If the segmenting or measurement of time is an externally imposed artifice, if that is what you are suggesting, does that suggest that the instantaneous "quantum leaping" of electrons from energy level to energy level, though obviously not static, has no meaning? Or is that not what you are suggesting?
Phaedrus, I'm still working through these issues, so can't speak definitively of the problem you raise here, right this "instant." But the problem has my full attention. For openers, however, I think it's safe to say that the universe has a time process, which may or not closely correspond with the way the human mind considers/chooses/selects the frames in which time is "naturally" relevant for it.
But here's a "thought experiment," for what it's worth, that might shed some light on the relevant issues.
Here I am, betty boop, sitting in a chair, totally stationary. I'm here, not going anywhere for a while. I suppose it would be easy enough to locate my longitudinal/latitudinal space-time coordinates on, say, a map of Massachusetts. But would this exercise designate my "absolute" position in the universe? Let alone the question of relative position; for the latter begs the question: relative to what?
This was the point I was driving at, in reply #109. I'm beginning to think that the "relative to what?" is precisely the question that needs to be asked. So let's take stock of the possibilities.
First I would recognize that "relativity" has significance in two major modes: what is "beyond" myself, and what is "in" myself. That might sound totally mysterious; but it really is quite simple. To explain, I would like to apply the term "macrocosmic" as the "extra-me" component of the problem; and "microcosmic" for the "intra-me" aspect. (I seem to be the "conscious, that is self-aware mediator" that ties the two realms together, meaningfully.) Consider:
Exactly what coordinates could be established for my "absolute location" in present time, no matter how we might slice it, if -- as stationary as I presently am within my own limited sphere of reference -- I also happen to be the denizen of a planet that is rotating along its axis, and simultaneously orbiting in its course around the the Sun, our Star? Meanwhile, the Sun -- a star in a galaxy -- is travelling along its course, set by the primaeval explosion that propels stars and galaxies and nebulae into the further reaches of universal space-time? Every bit of this is "moving" in its own right; and I am borne along in this complex movement.
At the same time that we are considering the "position problem" that would seem to result from the above macrocosmic considerations, there are also problems of the microcosm: I am "moving" in every way at this level, too -- at the organic, cellular, molecular, atomic, subatomic, and quantum levels.
It might look like I'm a "couch potato," rooted to my chair, not going anywhere; but on closer inspection, it would seem I am teeming with movement, activity, in all directions and time scales....
So, if a careful observer wanted to locate my absolute position on a map in "real time" (three quite "naturally deduced," and yet still quite "relativistically artificial" human constructs right there), then by what relevant criteria amenable to human "measurement" would he be able to do this? How could I even be located, relativistically -- in the sense that the seemingly important relative items run outside of the categories of finite human time conceptions in themselves -- at both the macrocosmic and microcosmic levels?
This is what I mean about nature being "always moving," along multiple dimensions. And so we think we can simply designate an artificial time construct -- such as a second, or a minute, or a "now" -- and hope to capture a miracle, as if in a butterfly net?
Must stop for now. Probably more to follow, as these "lessons" sink in further....
Thank you so much for writing, Phaedrus.