A Walk in the Garden of Time
By John Tierney
()
About this ebook
Time surrounds us. We can't think about it any more than a fish can imagine the water around him.
Einstein said time is an illusion. Henri Bergson see it as "duration", a natural flow. A Buddhist would see a circle, a priest as eternity's antechamber, a historian a history of human development and decay.
It's all these things and more. In this book, I distinguish between chronological, personal and circular approaches to time. There is a large gap between our relentlessly chronological views of it and the non-European perception of time, a fact which leads to much misunderstanding and miscommunication. Part of it is the imprecision of our own speech, part of it is simply, due to the separate evolution of world cultures.
John Tierney
John Tierney is interested in the work of Oswald Spengler and how it relates to the modern West. Is the West in terminal decline?
Read more from John Tierney
Jordan Peterson and the Second Religiousness: Explaining the Jordan Peterson Phenomenon Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5China, the New Paper Tiger Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5
Related to A Walk in the Garden of Time
Related ebooks
A Few Well Chosen Words: More Wit and Wisdom from Public Radio Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSiddhartha Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe All: The Complete Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIs Barack Obama's Birth Certificate a Fraud? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Passage to Peace: The Art of Learning How to Love Oneself and Others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBridges to Freedom: Creating Change Through Science and Christian Spirituality Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Covid Prophecies: A Healing Message for Troubled Times Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFlight of a Butterfly Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGod Is a Verb!: Selah Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNobel Peace Prize Winners: People who worked for a noble cause Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpeaking and Being: How Language Binds and Frees Us Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Slippery Signifier: Accidental Grammar and Inadvertent Mistakes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What Is Philosophy? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJapanese in Depth Vol.4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLinguistics For Beginners Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Praise of the Garrulous Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDancing on Ropes: Translators and the Balance of History Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Language Wars: A History of Proper English Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wordplay: Arranged and Deranged Wit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIs That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Adam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vocal Magick The User Friendly Guide to Your Most Adaptable Ritual Tool Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fallacies and Pitfalls of Language: The Language Trap Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Language of Wolves Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEnigmas of the English Alphabet: and the Art of the Scribe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYes, I Could Care Less: How to Be a Language Snob Without Being a Jerk Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Use of Bodies Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5As They Say In Zanzibar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Science & Mathematics For You
Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Metaphors We Live By Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Book of Hacks: 264 Amazing DIY Tech Projects Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/52084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters--And How to Get It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Activate Your Brain: How Understanding Your Brain Can Improve Your Work - and Your Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Letter to Liberals: Censorship and COVID: An Attack on Science and American Ideals Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Free Will Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Crack In Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Gov't Told Me: And the Better Future Coming Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/518 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No-Drama Discipline: the bestselling parenting guide to nurturing your child's developing mind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Joy of Gay Sex: Fully revised and expanded third edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Psychology of Totalitarianism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Suicidal: Why We Kill Ourselves Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential--and Endangered Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for A Walk in the Garden of Time
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
A Walk in the Garden of Time - John Tierney
gets.
Chapter 1
The Kinds of Time.
Other linguists have echoed the same concept:
Concepts of
time and
matter are not given in substantially the same form by experience to all men but depend upon the nature of the language or languages through the use of which they have been developed.
¹
Here’s another reference, another linguist, concerning the role of language in shaping our thoughts:
Human beings are...very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society...We see and hear and otherwise experience largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation .
²
So, what's our concept of time? Our experience, our habit, our predisposition?
In Western culture, in Western languages, time's a straight line. We stand at a single point, imagining we're at a place on a riverbank and a stream is passing us by. To our left is the past. There is a verb tense in our language with which to discuss time past, and we depend on memory for much of our information. Where memory fails, there are books. For time present there's personal experience, newspapers, conversation, and gossip. It can't all be true, it flies by too rapidly to verify it all, but it is all part of us.
To our right is the future. There's a verb tense for it, too. We assume it will happen because it always has; we derive our ideas of the future from time present and time past without thinking much about it. Next year’s cars will be different. We’ll all be a year older. Etc.
There's always been a future. Yes, the future hasn’t happened yet and is changeable, just as events in the other two time frames aren’t. Still, we don’t generally think of things that way. Something in us wants to believe the future will be a lot like the past----a little bit better, hopefully, but not too much different, certainly not challengingly so. It would be too upsetting. History belongs to someone else; we’re into change which is less than err, historic. We read horoscopes in our newspapers, all of which suggest only minor changes. We make straight-line projections; money is good. Therefore, we play the lottery. If money is good, more money must be better.
The future gives us an emotional need for cognitive dissidence; the future is a dangerous, unpredictable land where bad things can happen, things for which we cannot prepare ourselves. We build quiet, non-stressful alternatives in our minds to keep from going mad.
Can we remember how Greeks believed in the Time of the Titans how all men could foresee the future? Zeus, as a kindness, took that away from them. Only a few remained clairvoyant. Like Cassandra, whose curse was not to have others believe what she said, they typically suffered from their foreknowledge.
Our view of time is called "chronological after the old Greek god of time, Chronos. It prevails throughout Europe and in countries where the principal language is derived from a European one. While there are important differences within this group, too, it’s still all
spatialized, in that
time is still regarded as a
place. That is,
I lost my ball in the park and
I lost my ball last week" are two basically different concepts. Our language and our culture makes no distinction between the two of them.
This view of time is particularly Greek, and is based in the Greek language:
It is the Verbs not the Nouns which are the core of Greek writing, even Greek thinking and perceiving. Greek unlike modern English and Medieval Latin which are noun-languages
and stolidly satisfied with lists of things
, to the detriment of motion in Style as an art. Greek swings on its Verbs and the Verbal Classes are much harder to grasp than the Nouns.³
Greek, at least, has several future tenses; most languages don't have any. As with verb-centered languages, it's more difficult to learn. The Greek view of time prevails in Europe, in northern India, and among languages coming from these places. The existence of verb tenses is a marker, and conversations in these languages require us to set the scene
in conversation within our basic speech pattern, using basic verb