Cherchez la femme is a French expression from the 1854 novel The Mohicans of Paris by Alexandre Dumas, which means “no matter what the problem may be, a woman is often the cause. Look for the mistress, the jealous wife, the angry lover… there is a woman at the root of each problem.” The alternative […]
Following the previous post on uniform motion, this post covers non-uniform motion in space and time. A simple way to get non-uniform motion is to join two uniform motions in different directions; the change in direction means the joint motion is non-uniform. Another way to get non-uniform motion is to accelerate at a constant rate.
Uniform linear motion is the motion of a body at a constant linear rate. Uniform circular motion is the motion of a body at a constant angular rate. In both of these cases the spatial extent of motion and the temporal extent of motion are in a constant proportion. Because of this constant proportion, from
There are two ways in which the length and the time (duration) of a motion are symmetric. The better-known way is the use of a conversion factor, notably the speed of light, which is the same for all inertial observers. All lengths can be turned into time intervals or all time intervals can be turned
I previously wrote about pluralism here. Science is usually considered monist in various ways: there is one scientific truth, one scientific reality, one scientific method. This leads to having one scientific theory for each subject, if at all possible. The single scientific method is the easiest to critique: each branch of science has its own
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have a chapter on time (Chapter 10) in their book Philosophy in the Flesh (Basic Books, 1999) that makes several points: All of our understandings of time are relative to other concepts such as motion, space, and events. (p.137) Most of our understanding of time is a metaphorical version of
Expanding on a previous post here, this is a summary of the equations of motion for space-time and time-space. See also a pdf version in the Time-space Glossary option above. s = displacement magnitude, t = time magnitude, v = velocity, v0 = initial velocity, a = acceleration, w = lenticity, w0 = initial lenticity,
In a sense, every distance can be converted into a duration or vice versa: simply multiply duration by the modal speed or multiply the distance by the modal pace. For example, every time can be multiplied by the speed of light in a vacuum and so be replaced by a distance. This is usually done
I last wrote about religious freedom here. The post concerns how to define religion for purposes of religious freedom. Basically, there are two ways to define religion: (1) a narrow, traditional sense in which religion means one of the world religions, which are concerned with worship of God or gods and/or following a certain way
Expanding on the previous post here, this is a summary of the equations of motion for space-time and time-space. See also the Time-space Glossary option above. r = displacement magnitude, t = time magnitude, v = velocity, v0 = initial velocity, a = acceleration, w = lenticity, w0 = initial lenticity, b = relentation. Space-time
