How is Time Defined?

 Eran Tal begins his article, Making Time: A Study in the Epistemology of Measurement, by stating the epistemology of measurement has a direct relationship between measurement and knowledge. The reason this is such a key factor to our question, how is the second defined? and What do standard clocks measure? Is that by understanding the epistemology of measurement, we can understand how knowledge is produced and how it is preconceived as trustworthy.

Tal believes that is is critically important that we are able to ensure reproducibility within our standardizations of units. This means that a second for me should be the same second as someone halfway across the globe, but to do this yields an endless loophole. We cannot agree upon a unit if there is no standard already, which leads to the two different viewpoints of conventionalism and a model-based account of measurement.

Conventionalism is the idea that we can all just agree upon a random unit and use that across the globe, which means that it is static and stuck in place. He argues that this is inherently wrong, and that the models should be able to adapt and change. 

Currently, we use a standard clock to measure time, which is a form of conventionalism. The second, according to metrologist, is based off the cesium atom's cycle, but that choice was partly random. The choice, really, allows for precision, but sometimes time needs to artificially be changed to fit with the agreed upon unit of a second.  

Going off this idea of the standardization of time, Tal also takes into the account how is the second defined. The article defines time as, "s the duration of exactly 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to a hyperfine transition of caesium-133 in the ground state" (Tal 301). In other words, a period is equal to another one. 

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