About time

A week ago, humans around the world partied out the old year and rang in the new. Bearded old Father Time, representing 2006 in its final throes, once again handed over the reigns of his rule to an infant. Baby New Year accepted Father Time’s duties and will carry time on, grow up, grow old, and guide us through the passing of this next New Year.

It’s comforting to personify time. It gives us a sense of control over an aspect of existence over which we are powerless. It puts a face to the name. Time. It is the thing that makes us old. The thing we equate with money. The thing we don’t have enough of, the thing we sometimes kill.

Though we obsess about time, its mystery surpasses simpler things like the human genome. Time defies mapping, escapes our scrutiny, and continues to elude our attempts to bend it to our will. Time will not be engineered, captured or saved. Not yet.

Romantics among us continue to dream of traveling through time. Despite the paradoxes this raises, it would be nice to visit the past or the future. Looking into the night’s sky it seems that we should be able to travel back in time. After all, the light of the stars we see in the sky is traveling to us from the past. It gives us a picture from billions of years ago.

Time travel, however, is rife with paradoxes. A well-known paradox is the one that involves the potential consequences of a time traveler who goes back to kill his grandfather. If one went back in time and killed one’s grandfather before he met one’s grandmother, then one could not exist in the first place. And so ends the idea of traveling to the past. As Stephen Hawking wisely explained, our greatest proof that there could be no time travel is the absence of hordes of tourists from the future.

Or perhaps, we are not as interesting as we think. Perhaps our time is simply not a primary destination. Our time may be comfortable to live in (for many but not for all), but with its depleted forests, environmental degradation and steady advance of concrete, one might rather explore a different time, given the choice.

Time as a person

Ancient civilizations also dealt with the idea of time in a variety of ways and with a variety of personalities. Early cultures created vivid descriptions to explain the passage of time. Violent struggles as well as astrology and astronomy were used as sources of information.

The Celts – Time as a struggle between personified seasons

In Celtic mythology, each year advanced by means of a struggle between the Oak King and the Holly King. The Oak King ruled the warmer months and the Holly King ruled the colder part of the year. The Oak King was born annually at Yule (midwinter), and his strength grew through spring. The Holly King was born (also annually) in midsummer and grew stronger until he eventually overpowered the Oak King in fall and winter.

The Greeks and Romans – Cronus and Saturn

The Greeks and the Romans created exciting tales to explain time. Cronus was the harvest deity of the ancient Greeks. He was in charge of overseeing crops, agriculture and time. His mother was the earth, Gaia, and his father was the sky, Uranus. The sky (Uranus), wrapped itself around the Earth (Gaia) in order to bring forth Cronus and his siblings, some of who were evil. The story goes that because Cronus’ father, Uranus, wickedly brought evil into the world, Gaia, Cronus’ mother, hatched a plot of punishment. Gaia gave her son Cronus a sickle to do the deed. Cronus then chopped off the testicles of his father and threw them into the ocean. Thus, Cronus prevented Uranus from bringing more evil into the world.

Cronus later feared that one of his children would overthrow him. To prevent this from happening, he swallowed them as they were born, all except for his son Zeus who escaped this fate when Zeus’ mother switched Zeus with a rock that she fed to Cronus instead. When Zeus overthrew his father, he forced Cronus to regurgitate his offspring. Things weren’t too comfortable around the Pantheon after that, so Cronus fled.

There is a bit of mixing of mythologies here between Greek and Roman, but the story goes that Cronus fled to Italy where he became Saturn and was worshipped by the Romans as their harvest god. Saturn was honored annually at the mid-winter festival called Saturnalia much the same as we observe our new year in midwinter (January).

Science

So just what is time? In modern times we turn to scientists to give us the answers. Does time have a beginning? Will it end? Why does time run forward and not backward? Is time a means of measurement and if so, what does it measure? Why does the passage of time seem different depending on how old you are or what you’re doing? How does time work? Does it begin or end? Is time variable? Can it be sped up or slowed down? Can we see into the future or the past? Is time a measurer or the thing being measured? And if a day on Earth is not the same as a day on Mars, then is a second here a second there? Is there any way to get past opinion and into a sense of certainty? Isn’t there some way that we can know what time really is?

Even today, one’s definition of time depends in large part on who one is, where and when one was born and with whom one associates. If you talk to a philosopher, you’re likely to get bogged down in psychological time. Talk to a physicist and the discussion will revolve around physical time. One’s idea of time will depend on what one believes about the nature of life, death, God and science and how one puts all these ideas together. One’s faith, be it in the supernatural, the empirical or a mixture of the two also plays a role in one’s beliefs about time.

Scientific explanations

Scientific explanations of time are varied and complex. Scientific American’s Science Desk Reference defines time as “the continuous passage of existence.” Even in this definition, time seems to be tied to the human perception of it. Time is also said to take place when something is happening, but what, movement? Without Albert Einstein here to help me, I have to admit I flounder about on the issue of time. The various theories of relativity from Galileo’s to Einstein’s offer interesting insights and provoke further thought on the nature of time. Ideas such as flying fast and low can make you younger are interesting to ponder on a slow night with bad TV. Clearly, there is much to say about time. In this regard time is like money, having a little only makes one want some more.