The Time Percept

Time, what is time, and why is it important? Well time is a concept that humans’ brains can perceive, in fact their brains basically construct the past, the present, and the future. Basically, time is a measurement system, and without it the human race wouldn’t have ever existed. Humans have a very simple understanding of time, and they still do not understand its full potential. Humans only understand the measurement of time, and the manipulation and capturing of time overwhelms them. To this day the only way humans have captured time is their memory, and even then they still get it wrong sometimes.

Although many may not believe it until it happens to them, time can pass by so swiftly that one won’t even register it at first. Yes, time passing is a part of life, but the realization of it is another story within itself. “Forgetfulness,” a poem by Billy Collins, and an excerpt from “Once More to the Lake” by E.B. White both provide a clear example of how fast time can go by. In Collin’s piece, he puts together many various ideas one can forget as their life moves incredibly fast. Likewise, in White’s “Once More to the Lake,” the narrator struggles to understand how quickly time really passed and how his son is so similaralike to him. Both of these pieces of writing use X syntax and X diction to develop the common theme of annihilated time.

time,” is a statement which this book The Daughter of Time demonstrated very well. It showed how

I was reading something about the time dimension, and it's so complicated to understand, that when I more think in it, more questions I make to myself. It's a concept so abstract! You're right, the time hasn't mass, and it's not compound of atoms nor particles, 'cause the time is basically motion, but if the time is movement, don't it depend from the object that it moves? I mean, if the different objects move to different rhythms from one another, wouldn't exist so many "times" as objects

In the novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan explores the idea that the passage of time is inevitable, and that there is no preventing it. Each character in the novel finds themselves struggling with the passage of time. Each character longs for youth and holds on to that youth through memories. For some of the characters time has broken them, but for others, it has allowed them a new outlook on life. Throughout the novel, each character ages, changes, and eventually is forced to accept the life that they have now.

J.M.E McTaggart’s ‘The Unreality of Time’ is respected today as his foremost and best known work within Academia. It is appropriate that this work shares the title of one of his most enduring Philosophical projects, establishing that Time is unreal or does not exist. In regards to the question ‘Did He Succeed?’ while being a perfectly typical critical Philosophical essay topic, it would be beyond the scope of this essay to definitively say Yes or No. The standards of Western Philosophy just seem to be that for any of those enduring questions that have been the topic of study for in some cases nearly three thousand years in the discipline to be said to be definitively answered, the standard and breadth of evidence would be so great that no one would be asking if a Philosopher really did succeed in his project nearly a century after his death. So in this essay I will discuss how McTaggart attempted to establish the unreality of time, but in the context of not trying to argue he actually established it beyond doubt. McTaggart sought to establish the unreality of time by means of demonstrating how flawed conventional conceptions within Philosophy of Time were. So I will also seek to demonstrate he did at least establish that current conceptions of time were flawed and throw serious doubt upon then.

Time Time is defined as a measured or measurable period, a continuum that lacks spatial dimensions. This broad definition lacks the simple explanation that humans are searching for. There are many scientists, philosophers, and thinkers who have tried to put time into understanding terms. The aspects of time that we can understand are only based on what we can perceive, observe, and calculate. Every day we look at our watches or clocks.

It could argued that our common-sense notion of endurance through time is incorrect. That this mistaken self-conception lead us to experience the passage of time. If so, this would be illusory no? And if this enduring ‘me’ is an illusion then so is the passage of time.

What is time travel? Inevitably, it involves a discrepancy between time and time. Any traveler departs and then arrives at his destination; the time elapsed from departure to arrival (positive, or perhaps zero) is the duration of the journey. But if he is a time traveler, the separation in time between departure and arrival does not equal the duration of his journey. He departs; he travels for an hour, let us say; then he arrives. The time he reaches is not the time one hour after his departure. It is later, if he has traveled toward the future; earlier, if he has traveled toward the past. If he has traveled far toward the past, it is earlier even than his departure (p. 145).

In this paper I will be discussing the concept of the paradox, examples from Zeno and McTaggart, and how modern science has potential solved the paradox put forth by McTaggart. Both of these paradoxes have a enormous repercussion on how objective fact about the world can be understood. I claim that McTaggart’s theory of time can be solved by modern physics as Einstein’s theory of relativity makes time a relative factor in how time is understood.

Therefore, Eddington claims that the directionality of time is inherently within the human awareness. Human beings are essentially rational creatures who have an inborn need to make sense of the ever-increasing disorder in the world around them. We use the constant forward linear march of time to establish order in a disordered universe in which entropy continually increases.

A clock has a life span like a human; eventually they both break down and their time stops. Born with expiration dates the human mind eventually will run out of time. William Faulkner presents the concept of time and its effect on the human condition in his short story “A Rose for Emily”. His main character Emily is left alone when the only man, her father, who controlled her world dies. Unable to accept the fact of his death Emily undergoes a state of depression, which shields herself from society and makes her unable to face reality. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” reveals the terrible consequences when humans attempt to make time stand still.

     According to traditional concepts, time is considered to be a two-dimensional phenomenon, with a long past, a present, and virtually no future. The linear concept of time is western thought, with an indefinite past, present, and future, is practically nonexistent to African thinking. The future is absent because the events that lie in it have not taken place, they have not been realized, and therefore, they cannot constitute time.

Previous research by Malotki (1983) indicated that this finding was never approved as reliable data. This dilemma will be analyzed later on in reference to a contemporary study consisting of English and Mandarin native speakers and their ensuing concepts of time.

It is paradoxical to have a course, which revolves round the corrosiveness of faulted Western notions of time and its depiction through abstraction, identify itself with an abstract title but argue for the concreteness and tangibility of the portrayal of time and space. A Place Beyond Time does just that. Containing a vastly abstract title, A Place Beyond Time may at first glance appear to properly relate time as a tangent notion with space. Upon further contemplation, however, it becomes patent that A Place Beyond Time possesses a conspicuous absence present in its philosophy of aloofness from intangibility. And although the name of the course attempts to tackle and manifest the complications of abstract and concrete time, it is through its lack of definition and precision, lack of possession, and lack of sensation of repetition that A Place Beyond Time fails to properly capitalize on this dilemma.