Length and duration

Although it has seemed natural to speak of “space and time”, that is a confused designation of length and duration, as well as their metrics, stance and time (see glossary here). Space is the space of motion, so length space is only one side; the other side is duration space. Speaking consistently is challenging but a must in order to bring clarity to a confused subject.

Here is a diagram of the combinations of length and duration, stance and time (click to enlarge):

length-duration diamond

The extent of motion is measured by length and duration. The space of motion has three dimensions. Length space and duration space therefore have three dimensions as well. The space of motion is  represented by an ordered pair of length space and duration space coordinates. If there is absolute inter-convertibility between length and duration, then the space of motion is a six-dimensional space of either length units or duration units.

The metric of length is distance and the metric of duration is distime (though often called time). Stance variable is the distance of a placepoint from the origin in length space. Time variable is the distime of a timepoint from the origin in duration space. Events are located in length space and chronated in duration-space.

As one can speak of distance in three-dimensional length space, one can speak of distime in three-dimensional duration space. In this sense, time is a three-dimensional concept. There are three dimensions of duration rather than three dimensions of time per se, but time has a three-dimensional aspect.