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The Conceit of the Clock: Aristotle, Time, and the Hunger That Devours Us

Aristotle opens his investigation of time in Book IV of the Physics with a question so destabilizing it threatens to collapse the inquiry before it begins: does time even exist? His reasoning is not coy. The past has ceased to be. The future has not yet arrived. The present, the “now,” is not a duration but a limit, a dimensionless boundary between what was and what will be. If the parts of time do not exist, and the one element that does exist is not itself a part of time, then time appears to be nothing at all. This is not a classroom riddle. It is a genuine ontological crisis, and Aristotle treats it as one.

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‘c’: More Than Just Fast as We Unpack the Universe’s Master Constant

Let’s dive into the universe’s ultimate speed limit: the speed of light. It’s a concept so fundamental that it underpins much of modern physics, yet so mind-bogglingly fast that, as you say, human intuition struggles to truly grasp it. We call it ‘c’, and its value in a vacuum is precisely 299,792,458 meters per second. That’s not just an estimate; since 1983, the meter has been precisely defined as the distance that light travels in a vacuum in exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second. So, light’s speed isn’t just something we measure; it’s a foundational pillar of our measurement system.

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Be Blunt and Cruel, it Saves Time

As a proud, but inveterate, INTJ — I have a philosophy of life that few people understand: “Be Blunt and Cruel, it Saves Time!”  I never use that philosophy with others without permission.  That philosophy is fully how I prefer to be treated, but few people are willing to abide the terms of what they perceive to be “rough language.”

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Chasing Down Time: Ten Sentence Story #115

Thomas had a colossal problem, which was that he had no idea why he was always running out of time to do all of the important things that he wanted to do in life.

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Punctuality and Prolegomenous Predestiny

Do people care about being on time anymore?  It seems that as each day passes, our adherence to the hands on a clock grows more weary.  Transportation timetables appear to be more suggestion that requirement.  Medical appointments can vary up to 45 minutes and still be considered “on time.”  Meeting friends is now set in a “time frame” instead of an exact time that translates to: “I’ll show up if I feel like it and if I’m available.”

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