Re: timely musings from David Weihe on 1996-11-12 (Glorantha Digest Vol 03)

From: David Weihe <weihe_at_gsidanet.danet.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 96 17:52:14 EST

> >Me:
> >None of those statements had an reference to a GodTime chronos-time,
> >only to chairos-time. These are both Classical and Koine/Biblical Greek
> >terms for the single English word "time", but "chairos" (rhymes with
> >"pyros") is event-based time, as in "at the appropriate time" or "in the
> >fullness of time", compared to chronos (mundane time), such as "in the
> >2000th year of Yelm's reign" or "two years after that", etc.
>
> Peter Metcalfe:
> But Chronos-time is based on events. How else does your watch know
> how long a second is? And if the time between two events didn't matter
> why then did Orlanth rely on Mastakos for speed?

Mundane time is (at least apparently) continuous, whereas chairos time is discrete events. Real Numbers vs Integers only, as an analogy. If you can't detect anything occuring between the watch ticks, then the two do begin to merge, though. If your watch ticked every 1x10^-44 seconds (I think that's the number) then they would be effectively identical.

Thus Orlanth taking Mastakos' path of two steps is "faster" than Orlanth walking the path normally (for him) because there are far fewer events (assuming that Orlanth didn't take the path just because it was easier).

> >I would say that the examples are, in fact, supportive of the negative.
> >The problem is with the inability of English to fully distinguish between
> >different different Time-like ideas, except via circumlocution.
>
> Or perhaps a complete lack of need between distinguishing between
> six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.

Except for matters of theology, it is a distinction less than 6 of one, etc. If we English speakers wasted more time in theological arguments, the language would expand in that direction. Gloranthan questions often *do* depend on theological answers, though, so we may have to expand the vocabulary by adapting terms from RW theology, just as we adapt other RW terms for mythic and legendary criticism.