What exactly is time anyway? Why is a day only 24 hours? Why not 25? What is an hour? Who came up with that anyway?
It seems entirely arbitrary what time is and who decided these measurements for it. And why is it that when someone's really excited for something to happen, it takes forever (like falling asleep on Christmas Eve when you're a kid) but when something you're really dreading starts coming up, time can't move quickly enough? It's bizarre.
When time zones were invented, did they know when they started that they'd need an International Date Line? Or was that just something they realized along the way?
Time is a funny thing. Sometimes it drags on and on...and then sometimes it just goes too quickly. I think I'll think about this a little bit more.
1 comment:
Yes, the international dateline is coeval with time zones; something of this conception is dealt with in the fascinating book "Longitude" by Dava Sobel.
Time, as I understand it, is merely a measurement of change. That can be quite variously determined. A fine treatment of the business of time as a concept is in the very accessible "The View from the Oak" by Judith and Herbert Kohl. James Gurney's "Dinotopia" presents similar ideas, obviously with a fictional twist. LeGuin's NON-Catwings "Always Coming Home" also explores the concept of time, as you may recall.
Since different beings and different cultures perceive change differently, they necessarily have different experiences of time.
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