OUR DUAL RECOGNITION OF TIME 99 



introduced in connection with secondary law will now 

 exist, so to speak, in its own right instead of by its 

 current representation as arrangement of the quantities 

 in the abandoned primary scheme; and in that right it 

 may be more easily accepted as the symbol for the 

 dynamic quality of the world. I cannot make my 

 meaning more precise, because I am speaking of a 

 still hypothetical change of ideas which no one has been 

 able to bring about. 



Our Dual Recognition of Time, Another curiosity which 

 strikes us is the divorce in physics between time and 

 time's arrow. A being from another world who wishes 

 to discover the temporal relation of two events in this 

 world has to read two different indicators. He must 

 read a clock in order to find out how much later one 

 event is than the other, and he must read some arrange- 

 ment for measuring the disorganisation of energy (e.g. a 

 thermometer) in order to discover which event is the 

 later.* The division of labour is especially striking 

 when we remember that our best clocks are those in 

 which all processes such as friction, which introduce 

 disorganisation of energy, are eliminated as far as 

 possible. The more perfect the instrument as a meas- 

 urer of time, the more completely does it conceal time's 

 arrow. 



* To make the test strictly from another world he must not assume 

 that the figures marked on the clock-dial necessarily go the right way 

 round; nor must he assume that the progress of his consciousness has 

 any relation to the flow of time in our world. He has, therefore, merely 

 two dial-readings for the two events without knowing whether the 

 difference should be reckoned plus or minus. The thermometer would 

 be used in conjunction with a hot and cold body in contact. The differ- 

 ence of the thermometer readings for the two bodies would be taken at 

 the moment of each event. The event for which the difference is smaller 

 is the later. 



