A SCIENCE MANIFESTO:
Why Is There No
University Department for
The Study of Time?
By Rick Doble

THE PURPOSE OF THIS MANIFESTO

The point of this manifesto is very simple. We evolved from animals who lived in the moment, yet today we work with time, manage time, schedule time, and coordinate time in a linear fashion. Time for us is the past, the present, and the future plus duration. Our civilizations could not exist or function without this sense of time.

Since this is so critical, why is there no department at a university that deals with the nature of time as it relates to humans and civilization?

Therefore the first question is how did we develop a totally different sense of time? My guess is that this took millions of years and happened in stages.

"It must have required enormous effort

for man to overcome his natural tendency

to live like the animals in a continual present."

Whitrow, Gerald James. Time in History:

Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day.

Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. 1988, page 22.

Why is this important? We could not have created civilizations and technologies without understanding linear time. We have become the dominant species on the planet because we can manage time, plan with time, build with time, and coordinate with time. Time is crucial to our power.

If we are to understand how we developed and came to be who we are, we must study and investigate many different aspects of time.

Then the next question is how should we deal with the future because our understanding of time will be a major factor?

This is not an academic exercise. An understanding of time and how things will occur in the future will be crucial in our efforts to deal with climate change and global warming. To put it bluntly, our survival may depend on it.

A Department for 'The Study of Time' or 'Time-Studoes' at a university could delve into these subjects and shed light on these important questions.

WHY IS THE STUDY OF TIME IMPORTANT?

Nothing in life exists or has existed or will exist that is independent of time. (We'll leave the black hole questions to physicists but anyway, we are talking about life.) We live our lives according to the passage of time.

Our civilizations could not function without our synchronized clocks, time zones, and time stamps. The world we live in could not operate without a shared understanding of time.

"Is 'time' the most commonly used noun in the English language?
"...an Oxford dictionary...announc[ed] that the word is the most often used noun in the English language."
Study: 'Time' Is Most Often Used Noun - CBS News. Jun 22, 2006.

When you die, the date you were born and the date you died will be on your gravestone.

Time is fundamental and vital to each of us individually, to our families, to our communities, our nations, and our planet.

WHAT HAS PREVENTED
THE STUDY OF TIME?

The answer is simple: Most people believe that time is, well, just time and there is very little that can be said about it or done about it. Furthermore, they don't believe that cultures shape and mold our understanding of time. Time is so much a part of what we do every day, every year, every lifetime, that it is like asking a fish to describe water.

"A deep-sea fish has probably no means of apprehending the existence of water; it is too uniformly immersed in it..."
Lodge, Sir Oliver. Ether and Reality: A Series of Discourses on the Many Functions of the Ether of Space, (1925), 28.

I believe the complexity of time is, in a sense, hiding in plain sight. Time is here all around us and always a part of us, but thinking about it is difficult.

EXAMPLES OF HIDDEN TIME

I searched the Internet for articles about what is unique about human beings, i.e., what separates us from animals. It is clear that our ability to conceive and work with linear time is one of our unique characteristics. We are the only animal that has a sophisticated concept of linear time and as a result, we can design and build and cooperate.

However, I read numerous articles from prestigious universities about what is uniquely human, and not one mentioned our concept of time. Here is an example.

The following statement from Harvard University involves time and does not make sense without an understanding of time, but time itself is never mentioned. Time is embedded but not obvious.

"The unique brain mechanisms underlying human language also enhance human cognitive ability, allowing us to derive abstract concepts and to plan complex activities."
Uniquely Human - Harvard University Press. Jacket description of the book. Lieberman, Philip. Uniquely Human: The Evolution of Speech, Thought, and Selfless Behavior. Harvard University Press. 1993.

Planning requires an understanding of time. And planning complex activities requires an advanced and sophisticated understanding of time.

Here is another example from Oxford University.
"We tend to think that being able to plan into the future, be flexible in our approach and learn from others are things that are particularly impressive about humans," says senior researcher Professor Matthew Rushworth of Oxford University's Department of Experimental Psychology.
---------------------------
"Brain area unique to humans linked to cognitive powers." Published: 28 Jan 2014.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-01-28-brain-area-unique-humans-linked-cognitive-powers
While this article mentions planning into the future, it does not deal with how time, itself, is understood. Yet planning and many other activities are based on an understanding of time which is fundamental.

TIME IS A FACT OF LIFE

BUT CULTURES SHAPE
OUR UNDERSTANDING

It is important to say from the outset that time is an objective fact of life.

"Time and tide wait for no man."
Geoffrey Chaucer (born 1343 - died 1400),
Prologue to The Clerk's Tale, Canterbury Tales. 1395.

But the way we conceive of time and coordinate time is very human. Time is not only an objective reality but also a human concept. How we understand time today and how we may have understood it in the past are probably quite different. I believe that the ways it was understood by hunter-gatherers in the 3 Paleolithic eras and people in the Neolithic era, in the Ancient, Classical, and Medieval eras were all very different.

I think a culture shapes and indoctrinates a shared concept of time. For example, a contemporary hunter-gatherer tribe, the Piraha tribe in the Amazon, thinks of time in immediate terms. Dr. Daniel Everett, the acknowledged expert on this culture, calls it the Immediacy of Experience Principle. Their window of time conception is about two days in the past and two days in the future. Beyond those points, they don't imagine, plan, or conceptualize. But don't think of them as being primitive. They have a complex language that identifies time and reality, such as who saw something and when did they see it. There are over 65,000 possible ways to express such things in this language.

This is just one example of how a culture can shape an understanding of time. There are others. For example, some cultures today see the past as ahead of us instead of behind us.

Now, you might disagree that cultures can shape our understanding of time. But this is a perfect example of why there needs to be a Department of Time-Studies. This hypothesis needs to be explored and researched and this should be done by knowledgeable academic professionals.

10 AREAS THAT NEED TO BE RESEARCHED

AT A UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT FOR
'THE STUDY OF TIME'

Time, like any subject, has a history, a history of time concepts by humans, a history of time-keeping methods and devices, a history of time coordination, and also a history of how time has been thought of. Plus there are many other areas that need to be studied such as how the brain processes time considerations.

These different areas need to be studied from a time point of view. This means that researchers, scientists, and scholars must walk a fine line. They need to look at subjects from a time POV but not be biased and 'read in' facts and results that are not warranted.

#1. THE BRAIN:

Our human brain is unique both in size and its cognitive abilities. I maintain that both our perception of time, our memories, and our ability to manage time are only possible because of the way our brains are put together. With cutting-edge brain research that is now possible all of these areas need to be explored.

For example, how does the brain handle a simple sentence like this "When I complete this job that I am working on, I will be done for the day." It sounds simple but it involves imagining a future in which the present and the associated future activity, i.e., the job, is past.

#2. CONSCIOUSNESS:

I think it is clear that an understanding of time is a major part of consciousness. But furthermore (and this is just a guess) an understanding of time is/was integral to the development of consciousness. I believe that our sense of time developed in tandem with the development of consciousness. In my study of time during the last eleven years, this was one idea that jumped out at me.

I found one example that pointed in this direction. When blind/deaf Helen Keller suddenly understood words for the first time, she went from an unconscious state to a conscious state and also became aware of time.

#3. PROCESSES AND TECHNOLOGIES:

A sense of time and an understanding of time may have taken several million years to develop. During this time the size of the brain grew larger as memory and imagination abilities increased along with manual and cognitive skills. At the same time, basic technologies emerged and evolved such as stone tools.

My research led me to believe that basket-making or woven-fiber technology was also one of the early technologies. Creating woven-fiber tools (a basket is a tool!) became increasingly complex which required greater cognitive skills. Making a basket (just one example of a woven-fiber tool) required imagining the basket, finding the materials for the design, processing those materials, and then making the basket. The design of a basket needed to be such that it worked for the purpose for which it was designed, Step by step processes were early examples of the use and understanding of linear time since a process is linear.

"Man must have been conscious of memories and purposes long before he made any explicit distinction between past, present, and future."
Whitrow, Gerald. Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day. Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. 1988, pages 21-22.

The key to working with processes was to understand and plan the necessary steps in linear terms. This was, I believe, the beginning of thinking about time with a past, present, future, and duration. This does not mean that all time had to be thought of this way, but processes and planning needed to be thought of like this.

Processes invariably became more advanced as additional steps were added which required more complex cognitive skills and a more nuanced understanding of time. Archaeologists have found millions of stone tools from the earliest ones in the Paleolithic era to the most recent in the Neolithic era. Each stage indicated a more advanced and complex process to make the tools.

#4. LANGUAGE:

Words are the main tools we humans use to imagine and manage time. Most languages have a full set of verb tenses although some do not. Yet all can covey a full and complex picture of time.

When language emerged and developed, it added another set of tools to the ability to communicate and teach about time plus it added tools for planning, managing, and working with time.

"For words are to thought what tools are to work;
the product depends largely on the growth of the tools."
Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization: Vol. 1, p. 71, 1935.

"Time reference is a universal property of language..."
Lecarme, Jacqueline, Ph.D. Linguistics. "Nominal Tense and Tense Theory." Academia.edu, 1998. https://www.academia.edu/2486019/Nominal_Tense_and_Tense_Theory

As I quoted earlier:
"The unique brain mechanisms underlying human language also enhance human cognitive ability, allowing us to derive abstract concepts and to plan complex activities."
Uniquely Human - Harvard University Press . Jacket description of the book.
Lieberman, Philip. Uniquely Human: The Evolution of Speech, Thought, and Selfless Behavior. Harvard University Press. 1993.

A study of languages with the POV of how time is conceptualized, worked with, and shared along with how children learn language and time concepts (next) might yield important insights. This is a key area for research.

#5. CULTURE:

While time is real and relentless in its march forward, our cultures shape how we understand time, communicate about time, coordinate time, plan time, etc. Our understanding of time is, in many ways, learned.

For example, time management is one of the main skills that is taught in schools, i.e., how to meet deadlines, show up to class on time, pace yourself to complete a complex job, plan how to manage a project, etc.

#6. CHILDHOOD:

How do children acquire a sense of linear time? How much is cultural? For example, most children speak in the present tense until they are about 8-10 years old. What happens when they begin to use the past tense? What are they taught about time, and what do they learn and when?

Studying the way children learn time concepts, along with the way they work with time, might shed light on our modern sense of time along with ideas about how prehistoric cultures might have developed and used their sense of time.

"Unfortunately, we are not very well informed in the psychology of primitive man, but there are children all around us, and it is in studying children that we have the best chance of studying the development of logical knowledge, physical knowledge, and so forth."
Piaget, Jean. "Genetic Epistemology." Columbia Forum, (1969), 12, 4.

$7. THE DIMENSIONS OF TIME

We can think of time as having three dimensions. Immediate time is one-dimensional and without it, nothing would exist. Cyclical time is two dimensional with repeating cycles such as sunrise and sunset, spring and autumn, birth and death. And finally, there is linear time with the past, present, and future always moving forward.

While the modern world has adopted linear time, we still have a deep need to experience time in the moment. We can do this and become excited in the moment with live sports events and live music. These have the immediacy that we crave. We also need to experience cyclical time. And we do this every year, for example, with annual repeating points in time such as Christmas and New Year's Day or Halloween.

This could be another area of research for a time-studies curriculum at a university.

#8. TIME IN PREHISTORY AND ANCIENT TIMES:
-- Animal existence and the Lower & Middle Paleolithic:
Since we began as animals who lived in the present, how did we acquire a linear sense of time? How is the human brain different? How did our memory develop? How did planning develop? How long did this take?
Scientists have reenacted tool-making at their different stages and then measured brain activity. These experiments have given these researchers a general idea of early hominin cognitive abilities and how they developed over millions of years.
-- The Upper Paleolithic
By the Upper Paleolithic, when the human brain was fully developed and as advanced as our brains today, a conscious understanding of linear time may have evolved that was almost immediate. This was possibly a window of time that was only a day or two. This later may have developed into a sense of time that we have evidence for. The contemporary nomadic hunter-gatherer Piraha tribe in the Amazon has an immediate sense of time with a window of about five days: the present and two days before and two days in the future. Their way of thinking suggests that Upper Paleolithic nomadic hunter-gatherers may have functioned this way as well.
-- The Neolithic:
The change from a momentary sense of time, that probably occurred during the Paleolithic era, to a linear year-long sense of time in the Neolithic era, was as revolutionary as the change to a sedentary agricultural lifestyle that occurred in the Neolithic. What can we understand from the Neolithic evidence that has been left? There are, for example, many structures that were built to determine the time of the winter solstice such as Newgrange in Ireland and more than a hundred 'circular enclosures' in Germany and Central Europe. It appears that knowing a precise point in time during the year's cycle was important.
In the Neolithic era when yearly planting was essential, long-term linear time probably developed, i.e., it was time based on the seasons but probably within a cosmic view that was cyclical, since the seasons repeated every year.
-- Ancient and Classical Civilizations:
To govern a large civilization in Mesopotamia and Egypt, there had to be a way to gauge time, to track time, to standardize time, to schedule and coordinate time, to plan, and to keep a record of time. How did this start, develop, and work after thousands of years? Researchers can study many records that are available for this time period.
-- Medieval Clocks and the Industrial Age:
While not often appreciated, many large complex clocks were built in the Middle Ages using the gearing geometry of Ptolemy who had created the most accurate Geocentric (earth-centered) astronomy. While his astronomy was superseded by Heliocentric (sun-centered) Copernican astronomy, his gearing worked extremely well and was used to build these clocks. These clocks became the basis for industrial machinery and so led directly to the Industrial Revolution.

"The clock, not the steam engine, is the key machine of the modern industrial age."
Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934, Ch. 1, sct. 2.

#9. THE MODERN UNDERSTANDING OF TIME:

Our modern sense of time is, in a sense, the reverse of the Neolithic cosmic view of time that was primarily cyclical. Now cyclical time (New Year's Day, Halloween) exists within linear time, i.e., year 2023, year 2024, year 2025. Round cyclical clocks that emphasize the repeating nature of time are being replaced by linear digital clocks whose numbers only go forward.

In the mechanized consumer world of today, time is a commodity. Time is sliced into exact sections of seconds, minutes and hours. We think of time as a resource. We can save time, spend time, or waste time, for example. Time is money, as the saying goes.

Time today is a product of the Industrial Revolution and is machine-based. At the heart of all computers is a clock. Our lives are run by the clock: from the alarm ringing in the morning to that extra drink Friday night because the workweek has finally ended. The time we live with now is mechanical.

How can we learn to be comfortable with time instead of feeling trapped by time? Today there are many different time styles.

#10. TIME, THE FUTURE, AND THE ENVIRONMENT:

To survive as a species, we need to develop a new understanding of time. While we have enjoyed the immediate benefits of our advanced technology, we have ignored the long-term consequences. Furthermore, this new way of thinking needs to be a shared global effort.

Our first job in developing this new understanding is to study how the environment will change based on what we have done so far. If our assessment is accurate, it would allow planning for things such as sea level rise or the possible change in worldwide ocean currents that could radically alter the climate in some countries. Understanding how quickly or slowly changes will occur will be critical.

Next, we need to design technologies that have no impact on the environment. We need to take the time to design, plan, and manufacture so that the consequences, by-products, and side effects do not affect the environment. And this needs to be done on a global scale.

Finally, we need to build for the future even though we may not see the benefits in our lifetime. Called cathedral thinking, we may need to design and start building for the long term future. We need to do this so that we can reverse some of the damage we have done and prevent further damage to the environment.

For these ideas to be persuasive, research needs to determine the best ways to communicate this need, how to convince people of its importance, and then how to get people and industries to adopt a long-term point of view.