| Resources -
About Time: Some
physical and philosophical thoughts |
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| Time has long
been thought to be divided into two distinct entities. In Greek
mythology, there were already two gods of time, Chronos and Cairos.
Chronos was the god of ordinary time, while Cairos was in charge of
God’s time. Sir Isaac Newton eventually formalized this split of time by
talking about universal, absolute, and mathematical time which we can
measure and which passes, versus relative apparent time which is
subjective. In other words, the absolute time of half an hour probably
feels much longer in a dentist’s chair than in the arms of a lover. |
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Back in Greece, however, Aristotle noted that numbers are necessary to
define and ultimately measure time. He also pointed out that therefore
the notion of time is contingent upon humans and their ability to count.
If we can’t count, we can’t keep time, and the concept of time is found
with humans only. |
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One problem with absolute time is that time is observed in movement, but
movement only exists in time, leading to a logical circle between time
and movement, a dilemma similar to the chicken and egg problem.
St. Augustine observed that whenever no-one asked him what the meaning
of time is, he knew exactly what it is, but whenever someone did ask
him, he no longer knew what it is. In other words, we understand what
time is but we really can’t explain it. Scientists decided to deal with
this problem by deciding that science would not ask questions about time
any more, as is customary procedure in the scientific method: The things
we cannot understand, are delegated to philosophy. |
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Eventually Albert Einstein came along and challenged Newton’s circle by
concluding that it is nonsense that absolute time should exist which
passes because time is the measure of movement and the measure cannot
pass. He eliminated absolute time from his physics and introduced time
as the forth dimension, which is his famous theory of relativity.
Back to St. Augustine: He described time as being made up of three
components, the past, the present, and the future. |
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The
past does not exist any more; it is what we remember. The future does
not exist yet; it is what we expect. The present is fleeting and will be
gone soon; we remember and expect in it.
Herbert Pietschmann put it this way: the future is still open, the past
is set, the present is the process of setting, of deciding what will
become of the opportunities presenting themselves to us. Through our
present decisions, we can give new future meaning to the past: A crisis
can lead to a catastrophe or a promising new beginning. As we grow
older, our time is made up of much more past than future and our present
decisions reflect more and more past, leaving less and less future to
revise them. |
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Conclusions:
• We are free to choose how much of our time we spend in absolute time
and how much we spend in relative time. If we did not have this choice,
the ubiquitous time management seminars would not make any sense.
• The only chance we have for approximating the sum of time available to
us is to spend as much time in the present as we can. A Buddhist monk was
asked by a visitor how he manages to be so serene to which he replied:
“It is quite simple; when I sit, I sit; when I stand, I stand; when I
walk, I walk.” When the visitor interjected that he does the same, the
monk pointed out: “When you sit, you think about getting up; when you
stand, you think about walking; when you walk, you think about sitting
down.
• Planning, while necessary, needs to be limited to the truly essential:
When we plan, we live in the future; when we execute our plans, we live
in the past.
• The potential wisdom of old age lies in considering our past and its
lessons carefully in our decision making. We have more and more past to
work with.
• Ultimately, we are free to choose what we make of with the gift of the
time given to us.
Note: This paper is based on a lecture delivered by Prof. Dr. Herbert
Pietschmann, Dept. of Theoretical Physics, University of Vienna, to a
group of executives on December 7, 2001. |
