Archimedes by Lancelot Law Whyte — Read

The real discrepancy between the world of physics and that of life lies in the fact that physics has never recognized the irreversibility of time, while this is fundamental to life. We may even feel a doubt if the ‘t' of physics has the same significance as the time of biology, evolution, history, and human experience. The physical conception of time arose from the practical utility of clocks for describing natural processes, and finally took the form of defining astronomical time in terms of the rotation of the earth. The day was in fact taken as an absolute measure of time, and this remained quite satisfactory so long as the laws of physics were found to take a simple form with reference to the time so defined.

But then a complication arose. The study of the moon's motion suggested to astronomers that the earth's rotation was slowing down, i.e. to account for the apparent motion of the moon they had to assume that the day was increasing in length. The theory of the tides revealed a possible cause for this slowing down in the tidal friction on the bottom of shallow water basins, for instance the rush of the Atlantic tides into the Irish Sea provides an appreciable frictional force retarding the spin of the earth. In addition to this slowing down there appears to be a very slow periodic variation in the length of the day such as would be accounted for by a rhythmic expansion and contraction of the earth's crust.