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Old October 25th 17, 06:59 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Gerald Kelleher
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Default Time and timekeeping

The theorists assume they are discussing time when it is really timekeeping they are referring to. Of course this goes back to a person who decided to define timekeeping as time itself using a calendar based facility known as the Equation of Time -

"Absolute time, in astronomy, is distinguished from relative, by the
equation or correlation of the vulgar time. For the natural days are
truly unequal, though they are commonly considered as equal and used
for a measure of time; astronomers correct this inequality for their
more accurate deducing of the celestial motions...The necessity of
which equation, for determining the times of a phænomenon, is evinced
as well from the experiments of the pendulum clock, as by eclipses of
the satellites of Jupiter." Principia

Before you all run back to relativity as an utterly bankrupt notion based on absolute/relative time,space and motion run back further and deal with the actual mess Newton created at the expense of astronomy and timekeeping. Of course intellectual rednecks only want to know enough that suits them but that is what rednecks always do.