Ill 



Ti7ne and Motion 



WE can imagine a person without any 

 idea of number ; we have even attempted 

 to picture the gradual acquisition of a sense of 

 space; but it seems quite impossible to imagine 

 a conscious being without a sense of time. Pre- 

 sumably our primary notion of time is due to a 

 recognition of order or sequence in our own 

 process of thought, or as Eddington^ put it, 

 "Our minds are immediately aware of a 'flight 

 of time' without the intervention of external 

 senses." This primary conception of time as a 

 sequence of sensations and thoughts has, how- 

 ever, become highly complex, and in its course 

 of development many other ideas have become 

 interwoven wath it, for example, the concept of 

 causality. The scientist's view of time has nu- 

 merous connotations which are mutually inde- 

 pendent, and perhaps even contradictory. Dur- 

 ing the course of these brief chapters I shall be 

 able to mention only a few of the important 

 concepts of science, and many of these inade- 



1 A. S. Eddington, The Mathematical Theory of Relativ- 

 ity. See also his more popular exposition. Space, Time and 

 Gravitation. 



