-experiencing past events or pre-experiencing future events. A gap in the mental time travel literature exists, as paradigms have not explored the affective component of re-experiencing past episodic events; this study explored this sparsely researched area. The present study employed standardized low resolution electromagnetic tomography to identify electrophysiological correlates of re-experience affect-laden and non-affective past events, as well as (...) pre-experiencing a future anticipated event. Our results confirm previous research and are also novel in that we illustrate common and distinct electrophysiological correlates of re-experiencing affective episodic events. Furthermore, research from this experiment yields results outlining a pattern of activation in the frontal and temporal regions is correlated with the time frame of past or future events subjects imagined. (shrink)

In a current clinical trial for Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation, Dr. Samuel Tisherman of the University of Maryland aims to induce therapeutic hypothermia in order to ‘buy time’ for operating on victims of severe exsanguination. While recent publicity has framed this controversial procedure as ‘killing a patient to save his life’, the US Army and Acute Care Research appear to support the study on the grounds that such patients already face low chances of survival. Given that enrollment in the (...) trial must be non-voluntary, the study has received an exemption from federal standards for obtaining informed consent. How exactly, if at all, is non-voluntary enrollment morally justifiable? In this essay, I appeal to the notable work of Hans Jonas in an effort to defend the EPR trial's use of non-voluntary enrollment. It is often thought and, as I show, it may appear that Jonas has called for the end of experimental medical practice. Still, I derive from Jonas a principle of double-effect upon which physicians may be seen as morally permitted to pursue innovations in emergency medicine but only as a byproduct of pursuing therapeutic success. With this position, I argue that the EPR trial can be granted a stronger philosophical justification than simply waiving the requirement of obtaining informed consent. The double-effect justification would obtain, perhaps regardless of the success of such innovative procedures as therapeutic hypothermia. (shrink)

In a current clinical trial for Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation, Dr. Samuel Tisherman of the University of Maryland aims to induce therapeutic hypothermia in order to ‘buy time’ for operating on victims of severe exsanguination. While recent publicity has framed this controversial procedure as ‘killing a patient to save his life’, the US Army and Acute Care Research appear to support the study on the grounds that such patients already face low chances of survival. Given that enrollment in the (...) trial must be non-voluntary, the study has received an exemption from federal standards for obtaining informed consent. How exactly, if at all, is non-voluntary enrollment morally justifiable? In this essay, I appeal to the notable work of Hans Jonas in an effort to defend the EPR trial's use of non-voluntary enrollment. It is often thought and, as I show, it may appear that Jonas has called for the end of experimental medical practice. Still, I derive from Jonas a principle of double-effect upon which physicians may be seen as morally permitted to pursue innovations in emergency medicine but only as a byproduct of pursuing therapeutic success. With this position, I argue that the EPR trial can be granted a stronger philosophical justification than simply waiving the requirement of obtaining informed consent. The double-effect justification would obtain, perhaps regardless of the success of such innovative procedures as therapeutic hypothermia. (shrink)

We prove that everyn-modal logic betweenKnandS5nis undecidable, whenever n ≥ 3. We also show that each of these logics is non-finitely axiomatizable, lacks the product finite model property, and there is no algorithm deciding whether a finite frame validates the logic. These results answer several questions of Gabbay and Shehtman. The proofs combine the modal logic technique of Yankov–Fine frame formulas with algebraic logic results of Halmos, Johnson and Monk, and give a reduction of the representation problem of finite relation (...) algebras. (shrink)

A “frame of reference” is a standard relative to which motion and rest may be measured; any set of points or objects that are at rest relative to one another enables us, in principle, to describe the relative motions of bodies. A frame of reference is therefore a purely kinematical device, for the geometrical description of motion without regard to the masses or forces involved. A dynamical account of motion leads to the idea of an “inertial frame,” or a reference (...) frame relative to which motions have distinguished dynamical properties. For that reason an inertial frame has to be understood as a spatial reference frame together with some means of measuring time, so that uniform motions can be distinguished from accelerated motions. The laws of Newtonian dynamics provide a simple definition: an inertial frame is a reference-frame with a time-scale, relative to which the motion of a body not subject to forces is always rectilinear and uniform, accelerations are always proportional to and in the direction of applied forces, and applied forces are always met with equal and opposite reactions. It follows that, in an inertial frame, the center of mass of a system of bodies is always at rest or in uniform motion. It also follows that any other frame of reference moving uniformly relative to an inertial frame is also an inertial frame. For example, in Newtonian celestial mechanics, taking the “fixed stars” as a frame of reference, we can determine an inertial frame whose center is the center of mass of the solar system; relative to this frame, every acceleration of every planet can be accounted for as a gravitational interaction with some other planet in accord with Newton 's laws of motion. (shrink)

There is an inherent need for education systems and mental health models to begin incorporating principles of non-local science in their approach to education for a population to gain general intelligence. Contemporary education is lagging in comparison with scientific progress due to the adoption of concepts that are considered outdated in current scientific terms. While education systems have not moved away from physical theories the scientific community began departing from this scientific framework in the year 1900 with the dawn of (...) the discovery of the Planck constant. The Bhagavata Purana provides a robust framework to encompass various spatial features of reality required to describe non-local sciences. This research attempts to assess the extent toward which the Bhagavata Purana can reconcile the various issues in contemporary scientific theory. Through review of Newton’s Principia Mathematica, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, articles on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, various academic papers regarding quantum physics as well as published articles on topics of space and time, various reference frames used for perceiving reality is compared to the Bhagavata Purana. The research concludes that the true nature of time according to the Bhagavata is ontological and relative to the reference frame used by the observer to perceive reality and stresses that the only way to perceive the true ontological state of Time is through a practice called devotional service. This research also recommends that there should be further research done in this area through the phenomenological research of time and space. (shrink)

When the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski first introduced the space-time diagrams that came to be associated with his name, the idea of picturing motion by geometric means, holding time as a fourth dimension of space, was hardly new. But the pictorial device invented by Minkowski was tailor-made for a peculiar variety of space-time: the one imposed by the kinematics of Einstein’s special theory of relativity, with its unified, non-Euclidean underlying geometric structure. By plo tting two or more (...) reference frames in relative motion on the same picture, Minkowski managed to exhibit the geometric basis of such relativistic phenomena as time dilation, length contraction or the dislocation of simultaneity. These disconcerting effects were shown to result from arbitrary projections within four-dimensional space-time. In that respect, Minkowski diagrams are fundamentally different from ordinary space-time graphs. The best way to understand their specificity is to realize how productively ambiguous they are. (shrink)