Time again…
October 30th, 2011 § 1 Comment
Grandfather's clock (this one really is)
I may think about time more than the average person. It is not uncommon to be going about my ordinary daily activities when something as common as a wooded ravine or a cicada’s song will remind me of how narrow and limited our human perspective of time is. This year that seems to be happening a lot.
When my mom died this spring, I looked around the hospital room and realized that I knew her longer than anyone else there except my dad. She was ninety one years old. She grew up in a tiny town in southeastern Ohio and used to tell of Mrs. Barnes, the old woman who live next door to them. Mrs. Barnes told a story about a native American Indian coming up through a hole in the floor of their cabin when she was a little girl. Now I admit that this could have been a tall tale that Mrs. Barnes told the little neighbor girls or that it changed (for the better) over years of retelling but it still reminds me of the changes that have taken place in just two or three human lifetimes.
Earlier this summer I noticed in my Astronomical Calendar that as of July 12th, the planet Neptune has just completed its first complete orbit since it was discovered in 1846. That was only 165 years ago but that is one Neptunian year…two human lifetimes.
Those examples are both from modern history. The ancient history of human development in the middle east may span only 5000 years and of other people perhaps 20,000 years or more. Those pale in the light of geological time, of hundreds of millions of years, during which the continents drift around the surface of the Earth crashing into each other, raising up mountain ranges that then erode away and species evolve, proliferate, and go extinct long before anything resembling a human being even exists.
The largest period of time for which we have a common formal time-keeping device, is the year with its associated calendar. I guess that helps us keep our appointments and remember important dates in our lives.
But it is not very useful in helping us think about time…
Very cool.