Victoria's posting misses a primary consideration regarding life (us
and all other) and time,
which we rarely consider. We are all resonant beings, from micro to
macro scale.
We are entrained and tuned at the atomic, molecular, cellular and
greater, to
the many radiative wavelengths and energetic forces that surround and
involve us.
Our hearts beat at near-regular frequency; our brainwaves are tuned to
very low,
dominant, Earth resonance frequencies. We are a living timepiece,
continually
in and out of sync, and in adjustment with our complex harmonically
resonant ecosystem.
At the scale of life on this planet, we have learned through our senses
and our tools,
to perceive and communicate time; by the sun, by the moon, by our
walking pace,
by our breathing, by evermore complex and detailed universal tuning.
Life is just in time.
RL
On Fri, 3 Dec 2010 21:42:31 -0700, Victoria Hughes
<victo...@toryhughes.com> wrote:
In pulling together a very short talk for the Notions of Time event
tomorrow, I came across this section of text, from the introduction to a
paper The experience of time: neural mechanisms and the interplay of
emotion, cognition and embodiment [1] [2]by Marc Wittmann, PhD
Psychology, UC San Diego. I've removed the citations for clarity.
Thought some of the more philosophical among you might find it
interesting, or at least worth a shot of good whiskey...
Throughout history, philosophers have been intrigued by the
nature
of time and how we, as humans, experience its progression. The
perception of time is part of human experience; it is essential for
everyday behaviour and for the survival of the individual organism. Yet,
and surprisingly enough, its neural basis is still unknown. Temporal
intervals, lasting only seconds or spanning a lifetime, are judged
according to their perceived duration—often regarded as painfully long
or, the reverse, as lasting too short. Everyday decisions we make, as
simple as either waiting for the elevator or taking the stairs, are
based on the experienced passage of time and anticipated duration. The
importance of our temporal experiences for daily living is strikingly
documented in individual neurological cases where patients report of an
accelerated progression of time and, consequently, have troubles in
adequately interacting with the environment, i.e. driving a car.
Although we doubtless have a time sense, our bodies are not equipped
with a sensory organ for the passage of time in the same way that we
have eyes and ears—and the respective sensory cortices—for detecting
light and sound. Time, ultimately, is not a material object of the world
for which we could have a unique receptor system. Nevertheless, we speak
of the perception of time. When we talk about time (‘an event lasted
long’, ‘time flew by’), we use linguistic structures that refer to
motion events and to locations and measures in space; a further
indication that time itself is not a property in the empirical world.
Despite a growing body of knowledge on the psychology and on the neural
basis of the experience of time, the riddle for philosophers and
scientists alike is still unsolved: how does the mind (or, for that
matter, the brain) create time? Martin Heidegger's paraphrase of St
Augustine's famous quotation ‘In you, my spirit, I measure times; I
measure myself, as I measure time’ reflects a theoretical
approach—founded in western philosophical tradition—which states that
time is a construction of the self. Perceived time, thereafter,
represents the mental status of the beholder. In terms of a functional
equation, one could state that time T is a function F of the self, where
the self stands for all possible psychological (i.e. empirical and
theoretical) properties of an individual who perceives time. Links:
------ [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2685824/ [2]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2685824/
--
Richard Lowenberg
1st-Mile Institute
Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504
505-989-9110 / 505-603-5200
www.1st-mile.com
r...@1st-mile.com
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