An attempt to come near to a better understanding of this eternal mystery: TIME.
There is a lot to be read on Physics and and Philosophy books, but also on religious ones about the essence of time, or at least about our attempts to grasp it. By the way, is anybody allowed to state that time has indeed an essence? Would Wittgenstein say such a statement is no more than wordy nonsense?
A powerful reasoning about Time’s nature may be found in Immanuel Kant’s ‘Transcendental Aesthetics’, the first part of his ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, a text which exhales apodictic strength. In my opinion, the Theory of Special Relativity, so much as the Quantum Mechanics, give unequivocal support to insights the great Königsberg Philosopher had rationally derived only from his deep analysis of human faculties, some 120 years before.
For Kant, Time and Space despite so clearly experienced as external, are given to our consciousness before any perceived data, that is, both are a prioriconditions that our intuition imposes to any stimuli reaching our minds. Consequently, it is quite impossible for a human being to know what any a thing could be ‘in itself’, that is, deprived of these two ‘stamps’, namely, time and space. The Universe, or even a Multiverse, inasmuch they are human conceptions, must be regarded as phenomena, as all possible kinds of empirical knowledge.
However, even when our reason accepts the truth of all complex (and why not to say, rather weird for non-experts) rational demonstration that time and space are like previous indelible stamps imposed by our sense perception onto any stimuli arriving at it, something remains in a deep core of ourselves which reacts, resists and secretly utters: “Eppur si muove, yet indeed time moves everything; what a great nonsense to say otherwise!”
Galileo Galilei whispered Eppur si muove (yet it moves) to the inquisitors who forced him to shut up when he dared to prove the Sun, Moon, and other stars does not revolve around the Earth, as stated by ‘sacred truths’ for so many centuries. With extreme daring, we are now invoking Galileo’s phrase in a situation quite opposite to that in which he used it, for his was a reaction to the imposition of an irrational attachment to a common-sense, millenarian intuition. In his phrase, reason was responding against the threat of irrational obscurantism which obliged him to remain silent.
OMG, we have reversed Galileo’s phrase intended meaning! His same words were used to cast a doubt over a rational finding, which is being corroborated with strength and elegance by empirical sciences. Which conditions have put at stake our incredulity to such an extreme?
Notwithstanding all scientific and metaphysical theories, when opening our eyes everything around us exist in time, we are totally dependent on it, we emerge in it, and in it we wait for the most undesired event of life, namely, our death to come on some unknown day. Understandably, as human beings we are very prone to think there is something external, however very mysterious, called time, which completely permeates our Universe.”
How to face such a paradox? Would we have to resort to the celebrated statement of Gilles Deleuze, the French Philosopher, claiming only when we accept paradoxes without trying to solve them can our minds catch the reality of world and life?
Is time merely an imposition inherent in the human condition, dictated biologically by our sense-perception? Whether this seems nonsense to us, would it be true that only the refusal of reason or some of its conclusions could come to the aid of our intuitive evidences? Would it be necessary here to redefine the concepts of ‘illusion’ and / or ‘truth’?
Giving loose wings to my imagination, it occurred to me an analogy as a thought exercise, which seems a way of getting around our huge difficulty in accepting the idea that time might be only a fictitious imposition from the senses to our consciousness and not an existing physical, independent trait of the Universe.
In my reverie, the Universe / Multiverse has appeared as a wonderful novel imprinted on a huge book, as follows:
For every one of us, to live would be something like reading our own chapter of this Universe-book, something experienced with our eyes fully absorbed in its pages, from birth to death.
In fact, every novel must be read in one only sequence, that is, from beginning to end. Otherwise, it is impossible to understand its contents.
Surely this characteristic point out to an analogy with the unidirectional arrow of time, impossible for our minds even to dream of reversing its course (going from the future to the past).
Nothing changes within any a novel while it is read by us, even though we experience its plot as flowing ceaselessly.
Analogously, in this thought exercise, every human consciousness would consist in a singular, exclusive reading of a piece of the Universe-Novel, which from our birth till our death belongs exclusively to each one of us.
Despite our inexorably time loaded sensorial perceptions, such a printed book bound by God is always there, with all its pieces and chapters, unchanging, impassive, immobile. Eternal.
A powerful reasoning about Time’s nature may be found in Immanuel Kant’s ‘Transcendental Aesthetics’, the first part of his ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, a text which exhales apodictic strength. In my opinion, the Theory of Special Relativity, so much as the Quantum Mechanics, give unequivocal support to insights the great Königsberg Philosopher had rationally derived only from his deep analysis of human faculties, some 120 years before.
For Kant, Time and Space despite so clearly experienced as external, are given to our consciousness before any perceived data, that is, both are a prioriconditions that our intuition imposes to any stimuli reaching our minds. Consequently, it is quite impossible for a human being to know what any a thing could be ‘in itself’, that is, deprived of these two ‘stamps’, namely, time and space. The Universe, or even a Multiverse, inasmuch they are human conceptions, must be regarded as phenomena, as all possible kinds of empirical knowledge.
However, even when our reason accepts the truth of all complex (and why not to say, rather weird for non-experts) rational demonstration that time and space are like previous indelible stamps imposed by our sense perception onto any stimuli arriving at it, something remains in a deep core of ourselves which reacts, resists and secretly utters: “Eppur si muove, yet indeed time moves everything; what a great nonsense to say otherwise!”
Galileo Galilei whispered Eppur si muove (yet it moves) to the inquisitors who forced him to shut up when he dared to prove the Sun, Moon, and other stars does not revolve around the Earth, as stated by ‘sacred truths’ for so many centuries. With extreme daring, we are now invoking Galileo’s phrase in a situation quite opposite to that in which he used it, for his was a reaction to the imposition of an irrational attachment to a common-sense, millenarian intuition. In his phrase, reason was responding against the threat of irrational obscurantism which obliged him to remain silent.
OMG, we have reversed Galileo’s phrase intended meaning! His same words were used to cast a doubt over a rational finding, which is being corroborated with strength and elegance by empirical sciences. Which conditions have put at stake our incredulity to such an extreme?
Notwithstanding all scientific and metaphysical theories, when opening our eyes everything around us exist in time, we are totally dependent on it, we emerge in it, and in it we wait for the most undesired event of life, namely, our death to come on some unknown day. Understandably, as human beings we are very prone to think there is something external, however very mysterious, called time, which completely permeates our Universe.”
How to face such a paradox? Would we have to resort to the celebrated statement of Gilles Deleuze, the French Philosopher, claiming only when we accept paradoxes without trying to solve them can our minds catch the reality of world and life?
Is time merely an imposition inherent in the human condition, dictated biologically by our sense-perception? Whether this seems nonsense to us, would it be true that only the refusal of reason or some of its conclusions could come to the aid of our intuitive evidences? Would it be necessary here to redefine the concepts of ‘illusion’ and / or ‘truth’?
Giving loose wings to my imagination, it occurred to me an analogy as a thought exercise, which seems a way of getting around our huge difficulty in accepting the idea that time might be only a fictitious imposition from the senses to our consciousness and not an existing physical, independent trait of the Universe.
In my reverie, the Universe / Multiverse has appeared as a wonderful novel imprinted on a huge book, as follows:
For every one of us, to live would be something like reading our own chapter of this Universe-book, something experienced with our eyes fully absorbed in its pages, from birth to death.
In fact, every novel must be read in one only sequence, that is, from beginning to end. Otherwise, it is impossible to understand its contents.
Surely this characteristic point out to an analogy with the unidirectional arrow of time, impossible for our minds even to dream of reversing its course (going from the future to the past).
Nothing changes within any a novel while it is read by us, even though we experience its plot as flowing ceaselessly.
Analogously, in this thought exercise, every human consciousness would consist in a singular, exclusive reading of a piece of the Universe-Novel, which from our birth till our death belongs exclusively to each one of us.
Despite our inexorably time loaded sensorial perceptions, such a printed book bound by God is always there, with all its pieces and chapters, unchanging, impassive, immobile. Eternal.
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