VIBE TIMING

We take a break from objects that measure time to investigate what exactly is being counted.

- WORDS JOSH SIMS

What is now?

Pondering that question, many may be tempted to look at their watch and give the time. But the idea of now is a construct: a point on a socially-agreed system by which we measure the rotation of the Earth and organise our lives. Now is much more slippery, and not just because so few of us manage to pay it the attention it deserves. For example, clap your hands right ‘now.’ Were the visual, audio and tactile senses you experienced as you did so ‘now?’ Also, if you feel like you are experiencing déjà vu reading these words, this story does share a common origin point with something else we published in the Spring issue (#83) but it is a totally different subject - what is now is a bit different to when is now...

To get back to the “what” of it, ‘now’ may feel like now, but actually, while your consciousness registered those sensory inputs as being simultaneous, they all arrived in your brain at different times, thanks to the speed of light and the fact that we process auditory information faster than visual information. It was your consciousness that stitched them all together to make them feel like one event, like one ‘now.’

Mankind has pondered our relationship with time for millennia. Back in 160 CE, the Roman emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius was describing time as a river of passing events, a metaphor that has weathered well. More recently some physicists have argued that time does not even exist — it is an illusion, sort of. All the same, we feel it. And the understanding of how we perceive time psychologically, subjectively - as opposed to merely measuring it chronologically, in discrete constructs like seconds, minutes and hours - has made serious advances, albeit with competing hypotheses and with much to yet work out.

Chronobiology