An official metre stick seems kinda like the equivalent of an atomic clock that sets the official time (which is itself just an update to the church bells).

We do need to be careful not to stuff ancient philosophers into modern understanding, but still, I doubt the human understanding of time has fundamentally changed much due purely to cultural changes, even if how we talk about it changes.

An official metre stick seems kinda like the equivalent of an atomic clock that sets the official time (which is itself just an update to the church bells).

We do need to be careful not to stuff ancient philosophers into modern understanding, but still, I doubt the human understanding of time has fundamentally changed much due purely to cultural changes, even if how we talk about it changes.

Reminds me of a great history of science book by Peter Galison: Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps. It covers the projects in the late 19th century create unified, non-local times and systems of measurement. Apparently there is an official metre stick in a Parisian vault — something I'd never thought of before — and we easily forget what an engineering accomplishment it has been to separate time from events.

Of course, a spatial concept of time has existed long before church bells: but the point would be to not anachronistically read “our idea” of what time is into the words of the ancient philosophers.

If we go with Mumford for a minute (no pun intended), I think it might be worthwhile to contemplate the opposite proposition: Time exists because things happen.

According to the SEP's article on Time, this is an old philosophical controversy, with Plato and Newton having argued that time exists independently of events (like an empty container) and Aristotle and Leibniz having argued that everything we can say about time can be reduced to events.

Needless to say I don't expect to settle it…

This is something I've been carrying around for a while, and pretty much “believe,” but now that I'm trying to really make a public case for it I'm having a lot of doubts – though arguing the other way I'm convinced is much more difficult and less fruitful.

Seriously, does the existence of time necessarily imply change? Thinking in spatial metaphors, as we're designed to do, you can think of time as the distance between two things that happen in the same place. In that sense (and ignoring quantum properties), time can flow on just fine without any change, instability, or ambiguity except in the linear flow of time itself.

Of course, in the real world, everything has been set in spatial motion and allowed to bounce around thanks to time, so your point holds true.