Quid est ergo tempus?

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 10:24:12
Sergio asked this question:

Dear Philosopher,

My name is Sergio, I'm from Italy and I like spending time reading your page. During my studies I've got stuck in a real big problem:

QUID EST ERGO TEMPUS? WHAT IS TIME?

It might look simple to answer but it isn't for me, that's why I need your help.

In Italian (and maybe in English too) we talk about time as if we are the owner of it (sorry I don't have time for you, I don't want waste my time, etc.).

Sometimes we talk about time like if it's negative for us (the time was bad with that girl, she is 30 but she looks like she was 40).

Or like the time is something far away from us, for example when we have a problem and we can't find a solution (the time will bring the answers).

Or we talk about the relation between time and space.

Those things mean the we use time, it's ours, but doesn't really say QUID EST ERGO TEMPUS?

Can you help me to find a solution?

Regards,

Sergio

P.S. I'm not really looking for Husserl or Kant or St Augustine or what the other people say about time, I'd like to know what you think about time.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, Sergio, but I really don't know the answer to your question, 'What is time?' Like St Augustine, I seem to know what time is, so long as nobody asks me, but when someone asks, then I don't know.

I think this 'not knowing' points to something very deep. It isn't just a matter of some knowledge which I don't have yet, or which I would like to have. I'm not even sure if it's correct to say that time is unknowable, something outside or beyond human knowledge or understanding. Time, if anything, is too close to be out there, too close, even, for knowledge. However you try to get a handle on the nature of time, you find that you are talking about something else, related to time (for example, space).

I term which I have heard in this context is 'promiscuous'. Time is a promiscuous concept because it is mixed up with so many things. You can't explain time in terms of movement, because movement presupposes time. You can't define time as something that exists, because to exist is to exist in time. And so on. However philosophers try to explain time or theorize about it, they end up chasing their own tails.

What I will do is outline a theory of time which is not my theory of time, but simply my construction on what you have said. In other words, what I am offering is your theory of time, according to what you have told me. What you've said, in recalling familiar ways in which we talk about time, is very revealing.

For want of a better term, I will call this theory the 'agent theory of time'. By that I don't mean the obvious point that action or agency presuppose time, that doing or acting would be inconceivable in a world without time, whatever that would mean. (I'm also aware that in traditional theology, God is conceived to exist outside of time, rendering the question of how God acts on the world problematic. But more of that in a minute.)

What I mean is, rather, that according to this theory, your theory, time is an agent. Time does things, or has the power to do things:

• To have time, to own it, is like having money. Just as I can use the money in my pocket to buy things, so I can use the time I have available, this is a power which I have, which can be taken away from me. My time can be wasted or stolen. Time is money. You can use money to buy time, or use up time to gain money by earning interest on your capital.

• Time does things to people; to the unfortunate 30-year old woman, time has been unkind, her features show the ravages of time, the cares and worries that time has wrought. In colloquial English, we have the expression (now somewhat stilted and old-fashioned) 'How goes the enemy?', meaning, 'What is the time?' Time is the enemy that all of us have to contend with at some time or other.

• And sometimes, too, time is our friend and ally; a solution will come to the problem I am worrying about if only I wait long enough. Time is secretive. You can guess but you can never know for sure what time will bring, or even whether what it brings is something that we want or something that we don't want.

The agent theory of time is a mythological view of time, which like all myths seeks to render comprehensible something of great importance to us that we cannot control or understand, by a process of personification.

On a hunch, I looked up 'God of time' and found this article in Wikipedia:

In Greek mythology, Chronos (Ancient Greek: Χρόνος) in pre-Socratic philosophical works is said to be the personification of time. His name in Modern Greek also means 'year' and is alternatively spelled Chronus (Latin spelling) or Khronos. Chronos was imagined as an incorporeal god. Serpentine in form, with three heads — that of a man, a bull, and a lion. He and his consort, serpentine Ananke (Inevitability), circled the primal world-egg in their coils and split it apart to form the ordered universe of earth, sea and sky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronos

So much for mythology. Is there any truth in this idea, or is it just another pre-rational belief which human beings have cast aside on the road through philosophy to science? Could there be a God of time?

I may not know what time is, but can I venture a view about what time is not?

I don't know.

There could be a God of time. Why not? Forget the Biblical story of Creation, of how the world was made in six days, 'and on the seventh the Lord rested'. If we take this story literally it would mean that the God of the Bible did not create literally everything. He is subject to time, just like every finite being.

My story would begin with a different God, a God truly outside of time who creates a world also outside of time, a world which reflects His eternal glory like the sun shining through a stained glass cathedral window. (This image is from Richard Wollheim's book F.H. Bradley talking about McTaggart's vision of the 'unreality' of time. In McTaggart's theory of eternally loving spirits, we are the figures in the stained glass.)

Eternal glory is a fine thing. But it gets boring (after a while, ahem). Then came along Chronos, the God of time who finally made things... interesting.

I don't believe this. But I can see the point of it. I can imagine it. I don't care what physics says about time. Physics isn't the last word, whatever the Stephen Hawkinses of this world might think. If you believe that there could have been a world outside of time, if that notion is not logically self-contradictory, then two things follow:

First, McTaggart is wrong. His view of time, the metaphysical claim that time is ultimately unreal, is false. But it is contingently true of a world that might have existed, instead of this world. There could have been a world outside of time, but, in fact, there isn't. The world, as we all know despite McTaggart's arguments, is a world in time.

Secondly, if you try to imagine who might be listening when you say your prayers, you can only imagine the God of time. A God outside of time can do nothing for you. You might as well pray to the number 42. As it happens, I am an atheist. But if I wasn't an atheist, then the God I would worship is the God of time.