Readings: Responsive reading #549: "Hymn to Matter" by Teilhard de Chardin

From Carl Sagan's introduction to A Brief History of Time by Stephen W. Hawking:

We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend. Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know. There are even children, and I have met some of them, who want to know what a black hole looks like; what is the smallest piece of matter; why we remember the past and not the future; how it is, if there was chaos early, that there is, apparently, order today; and why there is a universe.

In our society it is still customary for parents and teachers to answer most of these questions with a shrug, or with an appeal to vaguely recalled religious precepts. Some are uncomfortable with issues like these, because they so vividly expose the limitations of human understanding.

But much of philosophy and science has been driven by such inquiries. An increasing number of adults are willing to ask questions of this sort, and occasionally they get some astonishing answers. Equidistant from the atoms and the stars, we are expanding our exploration horizons to embrace both the very small and the very large.

From On Time: An Investigation into Scientific Knowledge and Human Experience by Michael Shallis:

The riddle of time and its many manifestations in thought and experience seems somehow to tease us, embedded as we are in our own particular place in time itself. We are so imbued with the quality of our age that time's many facets seem almost too unbelievable to our rigid minds. Yet time is magical. Its interpenetration of the fabric of the universe, its eternal presence in now, its paradoxical nature is nothing less than magic. Not the magic of conjurer, performing tricks, but magic in the sense of the wisdom of the spirit. Its nature is occult, hidden from us by its own disguises, its physical display. It eludes the scientist, confounds the philosopher and, like Puck himself, is found here, then there, never where we are looking but never far away.

The second understanding of time developed later, especially with the invention of ever more sophisticated and accurate timekeepers like the pendulum clock. In this understanding, time is seen as flowing inexorably from past to future. This is linear time. In this view, time can be pictured as an arrow. By quantifying and mechanizing time, time began to be separated from nature.

In the centuries after the invention of the clock in the Middle Ages, linear time gradually became the dominant Western understanding of time. Then, in our century, came Einstein's theory of relativity, quantum mechanics and the atomic clock. Our understanding of time has been turned upside down, in many senses divorced from both the cyclical and linear understandings.

The way in which we keep time illustrates these transformations from cyclical to linear to the contemporary understandings of time. In the ancient world, time was kept by using a sundial to observe the changing shadow cast by the sun. Regardless of whether the ancients understood the physics, time was measured with reference to the earth's daily rotation.

During the Middle Ages, monks found they needed to keep more precise track of time in order to maintain their daily schedule of spiritual discipline. From this need came the much more accurate gravitational timepiece. Today gravitational timepieces include hourglasses, pendulum clocks, and spring driven, battery-powered and electric timepieces, which simulate gravitational timepieces. Like the sundial, gravitational timepieces keep time by reference to the observable mechanics of the solar system. Our standard of time--the second--is based on a fraction of the time it takes the earth to make one revolution around the sun.

In this century, we have developed the atomic clock. The atomic clock is a complete departure from the sundial and gravitational timepieces. It is not based on the mechanics of the solar system but is instead based on the electromagnetic properties of matter. The second is now a measure of atomic oscillation rather than a fraction of a revolution of the earth around the sun.

This revolution in timekeeping is a metaphor for the loss of our cyclic and even linear senses of time. Instead of relying on the mechanics of the solar system--which are easily perceptible--we now rely for our most accurate timekeeping on basically imperceptible atomic oscillations. The problem is that we still live in the solar system. Our bodies still note the rising and setting of the sun each day and the movement of time through the seasons. But we are increasingly removed from this level of reality.

We in the West have long had trouble with time. Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam had no inkling of the long age of the universe. Cosmologies from these religions were based on the notion that the universe started at a finite point in the recent past. St. Augustine set the beginning of the universe at 5000 bce. For centuries, this figure was embraced by most Westerners. (And some continue to believe it.) Additionally, the early Christians also believed that the end of time as we know it was close at hand.

This view of time contrasts sharply with other religious perspectives on the age of the universe. In the Hindu tradition, for example, one day in the life of Brahma lasts 4,300,000,000 years. And Brahma lives for the equivalent of 311,040,000,000,000 human years. The historian of religions Huston Smith reports one way of conceiving of the Hindu time-frame:
 

The Himalayas, it is said, are made of solid granite. Once every thousand years a bird flies over them with a silk scarf in its beak, brushing their peaks with its scarf. When by this process the Himalayas have been worn away, one day of the cosmic cycle will have elapsed. [Huston Smith, World Religions]

In addition to radically changing the Western understanding of the age of the universe, modern physics has transformed other aspects of our understanding of time. I shall highlight just two. First of all, thanks to the work of Albert Einstein in particular, we now understand that time is not absolute but instead is relative. Predecessors of Einstein--Aristotle and Newton, for example--believed in the existence of absolute time. In the words of Stephen Hawking, "That is, they believed that one could unambiguously measure the interval of time between two events, and that this time would be the same whoever measured it, provided they used a good clock. Time was completely separate from space." [Hawking, p. 18] The gist of the theory of relativity is that because location, speed and gravity effect time, there can be no one, true standard of time. The speed at which time passes depends on where one is and how fast one is moving.

The second transformation of our understanding of time also comes primarily from Einstein. With Einstein's breakthrough theories, we now see (at least theoretically) that time has important spatial characteristics. With this understanding, time has become the fourth dimension. Physicists now talk about "space-time," which is a way of locating events not only in space but also in time. (I should add that this understanding of the inter-relatedness of space and time is one of the reasons I decided to focus this sermon series not just on time, but also on place. At least scientifically, time and place go together.)

Michael Shallis, an astrophysicist at Oxford and the author of On Time: An Investigation into Scientific Knowledge and Human Experience, suggests that a people's understanding of time and the cosmos (their cosmology) as well as the way in which they measure time tell a great deal about that people. What might these modern understandings of time and the way we measure time (especially with the atomic clock) tell us about ourselves? Shallis proposes an intriguing answer to this question: our cosmology is one
 

which tells us little, if anything, about the nature of time, except perhaps that time is a lot stranger than we might think. I do think it tells us a great deal about ourselves, although it is not normally regarded in that light. It tells us of our obsession with technique (we will solve the puzzles that remain if we develop better instruments), about our abstractedness from 'normal' human experience, about our inconstancy, our insatiable need for and acceptance of perpetual change, our lack of a base, if you like.

Our cosmology also tells us about the way we perceive our relationship with the cosmos and with nature. That relationship, our cosmology tells us, has ceased to be grounded in the organic and cyclic world of nature in which we live our daily lives and in which time is more explicitly, more immediately present. [Michael Shallis, "Time and Cosmology" in The Nature of Time, edited by Raymond Flood and Michael Lockwood, p. 78]

I want to focus now on the four foundations of my understanding of time. The first foundation of my understanding flows from the insights of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics: time is relative and unpredictable. This is apparent even in our everyday lives: our experiences of time vary sharply depending on the specific events which happen within a period of time. For example, a couple hours waiting while my wife was near the end of labor or while my daughter was in surgery is very experienced very differently from a few hours at a baseball game in Wrigley Field. In the course of our everyday life, we experience time as relative.

A the same time, though, many of our experiences of time remain cyclical and linear. This is the second foundation of my understanding of time. Regardless of our increasingly mathematical and abstract understanding of time, I am convinced that our bodies are still affected by the perceived movements of the sun and moon, by the cycles of the seasons, and by the rhythm of aging. I believe, too, that there are seasons of our lives: infancy, early childhood, adolescence, young adult, middle-aged, old-aged and end of life, to name a few. I am now in a particular season of my life: child-rearing. The focus of this season has implications for everything I do. This understanding helps me realize that I will not always be changing diapers and meeting the emotional needs of an eighteen-month-old and a four-year-old or sharing in the joy of language and cognitive development and receiving a baby's first kiss. This perspective tells me to appreciate the season's unique joys and to realize its unique curses will not last forever.

The third foundation of my understanding of time is that time does stretch over an enormity. I find the understandings of modern science--as well as of Hinduism--to be very helpful in this regard. We are part of a universe that has existed for billions of years and will likely continue to exist for billions more. The long view that this understanding should give us has not yet fully emerged--it's hard to unlearn centuries of believing that the universe is only several thousand years old. Though most of us cognitively no longer believe the universe is 7000 years old, that view continues to inform many of our beliefs about time. For example, our politicians today generally seemed as focused on the current moment as ever. Contrast this with the leaders of the Iroquois nation, whose long view of time charges them with contemplating how their decisions will effect the next seven generations of their descendants.

At the same time as I recognize and celebrate the enormity of time, I also believe that time--at least as we know it--ultimately is finite. We are aware now that our sun will not last forever. Eventually it will burn out. Most likely our planet will face other life-threatening dangers long before our sun burns out. The catastrophic events on Jupiter last summer made this point abundantly clear. Humanity has existed for a terribly small fraction of the life of the universe. This is not likely to change.

The fourth foundation of my understanding of time relates to my view of the afterlife. Our views of the afterlife play a pivotal role in our understandings of time: our view of the afterlife indicates the time-scale of our existence. For example, a Hindu who believes that he or she is in the middle of a 311 trillion year process will have a very different understanding than a person who believes that the seventy or eighty years of this life (if we're lucky) is all we get.

I do not personally believe in physical or spiritual life after death--other than the life that lives on in those whose lives we touched. I believe that upon death, my body--now devoid of spirit--will return to the earth (and the universe) from which I came. I am made of the same stuff as the stars and the planets. To them I shall return.

What are the implications of this view on my understanding of time? First, this view calls me to treat my time here with reverence. I don't expect to be back, so this time is very precious. The only experiences of eternity I am going to get (I think) are the glimpses I get here and now. This calls me to be attentive as possible to life so that I don't miss these glimpses.

At the same time, my understanding of the enormity of time tells me that I don't really need to be in a driving rush to achieve things. In the face of meteors eventually destroying life on earth or the sun burning out or the universe collapsing in the Big Crunch, what difference does it make whether I achieve everything I could achieve? Sure, my living has some effect on the interdependent web of the universe, but let's not exaggerate this effect! The long view of time gives me some perspective.

The last foundation of my understanding of time is that time is neither money nor a commodity. I believe that understanding time as either money or a commodity is terribly destructive. Rather, I would say that time is a gift from the universe. This understanding of time leads me not to the question of how we should "manage" time, but how we should live our lives in time. And that, my friends, is the question for next week.

Campbell, Joseph and Moyers, Bill, The Power of Myth (New York: Doubleday, 1988).

Flood, Raymond and Lockwood, Michael, editors, The Nature of Time (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1986.

Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1988).

Keyes, Ralph, Timelock (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).

Sanders, Scott Russell, Staying Put (Boston: Beacon, 1993).

Shallis, Michael, On Time: An Investigation into Scientific Knowledge and Human Experience (New York: Schocken Books, 1983).

Smith, Huston, The World's Religions (San Francisco: Harper, 1991).

Utne Reader, January/February 1994 issue on "Too Busy?"