[WS:] True. And the experience of duration - as well as that of 'space' or rather distance - varies greatly depending on the social context. I could illustrate it with examples of everyday life, refer to literature (Eviatar Zerubavel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eviatar_Zerubavel my professor at Rutgers wrote about it quite a bit), but instead I will cite two anecdotes.
When asked about the impact of the French Revolution, the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai replied "too early to say." Whether or not Zhou actually meant to say that (there is some debate about it) - the reply immediately caught on because it nicely contrasted the cultural differences in the perception of duration between China and the US. The second one is pun about the difference between America and Europe: In Europe 100 miles is far far away, in America 100 is long long time ago.
The bottom line is that perceptions of time and space are derived from basic experience of duration and distance - as you correctly point out - and then socially reconstructed into metaphors relevant to a wide array of human experiences - including science. That is all that there is to it.
That is why I find studying the sociology of time and space quite interesting while abstract philosophical speculations on the same subject dry, soporific, and boring.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."