TIME TO TALK ABOUT TIME

Let us spare some time to talk about time. Time is a fascinating phenomenon and one that is difficult to wrap the mind around. It has a way of walking ahead of us, with us, and behind us- it tends to wrap around anything and everything! We exist in a time bubble whose size, shape, and special charge varies without our control. The question “What is it?” has a difficult answer. It is easier to express how it affects us, what we do, and what happens around us. It remains like a ghost whose tendencies are apparent, but its nature is elusive.?

Time may be compared with the elephant of Hindustan. In a version of this memorable poem, a group of blind men requested to see an elephant. On an appointed day an elephant was brought, and they went forth to see the beast by feeling with their hands. One of them caught the task and shouted that an elephant was sharp and pointed like a spear. A second one fell on the broad side of the elephant and declared an elephant to be exactly like a wall. The one who wrapped his arms around the leg screamed that an elephant is similar to the stem of a tree. The fellow who caught the tail said loudly that an elephant was like a rope. Thereafter, they argued for long with each holding fast to their belief about the elephant.

Time remains a fascinating phenomenon because even the best among us does not have eyes to see the totality of it.

Plato, the eminent 4th?Century BC Greek philosopher and headmaster of a school in Athens called the?Academy?was convinced that time was the wanderings of celestial bodies. So, to him time and movement or space were inseparable. His most renowned student ever, Aristotle, had a different explanation that abstracted time from celestial bodies. According to him, aether?was responsible for time. A common belief at the time was that?aether?surrounds the dome of sky above the earth and celestial bodies. We can imagine this as a kind of battery that time depended on.

In chapter 10 of the Old Testament book of Joshua, an account is given of how the Lord suspended time for a day to last long enough for Joshua’s band of fighters to defeat a hostile tribe in battle. A spill-over to the following day could have complicated matters and reversed battlefield gains. This account should not be dismissed lightly as a myth. Ancient Chinese writings; traditions of the Babylonians and Persians; the Aztecs of Mexico;??and Incas of Peru,??all record a particular day that was exceedingly long. Josephus the ancient Jewish historian also records an incident when he was in Egypt and was shown temple records of a day that lasted twice as long as a typical one.

Isaac Newton, the eminent 17th?Century English mathematician and physicist drew a distinction between an imperceptible?absolute time?and measurable?relative time. He differed with Plato and Aristotle in that time was independent of space,?aether, or any other external force.??You cannot be late for a meeting for 30 minutes and yet be punctual by winding your watch backwards by 30 minutes. Likewise, a boy whose birthday falls on, say, 2nd of January, but remains unaware until a later date cannot do a diary where the 2nd?of January comes up in the following week. Time is a consistent universe-wide phenomenon that defies diaries, calendars or clocks.

Einstein saw time as an illusion. He rejected the existence of aether, and in a way almost reminiscent of Plato’s?‘wanderings of celestial bodies’, time and space formed a continuum. His view gained credence when an exceptional eclipse of the sun in 1919 revealed that a star in the bright cluster of Hyades positioned behind the sun could be seen during the eclipse, thanks to observations made by English mathematician and astronomer Arthur Eddington and the Astronomer Royal Frank Dyson. The gravity of the sun had warped space-time and bent the light from the star around the sun so it could be viewed from Earth as if it was side by side with the sun.

The recently departed genius, Stephen Hawking, too paid attention to the matter of time. One of his notable contributions was that time and space originated from a?singularity, an instant from the?big bang,?and that time travel was a possibility. This idea accommodates the views of Einstein but turns those of Newton, Aristotle and Plato on their heads.??

Besides Hawking’s central thesis associated with the big bang and the complex mathematical models that go with it, the space-time expansion from a singularity can be related to some day-to-day realities encountered in the life of the man on the street, and also the executive in an office.?

There is a democracy that allows humans from diverse backgrounds to have their say. It has been observed that in African and Asian traditions, time is viewed as cyclic and repetitive. In contrast, western civilization has perceived time as linear. The question of which view is right is a moot point. Seasons come in cycles, winter always becomes spring, followed by summer then autumn and the cycle repeats. On the other hand, the year 2020 ends and is replaced by 2021 such that 2020 is gone for good. That is linear thinking of time.

Inevitably, ordinary people ask questions and try to associate time with familiar circumstances.??What is the nature of time? Is it a dot? A continuous line as many philosophers agree? A discontinuous line? Or a cycle?

It is widely agreed that time is measurable, albeit in relative rather than absolute terms. Therefore it can be lost, wasted, even gained. Insightful expressions include:

·??????“We are running out of time”

·??????“Time and tide waits for no man”

·??????“We will do this when time allows”

·??????“Time is money”

·??????“Make hay while the sun shines”

·??????“We should plan in order to avoid wasting precious time”

·??????2 Peter 3:8 NIV-??with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years

like one day.

·??????Psalm 139:7-12- KJV- where can I flee from your presence….

·??????Matthew 18:20 KJV- for where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am

I in the midst of them.

In the above examples, time is cast variously as a resource, a master, an accessory, even a bystander and witness to all events and happenings. In particular, the biblical views defy distance, space, and anything complex associated with astrophysics.??In an interesting twist, time can be both limited and unlimited, in a discriminative kind of way! A tractor operator can plough an acre of land in a fraction of the time it would take a hoe man. So the two have different limits as regards time.

It would not be far removed to think that the views expressed in the above democratic space and beyond have some genetics traceable to the scholarly views outlined earlier. Below is an attempt to draw a link between popular thinking and practices about time with selected ideas of our historical scholars on the question of time.

Plato

Time is the wanderings of celestial bodies:

·??????Time is cyclic.

·??????There is a discernable ‘timeliness” about the movement of celestial bodies.

Aristotle

Time is abstract and moves in a set direction:

·??????“We are running out of time”

·??????“Time and tide waits for no man”

·??????“Make hay while the sun shines”

·??????“We should do forward planning to avoid wasting precious time”

Newton

Time is consistent across the universe, and relative measurement of time:

·??????There is universal agreement on how to measure time

·??????International adoption of time zones

Einstein

Time is an illusion:

·??????Historically, not only have we had a succession of calendars, but we still have the

Jewish calendar, Ethiopian calendar, and Islamic calendar among others, in existence.

·??????Only?today?exists,?yesterday?(the past) and?tomorrow?(the future) are illusions that

do not exist?

The space-time continuum:

·??????2 Peter 3:8 NIV-??with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years

like one day.?

·??????Psalm 139:7-12- KJV- where can I flee from your presence….

·??????Matthew 18:20 KJV- for where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am

I in the midst of them.

Hawking?

The idea of existence of a?multiverse; and the possibility of time travel:

·??????2 Peter 3:8 NIV-??with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years

like one day.?

·??????Psalm 139:7-12- KJV- where can I flee from your presence….

·??????Matthew 18:20 KJV- for where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am

I in the midst of them.

The cited biblical views appear inconsistent with with the scholars examples cited and work outside laws that would be unacceptable by the four illustrious scholars. Be that as it may they too belong to the same democratic space.

In many spheres of life, time is a central consideration treated with a measure of religious fervour as if it is a deity. For instance, biologists would talk about the?metabolic age?in contrast to the actual age; laboratory workers measure time in minutes; physicists measure time in microseconds; and accountants and their banker cousins have cut-off dates in closing accounts. The entire world views midnight as the change-over point from one day to the next in the calendar.

It is worthy of mention that a general manager who coordinates activities of accounts, HRM, procurement, sales , R &D is exploiting the manifestation of time as a multiplicity of parallel lines. Although on a micro scale, this coincides somewhat with Hawking’s suggestion of a multiverse.??A person who is a father, a husband, a part-time Masters Degree student and a General Manager all at the same time is manipulating time in a way that echoes the multiverse idea. The Christian doctrine of God as a Trinity is time and space defying and also reflects this but not with the same set of rules.

At this point the question still nags, “what is the nature of time?”. The contributions we have examined still do not give an easy answer. They are however sufficient to enable us sketch a construct that brings some light. All the points of view can be fused into a tringle as illustrated below.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????The Time Triangle

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Space????????????

????????????????????????????????????????????????????State????????????????????????????????????????Event

Time is at the center of the triangle and is framed by space, state and event. The triangle can be of any shape or size. Space, state and event are a set of fraternal triplet siblings mothered by the?big bang, expelled all at once so none is older than the other. Time is the 180 degrees sum-total of the angles. The biblical citations are part of the picture but fall outside this triangle.

At this point (state), time does not allow us to continue talking (event) about time on the LinkedIn network (space). Time to talk about time has run out.