Thursday, January 9, 2014
Time's Up
We don't seem to be having much luck finding objective truths, but maybe we just need more time. Surely time is the same for everyone, isn't it? Spend an hour listening to these perspectives on time. Extract one knowledge question from one segment of the podcast and begin your post by sharing your KQ and it's context. Next, formulate and share your definition of time. Finally, identify and explain one way someone might disagree with your definition. Please complete your thinking and writing by 9:30 Monday evening and arrive in class on Tuesday having read one another's posts. Here are a couple musical interludes to pass the time.
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Well time. How does our knowledge and understanding of the world change with the passing of time and/or our personal (NOT collective; as in one person, not the whole class) definition of time? I took this question from the podcast as a whole, but I guess what I keep coming back to is the man who was wiping his nose for two hours and the woman that had Parkinson's, and so had incredibly fast reflexes. Also the hummingbird and the tortoise, with their (possibly) different versions of reality based on the way time passes for them.
ReplyDeleteWhat's time? What. is. time. I just wanted to say, before I try to define time, that I think that it's kind of only definable based on the fact that we are human. Humans made up the concept of time; of time passing, of the past, the present and the future. We made up the concept, but we didn't make up the reality of time... or is it the same thing? I'm not sure, but after reading 1984 I may have a new perspective. I think time is relative. That's the only definition I can actually think of right now. In 1984, George Orwell makes this point that reality exists only in the human mind. I think its the same with time as well.
Theres about a million ways to disagree with my definition of time. Someone could say that I just typed the above sentence, therefore it happened, therefore the past exists outside the human mind. That disagreement doesn't make a lot of sense to me though, because if people are thinking about the past and time, defining it inside their heads, then it exists inside the human mind. Anyway, lots of food for thought.
My knowledge question, “How can time change knowledge?” is extracted from the third and last segment of the Radiolab podcast. In this segment, the stretching of Beethoven’s 9th symphony is explored. In the “9 Beet Stretch”, conceptual artist Leif Inge digitally elongates Beethoven’s 9th symphony to last 24 hours. I think that he not only stretched the music, by doing so, he stretched time as well.
ReplyDeleteChoosing a master like Beethoven with oeuvres that are widely known and have survived the test of time, leaves a reinterpretation of the artistic experience. As time and music is interrelated, change of one can immediately influence the change or distortion of the other. Just as Leif Inge did when he stretched time by stretching Beethoven’s music.
My definition of time is the premise of, and to an extent, the measurement of change. Beethoven’s works are held today as a standard of classical music, are widely performed in their original version, and yet, are also widely being reinterpreted by innovators like Lief Inge.
As a counter argument, one may disagree that time may not be the most accurate measurement of change. Major changes often happen in short time intervals , however, a small change may occur over a long time period. Therefore, the relationship between the amplitude of the change and the amount of time elapsed may not always form a direct correlation. I am certain that many performances of Beethoven’s work have had minor divergences with the original composition, yet Leif Inge’s work truly changed everything by simply stretching the time duration of the piece.
P.S. When a participating audience commended on the acoustics of the gallery and how it was set up, it immediately made me think of Anna Shuleit and her Bach sound body.
P.S.S Here is the link to the New York Times article on the “9 Beet Stretch” and a brief interview with the artist. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/arts/music-high-notes-beethoven-s-ninth-around-the-clock.html.
The radio introduces a man and a woman who experience the same amount of time really differently. The man is suffered from a disease that made him live a slower pace of life than normal people do without noticing it. The woman is the contrary that she speaks really fast without noticing it. However, living in the real world with clocks all around, it is impossible for one to use the time in the same way as the way they are born with. People have to try to accommodate the standardized time.
ReplyDeleteMy knowledge question: To what extent can standardized time change human nature?
For me, time is something that flow with every living creatures’ life. Time is always there and living things use their life to fill the time and make the existence of time more wonderful. However, time is just a name human granted to a non-exist idea or concept. I think the invention of the word “time” really shows the amazement of language development and human intelligence. Time is one of the most abstract and blurry concept. It is impossible to describe what time is. We use year, day, hour, minute and second to describe the length of time and use numbers to divide up time in one day. So people have developed so many ways and words to describe time and also make it more real.
One can refute my definition of time by saying that time does exist. I have heard of a theory that Albert Einstein made. He said that if something can exceed the velocity of light, it could travel between time. Although this theory can not be proved until now, it is pretty well-known and no one had yet found strong evidence to disapprove it. So let’s assume Einstein’s theory is correct. One might say that time really exists. It can be controlled by the velocity and mass. If time does not exist, how it can be controlled.
"To what extent can standardized time change human nature?"
DeleteThe reason that it is a bad KQ is that it does not ask the answerers to investigate the nature of knowledge and it can not be applied to every area of knowledge.
Revised: To what extent can standardized time affect knowers' formation of knowledge?
The reason that it is a good one is that it can be applied to every area of knowledge and it's about the knowers' experience in the world of knowledge.
After listening to the podcast , I realized that almost all segments had one thing in common ; the use of humans to manipulate nature to determine time, or the use of human perspective and power to control time. One quote that was made to justify my statements is “Time is held by the individual” and also the podcast that related to the flower clock and how Linnaeus manipulated the blooming of a flower to tell time , or how human’s used a train as a determinant of universal time. Mention was then made about turtles and whales and how our time and their time was different , nevertheless humans still have the power to define time in the sense of what is fast or what is slow and what is past , present and future. If the turtle’s and the whales are taken into consideration to determine different time intervals , what is really time in the sense of fast , slow , past , present and future? My knowledge question derived is : To what extent are humans able to manipulate knowledge to determine basic factors such as time? How can knowledge influence constant factors of life?
ReplyDeleteTime in my opinion,can be defined as the mechanism that provides a basis to determine the sequence at which different events occur. I think people would disagree with my statement because if we never knew what time was maybe events would still occur in the same pattern as they do. I considered this , but then I went back to the example of the train : how would we know the exact moment that an event was to start and finish ? Then I considered another area where individuals would disagree with me in ; before advanced human societies , time existed amongst indigenous people. These individuals relied on nature and other things to help determine when a certain event was to occur. They did not know time existed , but it still did. Regardless of the fact that they never knew what time was , still it provided a basis to determine a sequence of events. I agreed with a statement in the podcast “Time enables us to see change” , not too sure whether that was a definition of time but then I considered again that time can pass and no changes can take place. I guess time is one of those terms that is hard to define , because its always used as a root word in a definition and barely defined itself.
Usually, I could not give a standard definition for time. I just usually relate it to clocks, watches, past and present. I’ve never really thought of a definition for time and now that I do I am getting quite confused. Time can be a lot of things. I would like to think of it as a mysterious infinite thing that always has been and always will be. People might disagree with my definition by saying that there had to be a definite beginning of time and there will be an end.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the podcast one interesting segment that stood out to me was an interview of athletes that states that time seems to slow down at certain points in time. People who have witnessed near death experiences related that in the span of 2 seconds they felt like their entire life had replayed or flashed in their head. This got me thinking a lot. Because while some people cannot seem to find enough hours in a day, others can say that time is moving by really slow. Another part that stood out and surprised me was the experiment with the watches. They did an interesting experiment where both men simultaneously synchronized their watches to same time. Both went two separate place doing two separate things mention was made of central park and outer space. I’m not quite sure if they were literally were but when they were finished and compared times the times were different and it is suggested that they spent the same time doing each activity. The narrator offered quite a troubling notion that time is different for each person. From this I derived a question: Does time exist universally when we are both partaking of lives at different rates? When we think about it, why is it that we judge something as fast or slow when we each have different perceptions of time? I liked the fact that the podcast compared the lives of a tortoise and a hummingbird to show that life and time are different for each organism that shares the earth. As humans we live on average around 65-70 years. Other species can live up to 300. No doubt, time would be a whole different concept for those species.
KQ: To what extent can time be defined by our individual lives? I got this questions from the podcast as a whole, because there were different instances where different people with different personalities defined and applied time according to their lives. I remember track stars talking about track and time and how their lives revolve around the time that they take to ready, set and go. Then there was the exhibition of Beethoven composition expanded to 24 instead of 70 minutes or so. There was also the voice time when time was looked at through a little girls voice and the growth of it as she got older. Because of these instance I looked at the people creating these time frames for themselves and came up with a question that would apply to their lives in their own situations. For this reason I can not really come up with a definition of time. I really don’t know. I don’t really have a definition of time because time to me depends on too many factors in life, such as past, present, future, personality, what I like, what I don’t like, things like that. For exactly this way that I think of the definition, someone might disagree with me. They might say that my definition is too broad, and not specific enough or doesn’t make sense (which I could see). They could definitely argue that there is a set definition for time, but then that definition would be according to them and not necessarily anybody else. I don’t think I, myself, can even make sense of my definition, thats not really a definition.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, I found the seemingly terrifying 1 hour podcast really interesting. Every story was different, yet they all explained time in their own way. On a whole, this reinforced the vagueness of time. Everyone has their own sense of time, but we live on this thing called standard time. I found the stories of people who had a completely different sense of time than ‘normal people’ to be really interesting. One man took about two hours to move through the motion of wiping his nose, and after some studying, the examiner actually found that if you sped him up, it would actually look like him going through the motion of what ‘normal people’ look like wiping their noses. Another person had the opposite condition, she moved much faster than what is the norm for human beings. In both cases the person was completely unaware of their tendencies to more what everyone else thinks is too slow or too fast. Unknowingly, they were on their own time; standard time did not exist to them in the way it exists to the rest of the world. I found these two examples interesting because it overemphasizes the fact that not everyone has the same time when you really think about it. This made me think about all the little ways time is different for different people. In History class the other day, we had a conversation about memory. We concluded that memory is triggered by something you find significant. For example, if I forget what I ate for lunch two days ago, I can think back to what day that was, then what I did that day, and finally trace back my steps and remember what I ate from there. Time can do the same thing. Many people remember time by other significant things. For example, today I felt hungry, then I thought: It much be lunch time. This left me with the knowledge question:
ReplyDeleteTo what extent does this concept of ‘actual time’ apply to all human beings?
My definition of time simply the span of existence. I use the word existence because anything that I think of, anything that is related to me in the slightest way goes back to the start of existence. Someone might disagree with the use of the word existence, because time has probably been occurring before the existence of anything.
Time. In my opinion, time is merely a man-made concept just as everything else is in the world (that is, everything else we use to keep ourselves sane). Without this concept of time, we would not not be very productive at all now would we? How can we as humans define time, when there are millions of other living things on this planet and likely others, that have very different views on...life. The podcast touched on the idea that every species (for example the tortoise and the hummingbird) goes through life at their own rates of time. Therefore time may exist for us but we can not force the same definition upon anything but just that--ourselves. A lifetime could be 150 years for a sea turtle, or a week for a fruit fly...their life purposes are filled out to the same content. Time is such a vague concept that is also very precise at the same time. We as humans may have it down to the millisecond yet barely have an idea of its origin. As a knower, I can not definitely say I KNOW for sure, every surrounding concept about time...yet I accept it because it does, if anything, keep my species sane.
ReplyDeleteKnowledge Question: In what ways does time change the knowledge of a knower?
ReplyDeleteI found this podcast interesting, as the concept of time has always baffled me. I agree that time is a man made concept that formulates how we run our lives. Each day we know that we have 24 hours to get our needs done. However, we know we sleep for about 8 hours, so really, we have 16 hours in a day to get things done. We know how long each of our class periods are and we know that they are scheduled so that we have enough time for each of our classes and enough time for sports, dinner, study hall, and some free time left for the day. I know that my group lessons for riding will be an hour and it takes about 30 minutes to tack up my horse and another 30 minutes to untack and clean up. I know that everything I do during my day revolves around the time that I have before I have to go to bed, or at least until the sunrises the next day. However, this is only my interpretation of time. For each creature that lives on the earth, time is different. In fact, for some species, I believe that time does not exist. For example, humans are very concerned about time and making sure they complete tasks by certain deadlines and in the end, it creates more stress than necessary. But a bird does not know the difference between an hour and a minute, he only knows that he must gather food, make a nest, and care for it's babies. He knows when he will sleep only because of the color of the sky, not by the time on a clock.
Therefore, to answer my knowledge question, time changes the perspective of the knower. One knower may have no concept of time and go through life easily. Another knower may have their own idea of time and go through life on a schedule. The idea that time is real is what changes the perspective and therefore the knowledge of the knower.
How can time effect the perspective of the knower? For example, How can time change the meaning of something to the knower?
ReplyDeleteThis podcast really interested me in the sense that I had pondered these questions before. Time always seemed like something that was set in stone, and it was unable to be questioned. I never had proof to question, and I never had the nerve. Although this podcast didn't answer any of my questions, it exposed me to different perspectives, and let me know that my pondering of the existence of time wasn't unheard of, and wasn't unacceptable at all.
Thinking of a definition of time is a challenging thing, simply because it is very loose and it all comes from your perspective. Google says it's "the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole." I would agree with this (hold on, i'm not stealing googles definition, just give me a minute). I question if time is indefinite. Humans created the idea of time, why can't we just stop believing in it. Hours would not pass if we did not let them. The planets would still turn around the sun, wrinkles would still appear on your face. Everything would be at a standstill though. My definition would be "A Human created concept that puts the past, present, and future into perspective." One person who would disagree with me is the person who writes the google definitions. Others would argue with me that time is definite, and even if we stopped using it to plan or lives the hours would still tick on. For me, the existence/indefiniteness of time isn't an answerable question. It's like the question "would the universe exist if we never existed." It's unanswerable. My definition is my perspective, but I could never prove my definition.
ReplyDeleteI found this assignment very ironic. The entire podcast was about how time is not a constant and how it can be different for people and animals. Meanwhile, I spent the entire time staring at my clock thinking, “When will this end… I only have an hour left to do this before it’s due”. Somehow I did come up with a knowledge question in the end of all this: Does our perception of time effect living things around us? When I ask this, I can think of examples such as the turtle and humming bird, with crazy different time perceptions, but I’m asking this question more on a scale of human to human. Humans seem to share a similar, if not the same for some, time schedule and perception, but do we really? In the podcast, one neurologist mentioned how he talked to a man who took 2 hours to scratch his nose. This man had no idea until he saw a flipbook made up of those two hours. This subject is mind blowing to say the least, but I came to the (uncertain) conclusion that our own perception of time does not affect each other. Obviously this statement can be argued in many ways. An obvious way this could be proved wrong was the example of trains time schedules and how everyone must rely on the same “time” in order to get onto the train and make it to their destination. In this case, I think time logistically makes a difference in day to day life around one another, but I don’t think that in the long run, our own perceptions of time affect each other. If I had to define time, it would probably take me a lifetime, but simply put, I believe it is how we see the world around us changing. I think this can be seen in minutes, seconds, moments, or years.
What is time?
ReplyDeleteTime is the progression of existence. Time is the past, present or future measure of events. Time has always been there, is there and, will always there. In every language that exists, time is one of the words at is used. In other words, ‘time’ is just a word that is very crucial for the existence of human beings. Human beings have to refer to time whenever they are planning a project or doing any other thing. The concept of ‘time’ is something that is very significant to life.
If people go on changing ideas as time goes on and on, that means that our understanding is also based on time. Our understanding changes according to time. As we go on discovering things, one can say that all that is time. For example, we go on discovering new things. Before, people thought that the world was flat until people like Ferdinand Magellan and Columbus changed people’s mindsets after proving that the world was round. My knowledge question is, “To what extent is knowledge affected by time? “ If so, is our knowledge then classified according to time?
One may disagree with my definition of time by saying that if time is the progression of existence, then the future is not part of the existence because it is yet to exist but has not yet existed. It is very hard to describe time but I know that everything we understand and do is based in time. And all these things we do are considered as what make our lives. Everything we make cause a change in our lives. Therefore, time is simply change. And that change is a fact of life. Time is then life. Every creature is related to time and time is related to every creature.
ReplyDeleteKQ: To what extent can a knower’s knowledge and or perceptive be affected by time?
Another overarching question thats not a KQ: How can a knower understand and use time if time applies to them as an individual (meaning that no one will always have the same time as them)?
To me, this podcast was surprisingly (no offense), interesting. While at first, and somewhat throughout the process, it was a little hard to wrap my head around and fully understand, I had a realization, and also found a few common themes. One of my realizations were that while it was agreeable that everyone who spoke in this podcast understood this concept of time not being universal, or standard, but rather individual, many people had different definitions of time. Basically I realized that time passes at a normal pace for everyone, because that norm is set by their own selves, however at the same time, even the definition of time is personalized... Therefore, time in general, not just the measurement or pace of it, is a completely individualistic and personalized concept that exists universally as an idea or word but never truthfully as a way of measuring. So, following that idea, my definition of time is hard for me to formulate. Until I heard these ideas tonight, I never thought about another definition of time besides a way of measuring. However it is may more complex. This pdcast led me to different questions such as what exactly does time measure? How many hours, days, or weeks pass? But then again, these are all words under the large category of time, all defining some fragment or section of time. So, this leads me to questioning exactly what the question I am supposed to be answering is: what is time? From what these podcasts have taught me, time is basically everything or associated with everything. The idea that there are different “clocks” came up in the podcast and relates to the idea of different times “personal time, sleep time, lunch time, “Task” time” etc. Everything has its own clock. With different emotions, one may experience a different time. Time to me seems to be everything but nothing at the same time because it seems undefinable. One person in the podcast thought that time allows one to see that which has changed, another idea that was associated with time is the connection between relativity and time, while it also can depend on energy and a person’s individual tempo. If this is actually the case, then I find it extremely challenging to create an actual definition for what time is because it covers too many broad topics to have a definitive or specific definition. Someone may disagree with the definition I have claimed to be too difficult to create, because maybe they do not grasp the idea that is in my mind, or maybe they have grasped it and learned more about time or understood more about time so that they are able to create an actual definition that I cannot seem to find or understand.
What is the definition of time? Wowza.
ReplyDeleteAfter listening to the Radio Podcast, defining time seems impossible, in that, the podcast questioned the existence of time for me. Obviously there is change over a period of time, but how does one measure that. Is it by looking at a clock, is it run by emotion, is it birds, like, what the heck! But, in order to write something productive in this post I will say that my definition of time is a way of seeing change.
‘If time does not exists outside the human mind or nature, is there such a thing as a past?’ This is the knowledge question I came up with after listening to the Radio Podcast.
The Podcast discussed everything and anything concerning time. One of the theories behind time is that it is not universal. After listening to how they analyzed time and how different it is in some situations, I was stunned. I had never before thought that there may be other ways of measuring time besides a clock (I mean in the sense that time is different for everyone). They began by explaining the history behind the development of measuring time. This is where I really came to the understanding that outside the human mind, time is not only universal, but it may not even exist, at least that’s what I thought. Essentially there are ways to measure change, there are ways to schedule/divide a day, but time, as in the past, present, and future, does not exist. That raised my question of the existence of the past. If time is different for all organisms, then there is no universal time. But if there is no universal time, is there a present? Because if time is only a way of measuring change, then how is there such a thing as the past. (So I am really confused with my own thoughts, so just hear me out.) Before there was a camera, there was no way of stopping time. But nowadays we have pictures, films, and of course our memory to remember with. However, if we removed all processes of telling time (past and present), would there still be memory? And if not, then would there be such a thing as a past? I guess my question really is how can there be one universal understanding of time, when there are different universes of time. For example, when people say your life flashed before your eyes when you get into a car accident, or that time stops when you are in love. Can time be effected by your emotions? And if so, would the universal way of telling time still be correct or would my time, as in a car accident or love, be the correct time? Overall, the idea and analysis of time is such a fascinating and broad subject that it is almost impossible to narrow it down to one KQ. However for right now, I will remain battling with the existence of the past and time itself.
My knowledge question after listening to the podcast is: how does knowledge affect our perception of time?
ReplyDeleteI thought about this a lot during the part of the podcast that talked about how time is not a universal thing and how relativity effects time. I thought that it was crazy that, just as they mentioned, that in science or in every subject of life, we are taught that time is the same everywhere. There are so many calculations based on time, like how long it takes for light to reach earth, but really how that even be calculated if light is on a completely different spectrum of time? And like the podcast was saying, do we trust our mind and what we have been taught or do we trust our instinct and what we feel when it comes to time? For all of my life I thought that time was universal, the same for everyone, because that is all I knew; but now hearing about the patients in the hospital and the watch experiment I have gained so much more knowledge and my perception of time has changed.
Right now I honestly am so mind blown that I don’t know what time is? I think time is just a concept in our minds that allows us to measure periods or intervals of something happening or not happening. I think that I and other people could disagree with my definition because maybe time doesn’t really exist. I mean, it does because days go by and time goes by, but maybe the way we think of time or the way that concept of time is used is not accurate. Time is relative, so the way we learn about time or its definition of being able to be used as an absolute measurement is not right.
Overall, I really enjoyed the podcast, but it really messed with my head and made me feel like I was a little narrow minded to think that time was universal and that it wasn’t possible for it to be different anywhere else. I also thought the railroad time was interesting as well because I can’t imagine not having one time that was always in sync with other times. And the different clocks were really cool like the spice clock, it made me realize how much or system of keeping time has changed or advanced based on technology and knowledge.
My knowledge question is “In what extend the time for people is different?” I was just so impressed about this after listened the almost one hour radio. In a town in Ohio, everybody has different time until the appearance of railroad. However, time can be different when people travel in the space. Time for the one who traveled and the one who stayed is the same, but different for each other. The radio also gives two patients as examples. One patient wiped his nose for two hours; on the other hand, one patient reacted faster than an athlete, and he or she can catch ball unexpectedly. It reminds me of time machine in a Japanese cartoon that I used to watch. I never regret what I have done in the past, and I am happy now, so I don’t need time machine soon. If you have time machine and you only have one chance, do you want to go to past or future? I am more curious about the future in fact.
ReplyDeleteBack to my knowledge question, I argue everyone have their different standard for the intangible time. When you get boring during the class, you will feel the time pass so slow. On the contrary, if you have good time, you will feel the time pass too fast. Also, in the same time period, for some people who are efficient, they have more time than the people who are dilatory.
However, other people may assert that the time for the universe is the same and the time for people is not the time we talk about here. It is more about efficiency. They may urge that if the time is not even the same, the whole world will be a mess.