Time Management

Time, Physicalism, Duration, and Consciousness

Bhaktivinoda Thakura, writing in 1893, says, “[A materialist] cannot reduce the material world to a single underlying principle. He must accept the simulatenous existence of many principles. What is time? That he has no power to say.”

Bhaktivinoda Thakura

One hundred and twenty four years later, we still have no power to say. Idealism seems very easy to refute. Samuel Johnson wanted to refute Berkeley with a kick. Bishop Berkeley’s idea that "matter, after all, is nothing but an idea" enraged Johnson. He famously gave a stone great kick with the tip of his boot and said, “I refute Berkeley thus!” But where is Mr. Johnson now? Samuel Johnson is dust. His boot is dust. The stone itself may have crumbled to dust. It has been destroyed by time. If we could do a time-lapse film of Mr. Johnson and his boot over the two and a half centuries that have elapsed since the kick and speed up the film so we could see the whole thing in a minute, we would see him disappear into thin air. His disappearance into thin air hardly refutes Berkeley.

Samuel Johnson's "kick" in bronze. But where is Johnson's bones? Taken by time.

Matter appears at first glance to be hard, cold reality. But we overlook the time factor. 20th century scientists headed by Einstein took it upon themselves to incorporate the time-factor as an element in the time-space continuum. But were they successful?

After all, what is time? If matter moving through space seems to be self-evidently “real,” and objective, time has a particularly subjective reality about it. Of course, there is “clock-time” or what can be measured with a mechanical instrument, but our “living time” seems to have a different quality: a subjective quality. If matter is entirely “objective” what about time? Have we advanced since the time of Bhaktivinoda? What is time? Does now exist in the brain? Or only in the mind?

An important debate took place in 1922 at the Société Française de Philosophie— Paris between the German physicist Albert Einstein and the French philosopher Henri Bergson. The physicist and the philosopher clashed, each defending opposing, even irreconcilable, ways of understanding time. At the Société française de philosophie—one of the most venerable institutions in France—they confronted each other under the eyes of a select group of intellectuals.

The “dialogue between the greatest philosopher and the greatest physicist of the 20th century” was dutifully written down. It was a script fit for the theater.1 The meeting, and the words they uttered, would be discussed for the rest of the century Its repercussions are still being felt in philosophy, science, and the humanities, especially in film and literature.

Their debate on the nature of time is documented in “The Physicist and the Philosopher” by Jimena Canales, Chair in the History of Science at Chicago University. But before looking into that debate, let us consider the position of materialism.

Modern “materialism” prefers to be called “physicalism.” Its doctrine is laid out nicely in a book called “Now” by Richard A. Muller:

“Does now exist in the brain or only in the mind? We take this truth to be self-evident: if it isn’t measurable, then it isn’t real. That ‘truth’ is not provable, of course, any more than are the rights proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. But it is not a hypothesis and certainly not a theory; it is more like a doctrine, a thesis figuratively nailed to a physics department door, a dogma that, given faith, will lead you to a mastery of the physics world. Philosophers call this dogma physicalism. Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying. Physics itself is not a religion. It is a rigorous disciplen, with strict rules about what is considered proven and unproven. But when this disicpline is presumed to represent all of reality, it takes on aspects of religion. Not only is there no logical imperative between physics and physicalism, but there is no logic whatsoever linking them. The dogma that physics encompasses all reality has no more justification than the dogma that the Bible encompasses all truth.”

The debate between Bergson and Einstein pitted the greatest philosopher of the time against its most brilliant scientist. Bergson objected that Einstein would appropriate measured clock time as the only form of time, avoiding the issue of time as we live it. He found that scientists of the day were meddling in philosophy and introducing metaphysical ideas through the back door, even while ridiculing man’s search for meaning as “metaphysical.”

Scientists use imaginary numbers, quantum amplitudes and wave functions, all the while apologizing for them. While Gödel showed that any mathematical model is incomplete, Hawking replies that “in the future,” it will not be so, since we will solve the incompleteness. “Trust science,” we are told.

Atheism, by itself, is not a religion. It is a denial of a particular kind of religious belief, theism, that posits the existence of God. Atheism becomes faith when it incorporates belief, as for example, the notion that all of reality is defined by physics and math, and that everything else is an illusion.

Bhaktivinoda Thakura, in Tattva-viveka, points out, “No one has ever seen consciousenss created from dull material elements...no one has ever seen a being spontaneously manifested from inert matter. If life is manifest from the spontaneous interactions of material elements, then in the course of the centuries of human study at least one living being would have been spontaneously manifested from inert matter.” While no evidence of this is forthcoming, we see scientists continue to claim that they can generate life.

But to question the dogmas of science is heresy against the religion of the physicalists.

Even Einstein himself was the object of opprobrium when his fellow scientists found that he outstepped the bounds of physicalism. Rudolf Carnap criticized Einstein´s mysticism by asserting, “Since science in principle can say all that can be said, there is no unanswerable question left.” But science cannot answer some very basic questions, as we have seen, for example: “What is consciousness?” or “What is time?” Or even “what does blue look like?”

Your experience of color is distinct from my experience of color. And this is true not only for color, but pain, sight, sound, and all subjective experiences. To dismiss the subjective simply because it cannot be measured is dishonest.

The “scientific religion” of Physicalism becomes extremism when it claims as dogmatic truth that what cannot be measured is an illusion. Time is an important example. We know that time flows like a river. The Greek philosopher Parmenides pointed out that you cannot dip your foot in the same water twice. Time rolls on. And yet, physical scientists believe this is not so. There is no flow. It can’t be mapped onto a diagram of time and space, so it isn’t real. It doesn’t fit the mathematical model of reality. Whatever doesn’t fit the mathematical model must be discarded as “metaphysical.”

Curious, then that so many of the great minds that created 20th century science deviated from the dogma of physicalism. In fact, the advocates of the new physical theories science of space and time held curiously mystical views. In criticizing Neils Bohr’s version of quantum physics, Einstein was famous for saying things like, “I do not believe God plays dice with the universe.” Erwin Shrödinger wrote in that he had “no hesitation in declaring quite bluntly that the acceptance of a really existing material world, as the explanation of the fact that we all find in the end that we are empiricially in the same environment, is mystical and metaphysical.” ( 1925 My View of the World, Erwin Shrödinger)

Of all the mystical metaphysicians among quantum scientists, the most mystical was also the most practical.

Oppenheimer and his creation

J. Robert Oppenheimer conceived, designed and built the first atomic weapon in Alamagordo New Mexico as the head of the Manhattan Project. He was surrounded by the greatest minds of the 20th century, scientists who were determined to make the atom speak. Assisted by Enrico Fermi, the inventor of the controlled chain reaction, by Leo Szilard, Ernest Lawrence of Lawrence Livermore Laboratories and a score of geniuses, Oppenheimer created the atomic bomb.

And when Oppenheimer had realized his dream, the bomb came to life one afternoon at Trinity.

When he saw the glowing fireball of the mushroom cloud blossoming over the valley of Jornada del Muerto, the Journey of Death, Oppenheimer famously quoted the Bhagavad-Gita. He had chosen the 32nd verse of the 11th Chapter of the Gita. In that verse, the Godhead makes his plan known. Krishna says, “I am Time. I have come to devastate the worlds.”

कलो’स्मि लोकक्षय कृत् प्रवृद्धो लोकम् सम हुर्तम् इह प्रवृत्तः

kalo’smi lokakṣaya kṛt pravṛddho lokam sama hurtam iha pravṛttaḥ

Long before the Egyptian pharaohs had their thrones carved in stone in the valley of kings by the Nile river, Krishna uttered this verse at the battle of Kurukṣetra. What is Time? Time is God. Time devastates all, from Samuel Johnson and his kick to the gathered kings who fought the ancient war at Kurukṣetra.

Time is inconceivable. Time is God. Krishna, God, says, “I am Time. And time destroys all.”

When Henri Bergson, the great French philosopher, confronted Einstein over his metaphysical presumptions in the theory of relativity, he point out that there is a difference between clock time that is measured in seconds and minutes and real time. Real time is time as we live it. Clock time is useful. But is isn’t “Real.”

Clock Time

Bergson drew attention to the problem of measurement. Measurement must stop something in time. “Real” time eludes measurement since it cannot be stopped. : “Real time eludes mathematical treatment, its essence being to flow...Duration is measured by the trajectory of a body in motion and that mathematical time is a line; the line one measures is immobile--Time is mobility. The line is made, it is complete; time is what is happening.” The paradox is important. To stop time we must freeze it, but time will not stand still. Time and tide wait for no man, as King Canute discovered when he ordered the tide to retreat.

Lived Time

Physicalism believes only in what can be measured. Time cannot be measured, since the measurer is also living within time. Measuring time never deals with time directly: we may count intervals or moments--short halts in time--but “time” itself is immeasurable and uncontable.

We believe that our measurement of time relies on “constants.” But we have no way of knowing if our “constants” or units of time are truly constant. Millions of years ago a second might have been longer or shorter. In the future there may be some universal time dilation that we are unable to comprehend. Since we won’t be around millions of years from now, there is no way to verify our measurements.

And even if our “constants” of measurement are absolutely accurate, we can count seconds or minutes, nanoseconds or ages of geological time. But we are only measuring units. Time itself cannot be divided into units. Time is an indivisible flow. Memory is never divided into minutes and seconds. Your memory of your mother is important to you, but your memory of her baking cookies is a montage of different occasions. The smell of the cookies, their taste is palpable. The moments you spent with her are real. But it cannot be measured in minutes and seconds. Movies and novels tell stories in fragments of time. But the fragmented time of our experience is not the same as linear, measurable, 4-dimensional time.

Do you have time? Or does time have you?

Life and consciousness defy measurement. We can study a life form completely only by killing it and dissecting it to see what makes it tick. A study of time demands that we stop time to dissect it. But this is impossible. Physicalism cannot apply to time, since we have no power to stop it, to dissect it. Any assumptions we make about time cannot therefore be free of metaphysical assumptions about epistemology and ontology.

Science wants to make predictions. By dissecting and analysing cloud formations, we try to understand the weather. Henri Bergson objected to Einstein’s attempt to establish measured time as the only concept of “real” time. He remarks in Creative Evolution, “Science extracts and retains from the material world that which can be repeated and calculated and consequently that which is not in a state of flow. Thus it does nothing but lean in the direction of common sense, which is a beginning of science; usually when we speak of time we think of the “measurement of duration” and not of “duration” itself. But this duration which science eliminates and which is so difficult to conceive and express, is what one feels and lives.

Bergson tried to signal the importance of lived time as distinct from what scientists measure when they concern themselves with the velocity of a baseball. We measure water in liters, but are not exclusively concerned with its measurement. Water is life. Its flow is poetry. It is much more than liters. We measure rice in kilos, but rice is food, kilos are simply units of measurement. Likewise, we measure time in minutes and seconds, but minutes and seconds are not time, any more than kilos are food or liters are water. There is a distinction between the unit and the thing measured. Time lived and “measured duration” are two distinct realities, according to Bergson. By imposing the dogma of physicalism to time, we believe we have solved an important existential question through measurement. But we avoid the problem of duration.

This gets back to the hard problem of consciousness, since consciousness outlasts the passing of minutes and hours and demonstrates an existential duration for which science and its measurements have no vocabulary. If we avoid the discussion of consciousness as being a “hard” problem, while avoiding the discovery of “duration” as another “hard” problem, then it is impossible to discuss the “duration of consciousness.” But the duration of consciousness is life itself. How consciousness plays itself out over time is the entire drama of our human existence. To ignore this for the sake of measurement is to avoid the central problem of human life.

While the idea of developing units for the measurement of duration is certainly valuable in the exploitation of the physical world, our real concern should be a more central question: what is the relationship between duration and consciousness?

This relationship is explored in the ancient mystic texts of the Bhagavad-gita (2.13):

देहिनो ऽस्मिन् यथा देहे कौमारं यौवनं जरा

तथा देहान्तर-प्राप्तिर् धीरस् तत्र न मुह्यत्

dehino 'smin yathā dehe kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā

tathā dehāntara-prāptir dhīras tatra na muhyat

As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change.

Swami Prabhupada comments:

Since every living entity is an individual soul, each is changing his body every moment, manifesting sometimes as a child, sometimes as a youth, and sometimes as an old man. Yet the same spirit soul is there and does not undergo any change. This individual soul finally changes the body at death and transmigrates to another body; and since it is sure to have another body in the next birth—either material or spiritual—there was no cause for lamentation by Arjuna on account of death, neither for Bhīṣma nor for Droṇa, for whom he was so much concerned. Rather, he should rejoice for their changing bodies from old to new ones, thereby rejuvenating their energy. Such changes of body account for varieties of enjoyment or suffering, according to one's work in life. So Bhīṣma and Droṇa, being noble souls, were surely going to have spiritual bodies in the next life, or at least life in heavenly bodies for superior enjoyment of material existence. So, in either case, there was no cause of lamentation.

Any man who has perfect knowledge of the constitution of the individual soul, the Supersoul, and nature—both material and spiritual—is called a dhīra, or a most sober man. Such a man is never deluded by the change of bodies.

The Māyāvādī theory of oneness of the spirit soul cannot be entertained, on the ground that the spirit soul cannot be cut into pieces as a fragmental portion. Such cutting into different individual souls would make the Supreme cleavable or changeable, against the principle of the Supreme Soul's being unchangeable. As confirmed in the Gītā, the fragmental portions of the Supreme exist eternally (sanātana) and are called kṣara; that is, they have a tendency to fall down into material nature. These fragmental portions are eternally so, and even after liberation the individual soul remains the same—fragmental. But once liberated, he lives an eternal life in bliss and knowledge with the Personality of Godhead. The theory of reflection can be applied to the Supersoul, who is present in each and every individual body and is known as the Paramātmā. He is different from the individual living entity. When the sky is reflected in water, the reflections represent both the sun and the moon and the stars also. The stars can be compared to the living entities and the sun or the moon to the Supreme Lord. The individual fragmental spirit soul is represented by Arjuna, and the Supreme Soul is the Personality of Godhead Śrī Kṛṣṇa. They are not on the same level, as it will be apparent in the beginning of the Fourth Chapter. If Arjuna is on the same level with Kṛṣṇa, and Kṛṣṇa is not superior to Arjuna, then their relationship of instructor and instructed becomes meaningless. If both of them are deluded by the illusory energy (māyā), then there is no need of one being the instructor and the other the instructed. Such instruction would be useless because, in the clutches of māyā, no one can be an authoritative instructor. Under the circumstances, it is admitted that Lord Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Lord, superior in position to the living entity, Arjuna, who is a forgetful soul deluded by māyā. (Bhaktivedānta Swāmi Bhagavad Gītā As It Is, 1972)