Eckard,
Yes, ooops, that was a typo, I had meant principal Nations competing in the global colonialism, giving rise to the nationalist fervor that also prejudiced philosophical circles. And as with all historical appraisals, we really can't boil everything down to a simple clear picture. Suffice it to say that there was a pan-national spirit by many that sought to transcend national 'points of view' and that influence impacted the sciences.
As for todays debate about measurement systems, as distinct from the so-called 'Newtonian' system, it's all too common for Einstein to be singled out as 'inventing' treating the measures of space and time as equivalent just as Newton is singled out as 'inventing' the Cartesian systematic treatment of time and space separately. What neither paradigm addresses is the inherent *assumption* in both, that the *scale* of a span of duration in the dimension of time, is identical, to the *scale* of a span of dimension in a direction of space. I'm not certain, but I think it was Minkowski himself who brushed it aside with a rationale of, 'well, we can't say there's different physical scales so we might as well assume they're the same.'
We have ended up with two measurement paradigms, one of which is the Cartesian method of instantaneous measure where any calculated result is a 'slice of time' along a time line, leading to all the arguments in qualifications, of what are as you point out, schizoid. The other is no less schizoid, because its own mathematic symmetry of full reversibility leads to such unphysical results as the past still existing somewhere else and zero momentum obtaining a result of negative mass. So we're stuck at the same old tea party.
I hope this is somewhat intelligible, I began to ponder scale at some time I don't remember, it kind of snuck up on me. But it has evolved to where I simply start with; light would always move at 'c' all by itself, in any sort of space, even if God put it there to start with, without a source of emission. And from there, I address the indefinite property of lengths, and wonder if the physical scales of both time and space evolve as a dynamic from a real operational initial difference that 'leap-frog' fashion limits at light velocity. And those initial differences in an infinite number of probable ratios, continuously replicate causally in projecting the arrow of time universally.
I know its a metaphysical hypothesis, is as untestable as any other, and may or may not fit the bottom line of all hidden variables. But, I want out of the rabbit hole. :-) jrc
