TIME-AS UNDERSTOOD IN EAST AND WEST

• Published date: 31 December 2022

Novikov remarks that Time is a uniform ‘river' without beginning or end, without ‘source' or ‘sink', and all events are ‘carried' by the river's flow. Time has no other property except the only property which is ‘of always being of the same duration. To him the ‘absolute time' is identical throughout the universe.' Henry Bergson writes that Plato expresses in his magnificent language when he says that God, unable to make the world eternal, gave it Time, “a moving image of eternity.” Bergson offers a practical example of the real Time: “If I want to mix glass of sugar and water, I must, willy-nilly, wait until the sugar melts. Iqbal relates the issue of time with human self. He says that ‘on the analogy of our inner experience, then, the conscious existence means life in time. A keener insight into the nature of conscious experience, however reveals that the self in its inner life moves from centre outwards.

It has, so to speak, two sides which may be described appreciative and efficient.' Elaborating both the sides of human self Iqbal tells us that the efficient self is the subject of ‘associationist psychology' and this is the practical self of our daily life ‘in its dealing with external order of things which determine our passing states of consciousness and stamp on these states their own spatial feature of mutual isolation.

What then is time? If no one asks me I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know. (St. Augustine)

The realm of time is infinity; it has no past, no present and no future. (Immanuel Kant)

A deeper analysis into our conscious experience shows that beneath the appearance of serial duration lies is true duration. (Iqbal)

Iqbal as a contemporary of Einstein, wrote, ‘What is the character and general structure of the Universe in which we live? Is there a permanent element in the constitution of the Universe? How are we related to it? What place do we occupy in it, and what is the kind of conduct that befits the place we occupy? These questions are common to religion, philosophy, and highest poetry.' The views of Iqbal about the existence of Time, which is a delicate and most important topic, will be taken up later. Let us first have a short glance on the ideas of a few of other great thinkers in this regard.

The importance of time has always been there in the mind of Man from the very beginning. Even Greeks and after them Muslim philosophers belonging to pre-scientific period tried to understand the reality of time. The Ikhwan rejected the Aristotelian notion of time as being nothing but a measure of movement. They considered that time is related to the motion of heavenly bodies in the physical world. But at the same time they maintained that from metaphysical point of view time is a pure form, an abstract notion, simple and intelligible, elaborated in the soul by the faculties of the spirit. To them it is an abstract simple and intelligible idea, a form abstracted from matter and existing only in consciousness.

Newton regarded Time as absolute. Igore D. Novikov says that ‘in Newton physics time is a flow of duration which involves all processes without exception. It is the ‘river of time', whose flow is not influenced by anything.' Novikov quotes Newton as saying:

Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without regard to any thing external, and by name is called duration.

(Newton Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy).1

Immanuel Kant believes that the space and time are both forms of sensible intuition. Let us briefly quote here the metaphysical exposition of his concept of Time. He maintains:

1. Time is not an empirical concept derived by any experience.

2. Time is a necessary representation that underlies all intuitions.

3. Time has only one dimension; different are not simultaneous but successive.

4. Time is not discursive, or what is called a general concept, but a pure sensible intuition. Different times are but part of the same and one time; and the representation which can be given only through a single object is intuition.

5. The infinitude of time signifies nothing more than every determinate magnitude of time is possible only through limitation of one single time that underlies it.

Kant concludes, “I can also say from the principle of inner sense, that all appearances whatsoever, that is, all objects of the senses, are in time, and necessarily stand in time-relation.”2

Novikov remarks that Time is a uniform ‘river' without beginning or end, without ‘source' or ‘sink', and all events are ‘carried' by the river's flow. Time has no other property except the only property which is ‘of always being of the same duration. To him the ‘absolute time' is identical throughout the universe.'3

Henry Bergson writes that Plato expresses in his magnificent language when he says that God, unable to make the world eternal, gave it Time, “a moving image of eternity.” Bergson offers a practical example of the real Time: “If I want to mix glass of sugar and water, I must, willy-nilly, wait until the sugar melts. This little fact is big with meaning. For here the time I have to wait is not that mathematical time which would apply equally well to the entire history of the material world, even if that history were spread out instantaneously in space. It coincides with my impatience, that is to say, with a certain portion of my own duration, which I cannot protract or contract as I like.” He continues, “It is no longer something thought, it is something lived.

It is no longer a relation, it is an absolute.” According to him the duration is immanent to the whole of the universe and he says that ‘the universe endures. The more we study the nature of Time, the more we shall comprehend that duration means invention, the creations of forms, the continual elaboration of the absolutely new.'4

John Wheeler, a patriarch of modern theoretical physics, as described by Igor D. Novikov, visited him on the 5th. June 1992. They had very useful exchange of views particularly on problems of black hole physics. Before Wheeler left, he asked him: ‘John, you pioneered several revolutionary developments in physics and in addition you are famous for your pithy, terse definitions of the most profound concepts of modern physics. Could you try to formulate what time is? I need for a physics popularising book, to be translated into English.' He says that ‘John took a very long time to mull it over; I suspected that he had fallen asleep (we had just finished a very good dinner). Actually he was deep in thought.' When he opened his eyes he said very seriously that he would think about it and write to him.

After a little more than a month Igor received a letter from him together with a copy of his book Frontiers of Times with his hand-written dedication: ‘To Igor - May you be timeless! John. 25.IX.92.' In the letter he wrote: ‘You asked for a phrase. There are graffiti on the wall of the men's room in Austin, Texas, and among them is this, “Time is nature's way to keep everything from happening all at once”.5

John Butler Burke says that we can avoid much futile discussion by recognising the difference between various concepts of time. He defines them as: (1) Absolute time, implying a definite Now common throughout the universe; (2) Physical time, which is relative but partly subjective; (3) Psychological time, purely subjective. Elaborating further he writes:

(1) Absolute time, though implying a definite Now common throughout the Universe, can no more be determined physically than absolute space. The reality of either cannot be denied and need not be asserted, for in physical measurement they do not enter into experimental considerations. From the metaphysical standpoint the idea of absolute time is of importance. It is not necessarily inconsistent with idealism, for even if time be subjective it may be common to all minds, and, like truth itself, be a universal reality.

(2) Physical time, however, depends upon simul-taneity and the measurement of equal intervals, both of which are affected by the motion of bodies relatively to each other. Time as a measurable quantity cannot be reckoned without space. The two must be considered together as in the ‘space-time continuum' of the physicist. But in so doing it still remains ‘subjective'. (This corresponds to Bergson's ‘spatialised' time).

(3) Psychological time is purely subjective. This psychological time is what Locke called duration. It may be slowed down in moments of distraction, so that an hour may appear as a few minutes, or to the Budhist as eternity; while the evidence of...