Mead says clock time and calendar time is time only “in a manner of speaking.” He also argues that clock and calendar time is not “absolute” but relative to one’s frame of reference. True that, as my kids say: “Monday” spells gloom within the framework of a certain organization of the working week, and more specifically within the framework of a certain job.
But why should “relative” time be time only “in a manner of speaking”? Must something be “absolute” to be fully real? Mead lusts for an absolute time like Newton’s even though a lot of his project is anti-Newtonian. He relocates absolute time, but like Newton he reduces everything outside his absolute time to “relative” and “not-quite-time” time.
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