Time as a Trajectory

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There are few straight lines in nature; it is we who superimpose the Cartesian plane onto circular and elliptical shapes and trajectories. Our perception of time is no different. We view history as a record of linear progress, and we visualize time as an eternal line from point A to point B.

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Is the cyclical understanding embodied in the Ouroboros therefore more in tune with nature than the notions of the directed river or arrow?

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Our tendency to assign linear visualizations to time is analogous to the experience of a fish that spends its entire life in a river with a strong, directed current. The fish considers the current basic characteristic of its environment, but we know that temperature, gravitation, the earth's relief and numerous other factors contribute to the formation of the current, which is not a necessary attribute of water. Our perception of time is parallel to the view of the current held by the fish. Having lived within an environment that seems to be subject to the forces of a unidirectional time, we have accepted it as intrinsic to our world.

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While modern history relies on a linear understanding of time, modern science seeks out recurring patterns and repetitions, codifying this search through the scientific method of observation and experimentation. One of the fundamental tenets of the Scientific method is that a hypothesis can be proven only if its conclusion can be reliably  repeated under similar conditions. It can be inferred from this that given a set of identical circumstances, any observable process will repeat itself in a cyclical fashion. We can call this repetition the life trajectory of any given process. In ideal conditions, this life trajectory can be visualized as a circle.

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Outside of tightly controlled experiments, individual circular trajectories can interact and intersect. Imagine the human body in which each organ and cell has its own life cycle, and each exists at different stages within its cycle. In an alcoholic's body the liver will reach the end of its life span first, while the rest of the body may be able to outlive it by years or decades. In an even larger system, each element will have its own life trajectory, and theses trajectories will each experience time individually.

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Perception and Imperception

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The human body has various sensory mechanisms designed to perceive and organize information. Our eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin make the outside world understandable to us in particular ways. We perceive electromagnetic waves as color, and particular molecular shapes as scent, etc. Our perceptions determine the way we experience our environment, and determine the look and feel of our world.

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Time has never been truly accepted as part of the repertoire of our perceptions. A simple linguistic demonstration of this is contained in these two questions: "Does the universe have a scent?" and "Does the universe have time?" The first, based on our senses, seems nonsensical; the second seems to hold some meaning.

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But time in its essence may not be different from scent or the other senses. Having observed repeated and regular changes in the matter around us, we have learned to interpret their cause as the result of the passage of time. As examples, we can take the processes of human aging, the spoilage of food and the deterioration of buildings. In other words, our view of time has been determined by the ability of our perceptual organs to detect changes in the surrounding world.

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Linearity may not be intrinsic to these processes of aging and decay. Like a fish that lives in a current and believes itself to be an innate part of its environment, so do we perceive time as linear. Yet the assumption that linearity is a natural aspect of time limits our ability to determine its real nature. We see only its seemingly mysterious impact on the objects that surround us.

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The Cosmic Object

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​Similar objects can age differently when placed into different environments. The passage of time for any given object seems to be dependent on two elements.

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The first element is the initial composition of an object, or its informational structure. The second is its subsequent interactions with other objects in its environment, which leave an informational imprint on it. In other words, objects are composed of the information that goes into their inner composition, as well as the history of their interactions with other objects and the changes that result.

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Every object can be studied in terms of its informational structure and informational imprint.

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Any object in our physical universe ages according to how its informational structure accumulates information. Structural change within an object - aging - is not linked to the passage of time in the way that we currently comprehend it, as an independent force. Instead, it relates to the change in the informational imprint of an object, or the record of the impressions that other elements in its environment leave upon it.



Let's imagine a cosmic object that exists in a perfect vacuum somewhere in outer space, leaving the details about its space, location, and trajectory unknown. As observers, we know nothing about this object but the fact that it exists, and that it is not subject to any interactions within its given environment or within its inner properties. Does time as we understand it exist for this cosmic object?

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If this object collides with another object and changes its shape and trajectory, what has actually happened is that the two objects have exchanged information. They both have left informational imprints on one another and changed their informational structures accordingly.



Having previously known nothing about our cosmic object, we can now analyze its informational imprint and conclude that with all probability that it interacted with another object. This allows us to examine not only its current state, but also its previous state. The informational imprint, or the record of change within the object, serves as a reference in dividing what we would normally term the "present" fro the "past." 

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Time as Fear



The question "What is Time?" has been considered to belong to physics or philosophy. To me, the question becomes more psychological, "Why do we experience changes in information as time passing?" More accurately, what we ask ourselves is "Why do we age? Why do not we not live forever? Why do we have to die?"[1]



We connect the abstract idea of time with our fear of death. As a consequence, the concept of time transforms into a powerful myth that places an unbearably psychological burden on us that we cannot overcome. We are afraid to investigate time because we are afraid of death.[2] Instead, we look int the opposite direction. We strive to reverse our decline - go from old age to youth. We are on a never-ending search for the ultimate elixir of youth - a cream, a pill, or a surgical intervention. 



Time and age are inextricably linked in our collective [un]consciousness. We have created the myth, and we are afraid of our creation. This fear is the reason for our interpretation of informational change as an irreversible passage and decline.



Time seems too overpowering to deal with.



NOTES:

[1] This question was most viewed (1,534) and received most number of responses (78) by 2009 on the discussion boards of the New York Philosophy Meetup, and was part of the most popular discussion of 2007 and 2008, titled "Immortality."  

[2] In China, people never offer a clock as a gift because the words death and clock are homonyms.

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Time as Sense

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Humans have complex tools for collecting information from the environment - the senses. [3] Is there a sensory tool for sensing time?



Perhaps the answer is obvious. Among its other functions, the brain collects, encodes, stores, analyzes and decodes information that comes from the sense suppliers of the body.  It produces new information. It does not touch, smell or feel anything, but deals solely with encoded information. It is a tool that never directly communicates with the outside world, yet is essential to us if we are to notice changes in our surrounding informational field. It records these changes as linear and sequential, and stores them in memory.



Our understanding of cause and effect depends on the linearity we assign to change. We know from experience that if we put water in a pot above a fire, it will boil and evaporate. If we cover the pot, the vapor will condense back into water. With reference to the human body, the same process has different results. A human body placed over a heat source will burn, but will not be able to be condense and be re-used. 



We designate as cyclical those processes which we can observe from beginning to end, like the change from water to vapor and vice versa. We see linear processes in those of human life and death. Our egocentric tendencies win over our objective observations which tell us that when humans are burned or buildings destroyed, their same atoms remain, simply rearranged. Yet we tend to perceive human life and the lives of man-made objects as linear, and connect these to our understanding of time.



Upon death, this space that had been structured as a human or a building remains, but changes the principles of its structure and the connections between its parts. The component parts of humans participate in much greater cycles of transformation, even as our brains sometime perceive only a localized, limited portion of these cycles and encode them as straight, directed lines.



NOTES: 

[3] Like other living beings with their own toolsets. 



 

 

Originally appeared in Fleeing from Absence from Ugly Duckling Presse; edited by Julia Druk.

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"#8 Time as a Trajectory" is from essay "The Visualization of Time";
"#1 Perception and Misperception" and "#3 The Cosmic Object" are from essay "In Search of Absent Time";
"#1 Time as Fear" and "#2 Time As Sense" are from essay "The Origin of Forms"