These metaphors and more are the ways we conceive of Time. Physicists point out that time is a conundrum. On the one hand all closed systems tend towards disorder. Open systems can scavenge energy that drives transformations that maintain or increase order. When that external energy input stops, the system decays into increasing disorder Thus the forward direction of the Arrow of Time, which we experience as the flow or passing of time.
Expressions and musings about that experience form the bulk of this collection. Any reader will recognise their own experience and thoughts represented here. But there’s almost nothing about time as an aspect of reality.
Albert Einstein’s theories play a cameo role. More recent (and current) problems with time as a physical fact, or an aspect of reality, don’t show up at all. So let me offer a few musings of my own.
For us humans, the central fact of time is that for each of us it will end. For some that end
comes before the body disintegrates, when dementia destroys memories, and in doing so destroys the self. Knowing that this could happen to me creates a dread that I hurriedly push down below the tissue-thin surface of mind that I experience as my self. Time is the essence of what the brain constructs as my experience of reality. Consciousness exists only while it’s happening. That means my self, me, I exist only while I’m happening. Maybe that’s why the Christian creed asserts a belief in the resurrection of the body.
When I was growing up, the usual measure of distance was time. The next village was a half-hour away. Gruber’s farmstead was 3/4 hour away. The post office was 5 minutes away. And so on. So Einstein’s space-time to me seemed fairly obvious when I first read about it. Of course, I didn’t know the math that combines these aspect of reality. But I knew that moving through space always took time. Einstein’s space-time clarifies this: To move through space requires movement through time.
So what happens when we are standing still? Why do we still move through time? Well, we stand still within our frame of reference. But that frame of reference is moving with respect to every other frame of reference you care to specify. Which means we are not standing still. Which also means that time transcends frames of reference. Or that a frame of reference is specifiable only as moving through time. Which makes time, not space, the fundamental “whatever-it-is” of reality.
Maybe.
To exist means moving through time. When an entity ceases to exist, it disappears. But nothing disappears. So to cease to exist means to change into something else.
Consciousness exists only while it’s happening. Anesthesia interrupts consciousness. Sleep is a different form of consciousness. When you “wake up from” from anesthesia, there is no sense that time has passed. Well, that’s my experience. But when you wake up from sleep, you know that time has passed, because you have memories of dreaming. I don’t know about comas, but descriptions of the experience suggest that comas are interruptions of consciousness like anesthesia.
Since consciousness exists only while it’s happening, time is of the essence of consciousness.
“Exist” implies time. Hence the question “Does God exist?” is a non-question, since by definition God is not in time but beyond it. (That phrasing shows that we can draw logical conclusions from statements that refer to thing we cannot imagine.)
Time is a puzzle.
As always, this collection is an excellent overview and sampling of what humans have thought and imagined and reported about its topic. Recommended. ****
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