Bunches
Jorge LlambÃas wrote:
>On 12/1/05, John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>
>>--- Jorge LlambÃas <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>I always thought x1 of temci was a continuous
>>>interval
>>>rather than a (very large?) number of (very
>>>small?) chunks.
>>>
>>>
>>That is about what it is scientifically, perhaps,
>>but not linguistically, where the answer is
>>always in terms of (variously sized) chunks.
>>
>>
>
>No, I'm not talking about it scientifically, I mean in ordinary
>contexts. I cannot normally conceive of durations as strings
>of little time-chunks. It never occurred to me that others
>would think of that as the natural point of view.
>
>
It's not. That we generally refer to non-zero intervals of time does not
mean that we treat it as discrete. Those interval endpoints can be
situated anywhere in the timeline, and that means we treat it as
continuous. Furthermore, people refer to instants and moments which have
no duration, like a point in space has no size. A pixel, however, does
have size. And there is no analogous time-pixel in English.
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