Astronomers, archaeologists, and theologians, among many others, have long discussed the nature and meaning of “time”.
We all think we know what time is, until someone asks us to define it. That’s when we realize we don’t know what words to use to describe time. Worse, the more we think about time, the more complicated this topic becomes, especially if we involuntarily associate the paranormal that is so dense in science fiction.
Have you ever wondered about the nature of time? Is time linear, meaning it only moves in one direction, or is time cyclical, moving in circles, like the seasons of the year? Although many people in this day and age seem to agree that time is linear, when we look back at the history of human existence, we will see that time is cyclical and changes with rhythm.
Here are 3 reasons why time is linear, and 3 more reasons why time is periodic.
Traveling back in time is simply impossible.
Don’t believe movies like Back to the Future, The Flash , or HG Wells sci-fi novels, traveling back in time is simply impossible. As living beings, we are born, grow, and die, in that order. We know about the past, but cannot know about the future. That’s because time moves in only one direction – not in terms of perception, but as a reality according to natural science.
The second law of thermodynamics states that time is linear and unidirectional because everything in our universe goes from an ordered state to an increasingly chaotic state. A cup of hot tea will become cold, not hot. A corpse will rot, not regenerate. Cars will rot. And people get old. You can deny that these things have happened, are happening, and will happen, but one day, you will no longer be in the world to deny them.
Time is linear because we have different ways of recording and measuring it, and recording and measuring can happen in a cumulative fashion. Our smartphone stopwatch app can measure time in milliseconds. But it would be silly to measure everyday activities with that much precision, unless an athlete wants to track and push the limits of his or her speed. We can also measure time by counting the number of times the Earth orbits the Sun, just as humans have done for thousands of years. If you count that way, you’ll see that time is a linear progression from a starting point forward forever. Or we can measure the vibrations of cesium-133 atoms – that’s how scientists do it to set the International Atomic Time (IAT). That global standard is so precise that it takes 1.4 million years to be off by 1 second. These natural phenomena can be recorded in long, cumulative, and linear series.
All the most common timekeeping systems that we use in our daily lives are cyclical: every 60 seconds counts as 1 minute, 60 minutes into 1 hour, 24 hours into 1 day, 7 days into 1 week, 4 weeks into 1 month, 3 months into 1 season, and 4 seasons into 1 year. So, isn’t the feeling of relief we so often experience, and history repeating itself, evidence that time is cyclical? If time is indeed linear in nature, why don’t we use linear, parametric methods that start at a single starting point and work forward to infinity, like measuring? that distance?
Human life is governed by a seasonal cycle that repeats endlessly.
To this day, the lives of farmers, nomads, and even urbanites are governed by a seasonal cycle that repeats endlessly. Calendars, which represent time in linear terms, are a relatively new phenomenon when compared with the long existence of our species. The earliest calendar created was 10,000 years ago; Well-documented calendar systems have also become popular only in the last 5,000 years. Our species is 200,000 years old; That is, for at least 95% of human existence, time is something cyclical and measured in days only.
Before the coronavirus pandemic broke out, a fairly common lament was that we ” never have enough time”, so we never ” take the time” to stop and smell the scents of a roadside rose. Today, when we are forced to stay at home amid social distancing, we all have to slow down. Our human ancestors not only smelled roses, they watched them sprout, grow, grow, and wither, year after year, without even thinking about wasting a resource. precious and limited in doing so.
Have you noticed that calendar years – or linear time frames – are counted as cumulative units from a particular starting point? That’s because the annual calendar is used by political and religious powers to mark events they consider important, like the birth of Jesus, not natural or scientific events or processes. science, as the origin of life on Earth.
What is the difference between the Hebrew, Chinese, Gregorian (Government, Western, or Solar) calendars, and the Maya? Not much, from all concepts and from the point of view of time. Those types of calendars have different origins, starting points, counting systems, and holidays, and are related only to people, not animals, plants, or planets. After all, each type of calendar is nothing more than a cultural construct built upon the political, religious, scientific and economic systems of a region, which are man-made.
Humans have a complicated relationship with time. Our modern life is almost ridiculously structured from linear time and precise measurement of time. However, our human ancestors, and some of our relatives today, lived with a different understanding of time – one that is cyclical, diurnal, and rhythmic. Perhaps this understanding also has some wisdom that we have forgotten today?
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