A Question Of Time

Tags: philosophy

December.09.2009

"Time is an illusion that has a purpose" --edgar cayce

Imagine ….. alone in a room, it is just you and a ticking clock. Tick … tick …. tick ….. and it goes on and on and on. Each "tick" representing a passing second that will forever exist in the past. As each of these seconds add up, they eventually turn into minutes, hours, days, months, years, then decades and beyond. The future, which often seems like an eternity away, shifts into the past as if gliding effortlessly over a sheet of ice. In this hypothetical room, your life passes by. The rate of this time passage, even though it remains constant (for the most part), will be perceived as if it is happening at different speeds over the course of your duration within this room.

Even though you seem to move freely about, your life is symbolized by this room. You are locked in. Trapped. Unable to escape. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, this room represents time and from which there is no escape. You are a constant prisoner of it. The only saving grace is that time is what you perceive it to be.

Time - it is both a simple and complex idea. One that often raises more questions without yielding many answers.

What time means to us?

Time is everywhere. It is all around us. Even though it surrounds us we cannot touch it, grab it, or hold on to it. It is impossible to stop and is beyond our control as we know it. Time is something that we chase. Something that we fear. Something that we wish for more of. Something that we wish for less of. Something that we hope to slow down as well as something we imagine speeding up.

We are always aware of and in tune with time. Our way of life depends on it. We need to be on time for a meeting or an appointment. We need to go to bed at a certain time so we can wake up when our alarm goes off. It is a part of us. It is in our biological makeup. It is coded within our DNA so deeply that we often do not consciously think about it or its meaning. Think of this as our "internal clock" that helps us keep track of where we our within out existence. Without the sequencing of time, the potential for chaos would run rampant throughout out lives. Our internal human "program" would error our quite easily.

A Scientific Perspective

Time, by definition, is essentially a measuring system used to sequence events. It can compare the duration of events and the intervals between them. Your most common interaction with time in a physical sense is that of a clock of some sort. Longer periods of time are measured by a calendar. These are the most common devices for tracking time.

As the introduction to the article leads with seconds, we know we can measure seconds incredibly precisely. This is an interesting calculation, in fact, it can be measured as such:

The duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom

Passing by the second, we have other measurements for greater periods of time. For example:

Minute = 60 seconds
Hour = 60 minutes
Day = 24 hours
Week = 7 days
Month = 28 - 31 days
Year = 12 months
Lustrum = 5 years
Decade = 10 years
Century = 100 years
Millennium = 1,000 years

Without the science of time keeping, it would be impossible to have some of the modern conveniences we are used to. For example, GPS devices need to track all sorts of time measurements in order to work properly. There are major computations that handle real-time plotting of your GPS devices. This is all done using advanced mathematical algorithms including Einstein's theory of relativity. Throw the time calculations off just a ever so slightly and you could end up miles away from your destination of choice.

A Psychological View

Our minds need to process and analyze time in order for us to survive. This happens so automatically that we barely recognize it is happening. Our cerebral cortex is responsible for most of this processing.

Time has essentially evolved into an automated process with out minds. How we perceive time in certain situations can aid in our survival. For example, when in danger or under stress, we experience the feeling of time slowing. This enables us to have a better reaction to the current situation that we are in and potentially increase our probability of survival. The reality of this is not so much that time is slowing, but rather, our mental processes are shifting to the problem at hand. The need that needs the most attention at the time. During this time, we are not in a contemplative mood where we can discuss and debate the meaning of time or what its purpose is. No, at this moment all of our attention shifts to what needs to be done and we attempt to do that (if possible). While we may realize briefly that times seems "slower", it is mostly in retrospect that we comprehend and remember time "slowing" down.

There have been many experiments as of late to prove this phenomenon. The video below will further support this idea:

The Hourglass Representation

Think of an hourglass as a representation of time. We have the three distinct periods of time in this model. The sand within the hourglass is time itself while the hourglass is its container. When we set this idea in motion, all of the sand starts at the top. This represents the future. What is about to happen. As the sand falls through the center, we see it moving through the present. Once it arrives at the bottom, we now see it as the past. It will no longer have a future movement, but rather, it has become part of the past. A memory of movement per say. This idea represents most of our interaction with time and how we think of it.

Brief Summation Of Time

With all of the knowledge we are acquiring about time, we still lack a meaning to it all. While some of the scientific evidence above is a start, like all other philosophical discussions and debates, this seems as if it could go on forever without a proper answer to the question of what time is (which possibly defines an example of irony).

With all of the science behind time, with all of the knowledge we have on the subject at this moment, still, we may be missing an important idea. The idea that time does not exist at all, but rather, it is merely part of our memories. From these memories, we form ideas of the future while we exist in the split seconds of the present ( i.e. … the hourglass example). This is a classic example of the definition of intelligence. Intelligence - being able to predict the future based on past events. When we piece time together from our memories, it is then that time becomes relative to our experiences, thus, time is seemingly moving at a different rate for each of us though the reality is that this "thing" is moving at a the same constant rate. Perhaps it is not even moving at all but we seem to think (or even imagine) that it is.

As complicated as this may sound, as difficult and illogical as it may seem to grasp, time may not exist but is rather an illusion that serves a great purpose. That purpose may very well be our programmed way to survive. How we developed in this world, and how we have learned to adapt to it.

Just because something exists within our heads, that does not make it real to anyone or anything else. Therefore, outside of our minds, time may not exist. Then again, maybe it does exist, and we are wrapped up in something that we do not yet completely understand. For all of the answers, we seem to have a lack of answers on this subject. Therefore, the only unfortunate way I can end this discussion is with this predictable, somewhat annoying proclamation of …… only time may tell.

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