"It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits" Nicomachean Ethics (Book 1, 1094b24)
Since the beginning of modern science, there has been a
thrust that the enterprise be applied as much as theoretical: “for the relief of man’s estate,” in Bacon’s
formulation. Science has been wildly
successful in this technologic regard.
With reference to the famous serenity prayer, the wisdom to
understand what can be changed, versus what must be accepted with serenity, is
itself, perhaps like time, in a unidirectional flow, as we control more and more
of our world. Why not, indeed, the hours
of the day?
Modern science has also had an ambition, since the Cartesian
beginning, at least theoretically, if not always in practice, to attempt to found
itself on something closer to absolute certainty and then build from the bottom
up. Radical skepticism would be replaced
by a foundational knowledge that could support the architecture of acquired
learning. Math, logic, physics. Even
beyond the philosophy of science problem of begging the question – i.e. the biggest
hypothesis, neglected assumption, is that the laws of nature will hold tomorrow
as well as yesterday -- the 20th century is, in this regard, in
part, a story of the failure of the achievement of anything like absolute knowledge.**
This failure regarding anything, rudimentary or otherwise, became clear, even
as natural science, perhaps paradoxically, continued its progress unabated.
The concept of time as much as space, being, form, matter,
organic/inorganic, etc., has proven itself also resistant to anything like an absolute
definition or measurement. This is evidently
not limited to the Einsteinian concept of time not being constant at extreme
velocities, etc. Even in a Newtonian
framework, one needs a gold-standard reference, of course, which turns out to
be more elusive than hoped for at first pass, at least in terms of unwavering certainty.***Suffice
it to say that a comprehensive, widely accepted, non-circular, definition of
time does not exist.
Now, that other, opposite in many ways, if prominent, strain
of 20th and 21st century thought, postmodernism, tends to elevate
things like History, Culture, Will over and against an objective, universal
Nature. This position might have a
complex relationship with technology, but it would not be a great surprise to
see a relative disregard regarding natural standards for time as opposed to an
historical and culturally determined understanding of time.
For those who find this latter approach less than compelling,
however, are we simply adrift?
Perhaps there is a richer, if more limited, approach that,
in practice, resembles how many careful scientists actually implicitly approach
questions – even if it is also always true that there is plenty of bad science
and cloudy thinking.
This perspective might start from the fact that our common
sense understanding is inescapably prior for us. However much the human mind finds it
genuinely helpful to construct maps and models of the corn maze we find
ourselves in, the full birds-eye view is not simply available. Through inquiry, this starting position of
what is first for us might be enriched, deepened by the inquiry, and deepened by
modern scientific developments, but not simply replaced. The questions and challenges might be clarified;
first impressions replaced by a fuller, if incomplete, partial, imperfect,
provisional knowledge. At the same time,
it would contain perforce a natural, if unquantifiable, ordering of said provisional
knowledge, an ordering of degrees of certainty.
As described, this approach would naturally tend to avoid making
outsized epistemologic claims. One might
describe it ultimately as a Socratic impasse, one where there is progress in knowledge
of the pertinent questions, even if the aporia ultimately remains. There is no
absolute answer available to philosophy and science, even if there is, at the
same time, some genuine progress.
Dogmatism is when one tires of thinking.
With regard to time, and especially time of day, a sketch of
this approach might go something like this:
When it comes to seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years,
those measures that are most by nature rather than by convention are the day and
the year. The day, of course, is a
single rotation of the Earth on its axis.
There are roughly 365.25 of these in one of the Earth’s full orbits of
the sun. The day, then, is obviously known
better than the year, even though the year is also apprehended by common sense,
because the year requires approximation.
Sunrise and sunset require some definition, given they are
transition states, but however defined, if defined consistently, and measured –
i.e in moving from common experience to science -- solar midnight and noon, the
midpoints between sunrise and sunset, are the markers of the day most by nature.
So, it follows that if the day and night cycle are one of the most fundamental
human experiences of time itself, local
solar noon and midnight are, in fact, a concept of measured and studied time,
closest to the most basic phenomenon, to what is inescapably first for us. This seems especially true when speaking of “time
of day,” rather than “time as a general concept” more broadly. Further, in this framework, at the risk of
tiresome repetition, this might be considered only the beginning of thinking
about time.****
If noon and midnight, then, are by nature, and are
intimately tethered to the most fundamental experience of the phenomenon of
time, what are human business hours of operation, if not largely by convention?
Finally, what is “Daylight Savings” Time? It is not changing the Earth’s rotation, it is
not adding daylight, it is simply pretending noon is one – i.e. it is merely
shifting the hours of human operation to an hour earlier by changing the name
of the natural thing itself. A grand,
collective self-delusion so that 9-5 will really be 8-4, but we will still call
it 9-5.
But noon is, of course, not “one.” Noon exists.
In some ways, we are as sure of this as we are of nearly any other aspect
of existence.
Many are rightly bothered by the practical effects of DST. I care more about what it says about what we
think we can control, what we think is convention, what we think is natural --
in short, how we think.
That, and it is on its face a bit ridiculous. A ridiculousness no doubt that is made less
obvious to us due to it being somewhat long-established by now. Nonetheless, we are all Nigel Tufnels intently
fiddling with our amp while time marches on.
*This is no Summa. It’s
brief, hastily cobbled together, un-footnoted, and provisional
** As an aside, despite the history of science and of the philosophy
of science in the 20th century, in Medicine, there is a type of radical “Evidence
Based Medicine” that emerged only at the end of the 20th century
that demonstrates this tendency: underestimating any form of knowledge outside
of and prior to controlled clinical experiments and overestimating the
knowledge those experiments represent.
***One reads that there is yet a new SI definition of the
second planned. But, this is mere convention. There will still be no absolute physical
definition of time.
****This is not to suggest that all of modern physics’ grappling
with the question of time does not enrich the understanding and the question. And, both modern science and common sense
experience do largely assume that the sun will indeed rise tomorrow -- since it
rose yesterday.
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