Mike Rossmassler

Perhaps I should preface this with a small explanation of my current thesis topic. Like any good poker player, i want to keep my hand close to my chest, but i'll give you my elevator pitch: As the industrial revolution hits its stride, the populace finds that their subjective experiences with time radically alter their lives. Time functions like heat, or like gravity, with quantifiable rules dependent on situation and environment.

My first attempts to understand time, both as a concept, and as a measurement involved scientific research. Einstein's theory of relativity states that time moves slower (along with some other extremely interesting phenomena) at higher speeds. This has been proven by a number of experiments, and gets even more interesting (and more extreme) as the speeds approach the speed of light.

I came across a philosophical explanation of the present that can roughly function as a definition. Of course, modern science throws some curveballs, but i'm going to be addressing those later. The analogy is this: What we see(perceive), we see as the present. And since our eyes see motion, which must occur over an interval, we must see the present as occurring over an interval. That interval is time. There are a dozen ways that this analogy can be picked apart, with evidence from the actual 'quirks' of the light wave-particle duality, to the way that televisions and computer monitors present a moving image as a static one.

Next, i looked at a philosophic model of time. The first question that i came across was: How do we as humans interpret time, based upon the input modes of our five senses. Of course, thought and mental processes are not typically lumped in with the senses, so the question that is being is asked is, how does our brain receive information that indicates that time is passing, exterior to ourselves? The general consensus seems to be that our senses do not perceive the passage of time directly, but instead rely on the change of time, or more specifically, the change of events that occurs in time. Furthermore, the brain does take an active role in the synchronizing of events that should be linked (the sight of moving of lips and the sound of a person talking), so in a sense, our brain does pre-processing of information that helps to order events in time.

The next logical question that arises involves the simultenaity of events: can the brain perceive two separate events without actually perceiving the events themselves. If yes, then the brain has a knowledge of the events, and if not, then the events are currently occurring in the present. Therefore, the events must be occurring at the same time, which would cause them not to be successive at all.

Augustine writes on a related topic, that since duration is a property that cannot be applied to things that occurred in the past (since things that happened in the past no longer exist, and things that do not exist cannot have properties), and that it is impossible to measure the entire duration of events that are ongoing, time must be an element of the mind. There are some flaws in this logic that can be exposed through theoretical science and math (like what would occur if every particle in the universe reversed its velocity vector; resulting in a reversal of time), but i believe that Augustine's point is this: the brain goes a long way in construction our interpretation of and interaction with time.

Following this, i began exploring other scientific studies of the perception of time. One of the first areas i looked at was prompted by Augustine's impression of the brain as a time-interpretation device. One interesting phenomenon is that of the Circadian Rhythm, an organism's natural cycle of biological processes. In humans there are clear patterns of core body temperature, brain wave activity, melatonin secretion, hormone production, and regeneration of cells. These cycles are echoed by a vast number of organisms. For organisms that are routinely exposed to sunlight, the cycle roughly corresponds to the length of the day/night cycle. For organisms that are never exposed to sunlight, they length of the cycle can vary. Interestingly, there are some parts of the human body that seem to operate independently of the circadian rhythm, the liver being a notable example.

A number of interesting experiments have been performed around the perception of time. One of the first i came across involves the perception of timeframes. When recalling the duration of a number of events, individuals tended to estimate the duration of time based on the number events. So, estimates would place an increased number of events as taking a longer time to occur. Another experiment came up with a related conclusion based upon difficulty. Individuals tended to underestimate the time duration as the difficulty of a task increased. So, when asked to estimate the time duration for a difficult event, responders typically estimated less time that the event actually took. Another experiment indicated that adrenaline has significant impacts on the brain's perception of events in time. In other words, when under the influence of adrenaline subjects tend to notice the passage of time with better clarity. The common story is that of the perception that time slows down in the experience of a car crash or other traumatic event.

The actualities of time are rather controversial. The current model of space-time is beautifully complicated, mathematically, adding time as a fourth dimesion to the traditional length, width, height model. However (as i have said earlier), time functions independent of its position in space. To complicate matters, the function of space has to be refined at subatomic levels, as outlined by the current String Theory model. This only requires addition spatial coordinate axes or dimensions. However, the most complicated problems arise as the extremes of the spatial level. At the upper boundaries, questions of measuring the universe in quantifiable terms of mass and size are difficult, and even worse, at the extreme lower boundary, with lengths referred to as Planck Lengths (roughly 10^(-20) the diameter of a proton) the uncertainty principle makes any information extremely difficult to obtain. Worst of all, the scale of the time axis can make things difficult as well. The unit known as Planck Time (interrelated to the Planck length, the former being the time it would take a photon to transverse a Planck Length in a gravity-free vacuum), is so miniscule (on the order of 10^(-44) seconds) that the known models of physics may break down at its scale.

There is much more to be written on this, particularly the nature of cause and effect, David Eagleman's experiments on time, more particular cognitive models of time, and a number of scientific (or science fiction) models of time ...