Exegesis V08 Issue 013

Exegesis Volume 08 Issue #013

In This Issue:

From: "Dennis Frank"
Subject: [e] time

Exegesis Digest Sat, 09 Aug 2003

From: "Dennis Frank"
Subject: [e] time
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2003 01:15:18 +1200

Joan wrote: If our view of time changes, could that change things associated with time? I just read somewhere that time evolved into the present linear model, but I can't quite perceive how another view would work. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-07/icc-gwi072703.php

Depends if you mean our personal view of time or our collective view of time. The former is subjective, the latter relatively objective. I suspect there is no such thing as objective time, even if physicists still postulate such a thing for their theoretical convenience. Time is an imaginary component of space-time, which Einstein conceived as the contextual fabric of the universe. It exists to the extent that we believe it exists. A collective hallucination, yet highly influential across human society. Shows how powerful ideas do structure our world of experience, collectively and individually.

The website you point us to has intriguing news, so I did a google search for Lynds + time + indeterminacy & scanned some of the commentary on the 69 returns. He is interpreting, so the physicists will rule him out of bounds. Metaphysics & philosophy are the realm for interpreting scientific matters, where scientists normally fear to go lest they get out of their depth.

A moment is an imaginary entity, yet one readily conceived by all. It thus has currency, and one can argue that it is a relatively objective concept due to this collective consensus of its description and utility. The physicists go further & cite measurable events that occur in particular moments, including natural ones. It is easy therefore to conceive the moment/event as the particle (microcosm) of the space-time continuum (macrocosm).

Lynds' interpretive comments as cited on the website are too brief to be more than indicative. His references to duration & subjective time require elaboration. Duration is subjective (always being user-defined) but time periods are conventionally derived from nature, thus objective. For astrologers, the horoscope depicts an event, thus representing a moment of time (at somewhere on Earth). The diagram is objective, the interpretation mostly subjective.

Bill wrote: "an imaginal notion I entertain; that what we experience as time is an emergent property of change (as mentioned in my last post to Dennis). That change (or what Peter Lynds calls continuity) is primary and the time sensibility is constructed by consciousness. Hence my interest in cognition in relation to the astrologer's process.

Change is what we generally experience in the passing of time. Change is our common experience, time is our common concept for the experience. The word time is a symbol denoting the collective mental construct. I'm agreeing with Bill, in different words. Seeing how we use language to symbolise our common experience. I guess the point is that this situation is similar to that of the physicists - time is the label, representing something relatively objective that we all experience.

A moment, by contrast, achieves very little collective experience. Policemen always complain that eyewitness accounts of an event differ on key details. A moment only attains relative objectivity if an event occurs in it that influences lots of people. The media then creates an objective description, such as `atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at 8.16am'. The finding of the watch in the ruins of the city provided initial verification that the timing of this event was measured; when photographed, the recycled publication of the evidence provides cultural reinforcement for the objective reality of the timing (also recorded in US military histories). The meaning of the event also attains relative objectivity in proportion to the consensus generated.