Page 4 - 201001SEA - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - January 2010 SE

NewYeaarsEdition200912_june_july_2009.qxd 16/12/2009 2:32 PM Page 4 4 The Nature of Time 4 The Nature of Time The Nature of Time As transient as soap bubbles on the Traces of older, cyclical view of time The Nature of Time surface of eternity, these universes would persisted, however, until the scientific appear for 100 Brahma years, but even then the revolution of the 17th century seemed to Any attempt to predict the process would not end. Other gods would take consign such a concept to the dustbin fo history. Any attempt to predict the future must acknowledge its over, and so the cycle of creation and The time recognized by the new science of future must acknowledge its destruction would continue. Newton and Galileo was linear time - a straight relationship with the present The Mayas, who were at the height of line from birth to death. relationship with the present and the past. their power in Central America between a.d. and the past. Time as a circle, time as an 600 and 900, were meticulous students of time. Clock Time Time as a circle, time as an They produced a calendar more accurate than arrow - these are just two of the one used today - it was out of alignment by The widespread use of clocks quickly arrow - these are just two of the theories that have been only two days every 10,000 years. Our led to a general acceptance of the new scientific the theories that have been proposed over the centuries to Gregorian calendar, on the other hand, needs concept of time. People believed that the flow of proposed over the centuries to time was objectively the same for everyone and adjusting by three days over a similar period. explain the puzzling nature of could be measured by the regular ticking of a explain the puzzling nature of time. Time As A Relay Race timepiece. In the words of 17th-century time. mathematician Isaac Burrows: “Whether we Most people feel they know The Mayan concept of the nature of move or are still, whether we sleep or wake, instinctively what time is, because they time, however, may seem bizarre to us. The Time pursues the even tenor of its way.” experience it in every instant of their lives. Yet Mayas believed that each period of time - each The highly successful civilization of the they might be at a loss to describe or explain it. day, month, and year - was a burden carried by modern scientific and industrial age was built If ordinary people think about time at a god along the road to eternity. Time was a sort upon this concept of clock time. From train all, they probably visualize it as a stream or a fo relay race, repeating itself in 52-year cycles, timetables to working hours to the precise river, flowing swiftly from the past into the as the same gods once again took up their scheduling of radio and TV programs, modern future. It is generally seen as irreversible and burden. Events did not repeat themselves life is governed by the ticking of the clock. Yet unrepeatable - a one-way street with no U-turns exactly as before but followed a predictable 20th-century science has thrown this concept of and no stopping allowed, leading straight into pattern, since similar happenings would recur linear time into disarray. Since Albert Einstein an uncertain future. when the same god carried the day. published the first of his relativity theories in But in earlier civilizations a different Some ancient Greek philosophers took 1905, scientists have had to cope with an idea of view of time often prevailed. Perhaps because an extreme view of the circular recurrence of time that seems to defy common sense. they had no clocks and were in tune with the time. Pythagoras and his followers believed in According to Einstein, time is not the same for great rhythms of the natural world - the the exact repetition of all events as the cycle of everyone “whether we move or are still.” He progression of the seasons, and the waxing and time came around once more. demonstrated that everything about time finally waning of the moon - these civilizations tended It was the spread of Christianity that depends on your point of view. to see time as circular and repetitive. replaced this cyclical view of time with that of a For instance, can we tell exactly when a progression from the past into the future. In an particular event - say, the explosion of a star - A Cycle of Universes adaptation of existing Judaic philosophy, took place? An astronomer watching from the Christianity popularized the belief that Christ planet Zig 100 light years away will see the According to the Brahman cosmology had come to earth to save humankind once only, blinding light of the supernova a full century of ancient India, for instance, there was not one at a precise moment in history. At an unknown before an astronomer twice the distance away universe, but a cycle of universes, being born but equally precise moment in the future, there on the planet Zag. and dying in endless succession. Each universe would come the Last Judgment, another one- So the astronomer on Zig would believe flourished for one day in the life of the creator- and-for-all historical event. So time had to be a that it happened in, say A.D. 1800, and the god, Brahma, which was equivalent to fixed, one-way path, although Christian mystics astronomer on Zag would date it at A.D. 1900. 4,320,000,000 years. Then the universe faded were sometimes blessed with a fleeting vision Both options woudl be correct from a subjective for one Brahma night. of eternity or “the world beyond time.” point of view. (Continued on Page 5)