Timeline for What is an instant of time?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 9, 2018 at 10:11 | comment | added | AnoE | @Annibale: alright, I've added a sentence about that. | |
| Apr 9, 2018 at 10:10 | history | edited | AnoE | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 9, 2018 at 8:40 | comment | added | Annibale | @AnoE you wrote: "But the operation of "summing up instants (coordinates)" is not a defined operation because instants (coordinates) do not have a length, so there is nothing to sum up." so I want to correct your statement in this way: instants have a lenght, and is 0, and it can be summed up, but only countable times. So what fails is not the length definition of instants, but the possibility of sum them up in an uncountable family, and intervals are uncountable families of instants | |
| Apr 9, 2018 at 8:33 | comment | added | AnoE | @Annibale: I have trouble understanding the intention behind your comment; you seem to be saying the same thing that I wanted to express in my answer. Did you mean to agree with the answer, or do you think there is some part of it which I should improve? | |
| Apr 9, 2018 at 7:06 | comment | added | Annibale | @AnoE both coordinates and instants could be summed: coordinates, because they are elements of a vector space (or affine if you want), and instants as measurable sets, they have null measure, and the sum of a countable set of instants is well-defined (measure is defined upon a $\sigma$-algebra) and is still null. What can't be summed up is the measure of an uncountble family of subsets, such as an interval made of points, so you can't state that the measure of each subset is null, and indeed is false. | |
| Nov 4, 2016 at 16:27 | comment | added | AnoE | @totyped, Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged: "2. a particular moment or point in time". Point = 0 dimension = not an interval. Other dictionaries also have the definition "1. an infinitesimal or very short space of time; moment." which is fine with me. I chose to pick the first interpretation in my answer because that interpretation is where the OP's confusion ("paradoxon", which it really isn't) came from in the first place. thefreedictionary.com/instant for plenty of alternative definitions. | |
| Nov 4, 2016 at 15:05 | comment | added | james | Thank you very much for your answer. Would you mind to elaborate a bit further your assumption that an instance of time is the same a labeling a regular coordinate ? | |
| Oct 31, 2016 at 16:08 | history | edited | AnoE | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Oct 31, 2016 at 16:03 | history | edited | AnoE | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Oct 31, 2016 at 15:03 | history | edited | AnoE | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Oct 31, 2016 at 14:54 | history | answered | AnoE | CC BY-SA 3.0 |