{"id":7916,"date":"2015-12-03T04:14:34","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T12:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=7916"},"modified":"2025-07-02T22:38:35","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T05:38:35","slug":"class-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=7916","title":{"rendered":"Class Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20151204060558\/http:\/\/notalwayslearning.com\/learning-about-time-in-a-blink\/40323\">At a site whose content seems intended to entertain, I read of a teacher who is said to have challenged his or her students to <q>explain<\/q> time and to <q>define<\/q> <q>time<\/q>.<\/a>  The words <q>explain<\/q> and <q>define<\/q> are treated in the narrative as if referring to the same task, which suggests something about the <em>sort<\/em> of answer sought.  None of the students succeeded in doing what the teacher asked.<\/p> <p>While we might perhaps have different <em>conceptions<\/em> of <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">time<\/span>, the essential <em>concept<\/em> of <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">time<\/span> is not one that we <em>assemble<\/em> from and with other concepts.  <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">Time<\/span> is fundamental in our experience.  Thus, when we seek to define <q>time<\/q>, the best that we can do is to find synonyms that might seem to put us into loops.  For example, <cite>The Oxford Shorter English Dictionary<\/cite> defines <q>time<\/q> with <q>duration<\/q>, and <q>duration<\/q> with <q>time<\/q>.  But to define a term is to co&ouml;rdinate it with a concept; so either definition actually works just fine as a definition, on the assumption that we have a concept for the complementary term.<\/p> <p>Definitions often involve conveying a concept by showing how to <em>assemble<\/em> it from and with other concepts; that is perhaps what one expects when asked to <q>explain<\/q> a concept or a word.  But disassemblies that somehow never reached an end would never reach a concept.  We must at some stage somehow point to a concept without further use of definition.  In the case of <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">time<\/span>, we have reached a concept that we <em>cannot<\/em> disassemble; in the case of <q>time<\/q>, we have found a word for which we can find only either simple synonyms or assemblies in which its concept lurks undisintegrated, even if unrecognized.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a site whose content seems intended to entertain, I read of a teacher who is said to have challenged his or her students to explain time and to define time. The words explain and define are treated in the narrative as if referring to the same task, which suggests something about the sort of [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,117,720,4],"tags":[947,938],"class_list":["post-7916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-communication","category-epistemology","category-public","tag-definitions","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12724,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7916\/revisions\/12724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}