Time is so pervasive that it pervades absolutely everything we do, encapsulating our own existence and all our knowledge. We can say that nothing exists outside of time. Time always and for all that exists goes in one direction, it is an endless continuous process of events, in which each next one absorbs the previous one in the course of moving forward in the space-time continuum. Including right now, while you are reading all this.
But if we speak in relation to our life, then time is a rather flexible concept and much more conditional than we usually think. How does time affect our lives, thoughts and perceptions? And is time really as straightforward as it seems to our intuition and experience? In what cases do we use the term “time” itself and how do we count it? For example, the word "time" can mean a fixed point, such as 11:14 pm on Tuesday, May 12, or it can mean a segment between two points, for example, after one second or one minute. And this very second will never happen again. Here are ten interesting concepts of time that will allow you to take a closer look at this interesting part of our existence.
10. Linearity of time
This is the first, most intuitive version of time that follows from our experience. Time consists of a continuous sequence of alternating moments. When we talk about linear time, it means that time moves in a straight line. In linear time, each next moment must necessarily replace the previous one, and each second flows into the next second.
It is quite natural for us that we look at time as a movement in one direction, from the past to the future, but linear time is far from the only concept. On the contrary, modern science and philosophy tell us that time is nonlinear, it is not like our traditional idea of the past-present-future chain, and that for each object that is near us at the moment, this chain can be different. According to theories about nonlinearity of time, different episodes are just human markers that we use to store and track different points in time, but this does not mean that time necessarily moves in a straight line. In fact, non-linear time is probably a more reliable way of looking at the interval between two moments.
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9. Circular (cyclic) time
Cycle time is also familiar to us: it is periods of time that repeat, as a rule, with a predictable constancy. For example, the hands of a clock that run in a circle and all the time return to the same number from which you started counting. The same can be said for weeks, months or seasons. The concept of circular time goes back to Hebrew philosophy, it says that time is infinite because it moves in a circle.
Of course, since ancient times, many civilizations have used the cyclical movement of the Sun and Moon to determine the time of sowing, plan works and predict the future. The ancient Greeks were good experts in both astronomy and agriculture, the success of which largely depends on time cycles. Therefore, the Greeks and Maya, and many other ancient civilizations believed that time is circular and that everything begins and ends, comes and goes, is born and dies, just to repeat this cycle.
It may seem strange today, but for most of human history, time was considered circular, no one saw it as moving in a straight line in one direction, and there probably was no reason to think otherwise. Days followed nights, and nights followed days, only so that night would come again. The familiar Gregorian calendar, which is the most widely used in the world now, actually appeared only in 1582.
8. Real duration
The next interesting theory of time is quite different from what we've discussed so far. This is the theory of real duration (also called duration) of time, proposed by the philosopher Henri Bergson. According to Bergson, there is a physical, measurable time, and a pure time of the life stream, which we experience directly. Unlike linear or circular time, which are always the same for everyone, real time depends on what we are experiencing at that particular moment.
For example, in linear time, you quietly eat your yogurt for one minute and look out the window. The next minute, someone will beat you with a hammer in the leg with all their might. The first and second minutes will pass for you personally at different speeds.
Real duration, unlike other aforementioned forms of time, cannot exist separately from the personal experience of this period of time. It is interesting to note that Bergson vigorously criticized science for applying spatial concepts to time and turning it into a rigid, mathematical, inanimate thing, separate from human or animal experience. The question arises: what then to do with the concept of time, if there is no one who feels it? Unlike just time, the real duration always depends on the situation, events and environment of the one who will experience it, and this concept cannot be used in isolation from the experience that is being experienced at the moment. After all, there is a difference, whether you spend a year in a coma or will you be busy with what you love all year? According to the theory of real duration,the time depends entirely on what happened during that time period.
7. Temporality
This is another philosophical concept related to time. Temporality is a philosophical concept that refers to the exploration of the past, present, and future, and what it means to us. If time is a linear movement in a straight line or a circular movement in which everything repeats itself, real duration is the idea of time that we feel, then temporality focuses on how much everything has changed. Temporality is a real manifestation of the time when a banana goes from “unripe” to “ripe”, and then to “rotten”, or how decomposed the body is over several days, weeks, months, years. Although days, weeks, months, and years are very specific periods of time, the process of decay can occur at different rates, and this is evidenced by temporality.
Since Augustine's time, philosophers have sought to emphasize the difference between time and temporality, noting that time, unlike temporality, can be measured apart from eternity, and temporality is a process that exists in eternity, therefore, it cannot be measured. Time is an integral part of the unfolding of eternity. Since every moment is instantly replaced by the future, human existence is impossible outside of this constant transition into the future. Unlike linear time, which is an abstraction between two moments and which inherently means that the time being measured is finite, temporality is constant and eternal, and it touches everything that changes.
6. Relativism
Relativism is a concept of time that has been around for quite some time. It is one of the halves of the dichotomy that opposes relativism to absolutism (sometimes also called "objective reality") and which is a subject of debate in philosophy and sciences. Relativism believes that time cannot exist in isolation from changing events or moving objects. Like the debate about the difference between time and temporality, relativism seeks to argue that time does not just move in a straight line in one direction, but rather is a product of changes in objects. In short, relativism says that there can be no time without changes, one thing gives rise to another.
From the point of view of philosophy, the most important here is the conclusion that space and time do not exist one without the other. These are just abstractions, mathematical representations that really have nothing to do with the objects of the real world that make up the space-time continuum.
5. Absolutism
Absolutism, as mentioned above, is the opposite of relativism. Close your eyes for a second and imagine a completely black void. There is no light, there is nothing at all. It is literally just a huge void of beautiful nothingness. Can time exist in him? If in this emptiness there are no objects at all that sense time or change with it? Will time permeate this hypothetical universe? Or vice versa: if each moment is the same as the next, then the very concept of time loses its meaning? Also, if time is a measurement, what can be measured in a similar place? And if science (or philosophy) deals with the discussion of specific facts, then what can be discussed in the absence of something?
Regardless of your thoughts on these issues, absolutism believes that space and time objectively exist regardless of the presence of specific objects in them. So, do you think that space and time can exist in a vacuum of nothingness?
4. Presentism
Have you ever thought about whether everything that you see or feel exists in reality? For example, now, at this very moment? Presentism is a direction in philosophy, the supporters of which believe that the very moment that you are now feeling is your whole existence. The past and the future are not real, but rather the fruit of our imagination.
Presentism says that truth exists only on the personal level. This seems paradoxical to us, since we know that we did not appear out of nowhere literally at this very moment, and, obviously, we had a past in which we learned everything that we know now. Presentism affects all objects and entities that surround us, and it actually denies our entire universe. But presentism does not stop there either, it says that those objects that exist here and now are the only things about which we can say that they exist, and everything that existed before, right down to the mobile phone that called just a second ago, already destroyed. Each next moment replaces the previous one, and, at the same time, it erases and re-creates the next universe. The only reality is here and now.
3. Dimension
Since Pythagoras offered us the three-dimensional model of space that we all know and love today, the concepts of "height", "width" and "length" always go side by side with the concepts of "space" and "time". Time, as you can easily see, has always been the fourth dimension. For centuries, until about the late 1800s, space and time were seen as separate entities, until the theory of relativity was born in Einstein's head. The question is: are space and time independent from each other, or is it a single space-time entity?
The concept of dimension is fueled by controversy over how time fits into spatial dimensions. Does it exist by itself? This question - about the existence of time outside of space - has been controversial since ancient times. As a result, the idea of a single four-dimensional Universe appeared, in which time does not exist without space. Three axes of ordinates are inextricably intertwined with the fourth - temporal. This is the prevailing theory now, and it came from Einstein.
2. Metabolic effect
As soon as modern science parted ways with the previously prevailing circular and linear concepts, it began to reveal some rather strange things. For example, the time is different for different objects and entities, they move and develop at different speeds.
There is a relationship between metabolic rate and time perception. In short, for smaller animals (such as mice and hummingbirds), which have a higher metabolic rate, time flies faster. Just looking at how fast a hummingbird flaps its wings or how a mouse runs through the kitchen, you wonder how such a small animal with relatively weak muscles can move so quickly.
In fact, this applies not only to individual species of animals. Currently, it is believed that it is the high metabolism in children that is the reason why a day means as much to a child as a year to an adult. Anyone who has lived long enough will tell you that time flies faster with age. This is due not only to our life experiences or "habituation", but also to the fact that metabolic processes slow down as we age.
1. Perception of time by animals
Have you heard of the "dog years"? In fact, there is some truth in this. For smaller animals, time passes faster and differs from ours. Imagine that time is not a fixed quantity and that its unit of measurement is real life span. In this case, we can safely say that different animals can be programmed for the fact that time "ticks" for them at different speeds. Fundamental speed will slow down for some animals and accelerate for others, as modern science proves.
Imagine that your computer is the primary timekeeper. As we all know, as we acquire newer and faster computers, they process bits of information at ever higher speeds. Thus, we can say that for a computer, time is accelerating more and more. It turns out that time is flexible, it depends on the speed at which our brain can process incoming data, and the difference between different organisms depends on the metabolic rate - the fundamental rate to which all other processes are tied. Of course, all this happens at a biological level. For example, dogs do not sense time in the same way as humans, because they do not have enough memory to remember the events that happened. They perceive time through a series of repetitive biological functions,while we perceive it in relation to our specific memories. Unlike dogs, we can remember specific events in the past and apply that experience to what is happening.
As Einstein said, “When a man sits with a beautiful girl for an hour, it seems to him that a minute has passed. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute - and it will seem to him longer than an hour. This is relativity!"
So time is, at its best, a flexible mind structure that has many faces, and there are many ways to look at those faces. As we move into the future, our understanding of time will become more and more strange and unusual.