TIME AND TIME AGAIN

 TIME AND TIME AGAIN

 

The newly installed Webb telescope can ‘see’ some 8.5 billion years ‘back’ into space, i.e., the light captured by the telescope took so some 8.5 billion years to get here. It follows that we have absolutely no idea as to what is happening there right now, i.e. we have to wait another 8.5 billion years to find out. Chances are that right now these sources of light don’t exist anymore.

Since the ‘speed’ of light seems to be scientific fact, we can more easily visualize – and therefore comprehend – the much closer scenario whereby the sunlight takes about eight minutes to get to your eye here on earth. It is therefore equally logical that we have no idea what is happening on the sun right now. Since everything we ‘see’ here on earth, like the fly on the wall or the tree in the garden, is a reflection of light, we are always a few microseconds behind the time we think of being ‘now’, expressed as the present tense in English. One could argue that the ‘minute’ light hits me, I am in the present but for you who sees me I am already in the past. This may not be entirely the case for my conscious self, as the complex mediation of my mind emanating from my brain is based on biological processes that are a fraction slower than the speed of light, I.e. my perception of myself is technically also one of the past. When I hit my thumb with the hammer the sensation of pain took some time to be mediated via my nerve cells to reach my brain, which in practical terms is of no real consequence unless – now imagine this – my thumb is a light year away from my brain: I will see the hammer hitting my thumb quite some time before I feel the pain. Furthermore, I will have no way of telling if my thumb and the hammer is still in existence by the time I see and feel it. 

So, what in these terms happens when I die? It seems logically impossible that the last message delivered to my brain is technically from the past. Maybe this is where the crux lies, at least as far as my mind is concerned: this is the moment in time when the universe ceases to exist inasmuch as all my formerly well-organized atoms have lost their mind. The lucky ones still alive will of course claim that the universe is still intact even though when they declared me dead it was a bit after the time it actually occurred – not that it matters but imagine again the death of the space traveler who was a light year away at the time. 

The main point is that ‘to be in the present’ – or even ‘to be in the presence of’ – is technically impossible because we are told that we cannot move with the time that travels at the speed of light. As such I resurrect again the Polynesian concept whereby in front of our eyes is only the past – and we back into an unknown future. Those unfortunate people who cling to the present and look forward to the future are condemned to repeat history over and over again, as evidenced by the current state of affairs on this earth. Aliens a billion light years away will see the sad spectacle a long time after it actually happened. 

As a linguist I am also interested how this works for language. Apart from repeating my previous assertions that the category of tense in English and many other languages is a binary one between past and non-past – or realis versus irrealis - (and future belonging to the modal category), the question arises how in time language arises from the brain. Equating thought with language in the first place, one can also ask how in time thought arises. Given minute (excuse the pun) time lags between linguistic operations in the brain – as compared to the speed of light – one is astonished that in terms of the human imagination nothing is impossible, defying the laws of nature as much as formulating them in the first place. Chomsky’s idea that a finite – and quite minimalist - set of bio-linguistic rules can generate an infinite language output of expressions speaks to the human imagination as infinitely generative. If we compare this process to other systems that have that infinite quantity, e.g. numbers that seem to have a beginning but no end, we are stuck with mere ‘quantity’ that lacks any sort of discernable quality. From here on one can only speculate and here I always feature a solution suggested by Engels in his assertion that there is a leap from quantity to quality, attributed only to human evolution. This interesting question is of course how much quantity is required to make the jump to quality. Infinite numbers do not seem to make the grade but infinite combinations (Chomsky’s ‘merge’) of lexical items do. This unique quality – which I would equate solely to language and thought – allows us to articulate concepts like the speed of light but sadly also allows us to think of the best way of terminating the lives of those we do not like.

This last point is the seemingly unsolvable contradiction between man’s ability to assemble a telescope a million miles from earth, peering into the cosmos looking back 18.5 billion years to the near point of the so-called Big Bang, while mankind descends into a billionaires’ wormhole of war and famine, into the proverbial black hole from which light cannot escape – the associated puns and metaphors boggle the mind. And yet, as Cassandras like Noam Chomsky indefatigably point out, as long as there are people with a modicum of common sense, there is hope that they will prevail, that cracks will open up where the light comes in – note the correct use of the present tense as far as the light is concerned. To further run with the metaphors we live by, Chomsky’s pun that our quest for knowledge resembles the drunk who looks for his lost car keys under the street lamp – for that’s where the light is – is indeed quite profound: hope comes with the speed of light. If you happen to see it, be aware that it is a message from the past.