Click above to make time

Time lines from Will Durant
The Life of Greece

Consider intervals of time. Biological time, the duration measured by heartbeats, ranges from 60 to 120 beats per minute. 80 beats per minute in music is a moderate pace. 70 beats is leisurely, 90 beats is fast. Stepping right and left at each beat on a march, you cover 4 miles an hour. Pitch marks the smallest intervals directly notable. At 20 cycles per second sound is low. At 20,000 cycles per second sound is high.

Generational time, biblical for example, is 70 years. But time goes quickly when young (for a six-month-old child one week is four percent of a lifetime. For a fifty-year-old one week one-hundredth of that time. Time flies. Biblically-based accounts (allowing for early longevity by Methusala among others) closely agree on the age of the earth: some 6,000 years. The account of Bishop Usher, that creation took place in 4,004 bc may not appear current, but the principle that time measurements follow human interests is common.

Historical Time in traditional Western societies appears as the duration for a tree of ancestors to pass on old wisdom. Traditional societies may follow the assumption of Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun.” Perhaps current generations are less impressive than those of the ancestors, but traditional societies assume all members face similar circumstances, challenges and opportunities. Historical time for such societies is repetitive or cyclical. Modern societies see time as evolving: as circumstance including climate change, so too do human attitudes and actions change. A belief in progress is consistent with such assumptions, as is a belief in adaptation as a necessary component of evolution, whether such adaptation is an improvement or is just necessary for survival.

In Eastern societies, India for example, time is not considered by human standards, and intervals consistent with modern science appeared millennia ago.

Geological time, measured in Eastern societies such as India in the millions of years. The erosion of canyons, suggested to Charles Lyell, a new scale, measured in millions of years. Consider the Colorado River, passing through sandstone, carving out the Grand Canyon. Fossil records also suggest times past in the hundreds of million years. The build-up of sea-shell beds into limestone, with the subsequent thrusting up of sea-beds into mountain range, requires a new sense of time. Following Darwin’s assumptions of time gleaned from the study of fossils, Lord Kelvin was surprised that estimates of time past based on the cooling of a molten earth were not nearly so large, but the subsequent discovery of nuclear fusion in the great pressures of the earth’s inner core re-established a time frame in accordance with Darwin’s estimates. Modern estimates based on radioactive decay point to times billions of years long.

Astrological time, the time light takes to travel, offers a window into stranger orders of magnitude for considering time: time. The notable north star you see is the star which shone years earlier. Observing the heavens, you literally look backwards.

Quantum time, time available for sub-atomic particles to act, is as implausibly short as geological time is implausibly long.

Have a good time.