by Margaret Gordon
What is time? Time is the fourth dimension. It is the sun rising and setting during a day and the moon waxing and waning in a little less than a calendar month. In biological time, babies are conceived, born, and then grow into the children who grow into adolescents, then adults, and finally reach old age. In a calendar year, the earth goes through seasonal changes.
The whole pattern of life on earth is one of rebirth as the seasons follow one another. To understand the rhythms of time, we need to observe nature at every stage of life, growth, and death. The higher the form of life, the more varied and complementary are the rhythms of time.
Our lives are ruled by the passage of time. We cannot say for certain when time started, when it will end, or even if it really exists in a philosophical sense. We tend to think in terms of the past, the present, and the future. The past just happened, the present is now, and the future is to be, but the present quickly becomes the past, and the future fast becomes now. The length and speed of time seem long or short and pass quickly or slowly. We can save time or lose it, spend time or waste it (hearing the saying, "Time is money!"), and even beat it or kill it.
Defining time has baffled and intrigued mystics and philosophers for centuries. Over fifteen hundred years ago, Aurelius Augustinus, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, philosopher and late saint, said, "What then is time? If someone asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it to someone who asks, I know not."
In reported near-death experiences, almost all persons consistently have said that they moved very fast in time and space through a tunnel. They relived their lives in what seemed a long time, but actually lasted from a few moments to a couple of hours. Their flashing visions gave a new understanding to life. Often, the near-death experience allowed communication with those who had passed from life along with those still living. Time, as the living know it, had no significance to the near-death survivor.
The permanent disappearance of all signs of life is defined as death. In time, different parts of the body die at different rates. So the debate over when death occurs continues since body parts remain "alive" for minutes, hours, even days, after death. Experts argue that death occurs when the brain dies. If blood flow to the brain is not interrupted for too long, recovery will follow. Thus, time gives continuity and pattern to life, as well as disruptions and death.
The subconscious experiences time in another duration. Our dreams seem to go on forever, taking us places in a matter of seconds. We can travel through space at a thought. Reckoning the duration a dream evolves can baffle people so greatly that they forget the dream upon awakening from sleep. Time is an aspect of consciousness, the means by which we give order to our experiences.
The practical standard for measuring time is the rotation of the earth and very close to the ideal one. This sidereal day gives a noticeable unit of time and is different from the mean solar day used in civil reckoning. We take the earth as the body A and the sphere of stars as the Body B enclosing it; and measured by the apparent motion of fixed stars, we arrive at a sidereal measure of time. Mean time, or mean solar time, is measured by the apparent westward motion of the fictitious sun supposedly moving uniformly at the equator, but is actually due to the uniform eastward turning of the earth on its axis.
Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relatively allows for the possibility that matter in one place or time might reappear in another. According to Einstein, the spacetime continuum is curved by the gravitational force of a great mass. Would this suggest that the bending of spacetime might lead to the creation in it of faults which might connect separate, or even distant, places and times in the universe, either in the present, in the past, or in the future?
Einstein's time theory was proved in July 1977, when extremely accurate atomic clocks were placed aboard a United States satellite and sent into orbit. The clocks were compared to the twin hydrogen masers at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., upon return from space. It was observed that the satellite's clocks had slowed down by a tiny amount. (The hydrogen masers enable an accuracy of within one second per 1,700,000 years.)
The clock is a secondary standard for measuring time. The pendulum clock provides a smaller unit than the day. We tend to regard the clock as a machine to imitate the rotation of the earth. The theory of a clock is complicated, but clocks are not perfect. Too often, we adjust our lives to waking up to a machine's alarm, rather than our own internal clock.
Time travel is a favorite theme of science fiction, but travel into the future or past is not a scientific fact. Some physicists believe in black holes. If gravitational pull is theoretically infinite, then could not time and space be sucked into another dimension? The concept suggests that time travel is a theoretical possibility, but only under extreme circumstances in the depths of space. We have learned the motion of a point in time is represented as a stationary curve in four-dimensional space.
In music, time is a term signifying the number of beats in a measure, or bar, of a composition. The time is indicated at the beginning of the composition by the time signature. We understand a regular pulsation at regular intervals. So, musical time is usually organized in terms of a basic unit of length called a beat.
Rhythm is musical time. The ancients believed rhythm was the controlling principal of the universe. We see symmetrical proportions everywhere--in architecture painting, sculpture, movement of dance, meters of poetry, and nature. Music is an art that exists solely in time. Rhythm shapes all relationships within a composition down to the most minute detail, and meter denotes the fixed time patterns within which musical events take place.
The fifth edition of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, published in 1943, gives twenty-eight definitions of time. The designation "noun" accounts for most of these definitions, but time can be an intransitive verb, although, rarely. As a transitive verb, time is given four definitions. As an adjective, time is allotted three definitions, with the third having two commercial interpretations.
Time in thought affects philosophy, religion, and man's attitude toward change. Time and man deal with communications, rhythm, and behavior--time in language and literature, rhythm in music, historical types of rhythm, and a formal system of time. Time and life encompass rhythm and the earth. Time and matter have in common clocks, man, and the universe. Time simply is a general term for the experience of duration.
Works Consulted
Fraser, J. T. The Voices of Time. New York: George Braziller, 1966.
Goudsmit, Samuel A. Time. New York: Time, 1966.
Gribbin, John. Time-warps. New York: Dell, 1979.
How In The World? "Time and Space." New York/Montreal: The Reader's Digest Association, 1990.
Machlis, Joseph, and Kristine Forney. The Enjoyment of Music. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991.
McWhirter, Norris, and Ross McWhirter. Guinness Book of World Records. New York: Sterling, 1975.
Quest For The Unknown. "Bizarre Phenomena." "Charting The Future," "Life Beyond Death." New York/Montreal: The Reader's Digest Association, 1992.
"Time." The Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. 22. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1936.
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1943.