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e have all heard
the expression, “time flies.” We have oftentimes
asked, where does the time go? On the
other hand, we sometimes experience time as going by very slowly. These are all subjective measures of time,
based on our feelings of patience or impatience, etc.
Is there any objective, empirical measure
of something we might call, the “speed” of time?
At first the question may not make sense,
since speed incorporates both space and time.
We cannot validly measure something against itself.
We measure the speed of a race-car by
measuring how many miles, of road, the car travels per hour. The road is considered stationary, the car
moves relative to the road. We cannot,
however, measure the speed of time against anything.
Or can we?
Most of us have an intuitive “feel” for
the passage of time. We know that some
things take a long time, some a short time.
There are two ways to measure time, then. One of them is objective or
mathematical. The other is subjective,
based on how we experience time.
For us, the experience of time involves
our brains, the transmission of signals along our neurons and across our
synapses. These brain activities can
process the information about events which take time, and we must understand
that the processing itself takes time, so that there is a form of loop, a
self-referential quality to our experience.
Our physical activities are included among these events. For example, the act of walking across the
street takes time, and during this time, the brain is actively involved, not
only in the walking, but in measuring the time it takes.
Compare this processing by the brain, to
the processing of data by a computer.
Whereas the brain may take a few seconds to complete a particular
calculation, the computer can perform the same calculation millions of times
faster than we can. I recall reading
some old science fiction story in which a conscious computer found itself
impatient with the slowness of communicating with humans. In effect, the computer had to wait “computer
years” for each human response.[1]
Time is also measured with mathematical
objectivity. In physical nature, there
is no such thing as a “long time” or a “short time.” These are purely human perceptions of
time. Nature never gets impatient or
bored. Subatomic events that take place
in the realm of pico-seconds are no different than pan-universal events that
span epochs. An event that occurred 14
billion years ago is not ancient to nature, and an event that occurred just a
moment ago is not recent, as we think of it, not to an unconscious physical
universe.
There is a saying that for humans, the
days are long and the years are short.
This demonstrates that we have multiple ways of experiencing the passage
of time. For a small child, the interval
between Christmases is very long. For adults
in their later years, the Christmas seasons seem to fly by in a staccato.
Humans experience the span of their own
lifetime as a sort of individual eternity.
Our earliest memories seem very long ago, and our acknowledgment of
eventual, inevitable death is pushed beyond our experiential horizon to some
far flung future date that, while we know it must eventually occur, feels as if
it never really will. Few humans feel
that they are a part of history in the same way that we feel our today is part
of this week. Once in a while we
confront the task of providing life insurance or estate planning for our heirs
after we are gone, but this is not quite the same as our making plans for the
upcoming weekend.
Were we to be as conscious of the brevity
of our life-spans as the mathematics require, our entire attitude toward life
might become very different. We might
all regard ourselves as the ephemeral creatures we are, flashes in the pan so
to speak, giving us perhaps a greater sense of urgency, and a greater appreciation
of each moment. On the other hand, could
we handle all that without being overwhelmed by panic?
In nature, it may be that there is no such
thing as the “passage” of time. Nature
may not experience (so to speak) time as past, present and future. It may be all of a piece, a single fabric, a
weave of all events.
In regard to that, let us insert a side
note here. It is sometimes said that if
time is all of a single weave, that therefore, the future is carved in stone
(so to speak), inevitable and unchangeable.
If so, this fact would indicate that we do not have free will. However, this way of thinking is in
error. A simple example is that what you
did yesterday is now unchangeable, and yet, at the time you did it, you
exercised your free will. Eternity is
taken to mean unchanging, and yet it could also be very dynamic. Our brains never experience such things, and
so we have no way of comprehending the strange properties of time.
The Big Bang Theory requires us to
consider a paradoxical question, the question of what was there “before the Big
Bang.” It is paradoxical, because if
time and space came into being at the moment of the Big Bang, then therefore
there was no “time before” the Big Bang, since there cannot logically have been
time before time.
It is also interesting to consider that
the age of the universe may not be measurable.
We might have nothing to measure it against. Physicists speak of the first tiny fractions
of a second after the Big Bang, but what is the “clock” (so to speak) by which
that time could have been measured? Did
a measurement standard of time exist then, or does physics merely reconstruct
it retroactively?
If we somehow discover space aliens, will
their experience of time be comparable to ours?
Will they have enhanced, super-fast thinking modes that make us seem, to
them, intellectual snails? Will, to
them, the wings of a hummingbird in flight be seen in ponderous slow motion?
Beyond our own universe, whether in the multi-verse
or in a spiritual level of existence, what is time? Is there time there?
And what of this paradox? It is always now, it is never now.
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ime has been
considered a mystery for, well, for a long time. In the preceding section, we introduced the
importance of distinguishing between mathematical time and consciously
perceived time. Let’s go a little
further into that.
A simple diagram of time demonstrates both
our understanding of time, and our misunderstanding of it.
Such a diagram, a “timeline,” is perhaps
the most simple of all diagrams. It is
often drawn as a single line, horizontal, with an arrowhead at the right end,
signifying the passage of time from past (leftmost) to future (rightmost). Of course other conventions can be used, but
let’s use this one.
past present future
In addition to past and future, our
diagram also contains a place somewhere near the middle, a point which
indicates the present moment, or “now.”
The concept of “now” presents a
paradox. The paradox is that any instant
in time to which we can point as the “now” instant, immediately becomes a part
of the past, as soon as we point to it. Indeed, because our brains perceive according
to the transmission of electro-chemical impulses along our neurons, and because
those transmissions take much more than an instant of time, we are inherently
incapable of sensing a “now” instant of time.
Thus we have the paradox which says that it is always now, it is never
now. So how can we ever perceive a “now”
moment?
The answer is that our brains redefine
“now.” Instead of sensing the present as
an infinitesimally short span of time (perhaps a grain of Planck time?), our
brains define “now” as a finite segment of time. Indeed, we have several levels of now,
depending on the length of the segment and its context.
Let’s use an example from carpentry. If a carpenter is using a hammer to drive a
nail through two boards, then that is what he is doing “now.” He is nailing two boards together. That task may take only a second or two. However, if we ask him why he is nailing
those two boards together, then he may answer that he is putting a door frame
together. That task may occupy a half
hour or more, but that half hour is the answer to what he is doing “now.” On a wider scale of time, the carpenter may
say that he is building a house, a task which takes days, in which case, his
“now” occupies those several days.
“Now” can be an even broader period of
time, including “this present generation,” this lifespan, or even the era of
nations.
Were the brain to conceive of each “now”
only as the tiniest instant of time, then we might have no sense of continuity.
We might not connect the instants into a coherent series. If so, then there would be no music, because
music must have melody. We do not hear
music note by note, but as a continuum.
Indeed, when we hear the same music a second time, our “now” may encompass
the entire musical composition, because no matter where we are in the composition,
we are mentally placing each note into the whole. We are remembering the notes already played,
and anticipating the notes yet to come.
In a sense, the musical piece becomes timeless for us, partially outside
of time.
Certain brain disorders connected with
hearing actually may have the effect of a person being unable to connect the
notes of a piece of music into a continuum, unless the person has heard that
music before. This demonstrates that
hearing is not merely a function of the ear, but a complex processing of
auditory signals inside the brain. The
neural structure for accomplishing this process is not complete at birth, but
is developed over a period of time through maturation and experience. It can be damaged, resulting in various degrees
of impairment, some of which may result in failure to recognize music, or even
spoken language.
As we can see, the concept of time as we
perceive it is not exactly the same as time measured mathematically. This is an important point to make, because
it may answer the question of whether the Bible contradicts science when it
comes to the age of the universe.
Many Biblical scholars tell us that the
genealogy accounts in the Bible place the creation of the world as being only
six thousand years ago, whereas calculations by astronomers place it at 13.7
billion years ago. Who is right?
Here is a proposed answer to that
controversy.
At the moment when the first man
consciously perceived the passage of time, then it was that time as we perceive
it began to “flow.” Up until then, time
had existed only as a mathematical abstraction, the abstraction of
numbers. The word “abstraction,” does
not mean nonexistent, nor unimportant.
Another term for it, as used here, might be, outside of experience.
What difference does that make? As we discussed in Chapter 8, it bears upon
the controversy between the Biblical calculations of the age of the universe,
and the astronomical calculations.
Our timeline diagram might now take on a
distinctly different character.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - X--------------------------------------->
Mathematical time . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . Consciously Perceived time
Time may not be at all what it seems.
[1]
Sir Roger Penrose, by the way, disconnects the
concept of calculation from the concept of consciousness, suggesting instead
that some yet-to-be-discovered principle of natural law is required to explain
it. The God Paradigm agrees with his basic
idea, but whereas Penrose awaits a natural-materialistic explanation, the God
Paradigm asserts that consciousness does not arise from natural law, but is a
foundation of it. Clearly though, the
passage of time is experienced consciously.
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