Time: The Soul of the World
You can”t feel it, touch it, taste it or smell it. Yet it is measurable and your life depends on it. Time has mystified humankind ever since it began. But did it “begin?” If so, there must be an end. .. or not. Discover the logic and mystery of time and why every single living thing has a stake in its existence.
Pythagoras defined time as, “The Soul of the World.” We think of it as a clock – yesterday, today or tomorrow. What has happened, what is happening, or what will happen:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time; Macbeth
Time
Tiempo
Heure
Время
Heure
زمان
Време
עִדָן
Tidpunkt
Tempo
Wakati
Jam
Tempus
Idõtöltés
Maal
Aika
Tid
Every human understands time, yet it waits for no man and is as inevitable as the tide. We represent it with clocks and hourglasses and try to fight its inevitability. We look back at it and forward to it, but forget it and challenge it.
H.G. Wells’ “The Time Traveller,” comes to mind. Regardless of language or culture, man has ALWAYS been interested in understanding time – going back into it and forward, ahead of it. Would that we could send a representative back in a time and then forward to the present , using a machine, to report to us the way the way things REALLY were. Others indulge their fantasies by thinking of themselves as Mr. Morley, created by Jack Finney in “Time and Again.” Moreley was able to teleport himself into the past, and then return with the real story of how things were.
There is one problem here: Should, anything disturb the way things were in the past, neither the present nor the future would be as it is now or as we imagine it would be. Say, for example, you were Wells’ “Time Traveller.” And say, for example, you met Abe Lincoln as a baby. And say, for example, you transmitted a fatal disease to baby Abe.. There would not have been that president presiding over the Civil War.
Finney’s Mr. Morely, accidentally observed the first chance encounter of his mother and father. Had he disrupted that relationship, would he ever have been able to return to the present? Time is a wonderful thing, and it stinks when it’s not on your side. But what is time?
According to the Oxford Dictionary, time is “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future, regarded as a whole.”
Liked it
