Research Guides: NYU Reads: Time

Time

Orbital takes place during a 24-hour period, where the six astronauts and cosmonauts are bound to one time zone on Earth to keep them consistent as they float throughout space. While inhabitants of Earth only experience one sunrise and one sunset within 24 hours, the characters in this novel experience multiple sun rises and sunsets on different continents throughout their day. Readers are invited to question and reflect upon the meaning of time and how we experience it on our planet — how it is determined by the physical attributes of our world, and how that changes when we lose those markings — as well as through memories and aging. Readers are also confronted with the relative shortness of humanity’s time on Earth, especially when viewed through a calendar metaphor. If all of time could be projected onto a year on Earth, beginning on January 1 at 12:00 AM, then it is only on mid-afternoon of New Year’s Eve that mammals evolve into humanity (Harvey 171). And what happens on the cosmic calendar when it becomes January 1 again?

The universe doesn’t end at the stroke of midnight. Time moves on with its usual nihilism, mows us all down, jaw-dropping insensate to our preference for living. Guns us down. In another split second millennia will pass and the beings on earth have become exoskeletal-cybernetic-machine-deathless-postbeings who’ve harnessed the energy of some hapless star and are guzzling it dry…We exist now in a fleeting bloom of life and knowing, one finger-snap of frantic being, and this is it. This summery burst of life is more bomb than bud. These fecund times are moving fast. —Orbital, 173-174

Considering Time: Books

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
ISBN: 0553109537

Publication Date: 1998-09-01

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Published more than two decades ago to great critical acclaim and commercial success, A Brief History of Time has become a landmark volume in science writing. Stephen Hawking, one of the great minds of our time, explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin--and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending--or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends? Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and "arrows of time," of the big bang and a bigger God--where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.
Time's Pendulum by Jo Ellen Barnett
ISBN: 0306457873

Publication Date: 1998-03-21

Jo Ellen Barnett takes us a step further in our perpetual quest to comprehend time. She bridges the gap between the mechanical clocks which record the fleeting moment as it passes, and the powerful radioactive "clocks" which have opened up to us the eons of the earth's history, by showing that both are based upon the counting of identical time segments. Beginning with a historical look at clocks to tell the time of day, she discusses the impact of such inventions as the church bell, the pendulum, and the wristwatch on human culture, and explains how they've gradually transformed our perception not only of the world, but of time itself.
The River of Time by Igor D. Novikov; Vitaly I. Kisin (Translator)
ISBN: 0521461774

Publication Date: 1998-09-03

Can we change the past? The surprising answer to this question can be found in the final chapters of this book. Novikov details the development of our views on time from classical Greece to the modern day, presenting the figures who have contributed to the evolution of our knowledge as real people and placing them in the context of their own time. He also describes in detail the current state of research in such areas as time machines, the start of time and why does time pass: areas on which he himself has worked. The author's own personal experiences, of the old Soviet Union, of research and visits to other researchers, add a unique personal touch. Accessible to all, the engaging style and wonderful illustrations make this book hugely enjoyable to read.
Understanding Human Time by Kasia M. Jaszczolt (Editor)
ISBN: 9780192896445

Publication Date: 2023-08-18

This book explores the time that we (think we) experience and the concept of time in our beliefs, our knowledge, and our fears. We believe that time passes, we know that death is inevitable, we fear that we are going to be late. How do these human feelings and sensations of time relate to metaphysical time of tenseless reality? What do different languages tell us about the nature of human time? And what exactly is the flow of time? The chapters in this volume bring together insights from linguists and philosophers to examine questions about time on the micro-level of physical reality, as well as time in language and discourse on the macro-level of social reality. The unifying theme is that in order to understand human time we have to discover not only how we think and speak about time, but also what it is that makes us think and speak about it in a certain way.

Considering Time: Articles

A standard conceptual framework for the study of subjective time
Research on the mental representation of time (‘subjective time’) has provided broad insights into the nature of time perception and temporal processing. As the field comprises different scientific disciplines, such as psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience, studies differ with regard to the basic terms and concepts used. For this reason, research on subjective time lacks a coherent conceptual system. We argue that research in the field of subjective time should aim at establishing such a system, i.e., a more standardized terminology, in order to strengthen its theoretical basis and to support an efficient communication of results. Based on key empirical findings and concepts that are commonly (but inconsistently) used in the literature, we argue for a conceptual framework for the study of subjective time that differentiates between three types of mental representations of time: basic temporal processing, time perception in terms of passage, and time perception in terms of duration.
African Music and the History of Time
This article aims to decentralize the dominant temporalities of the colonial era with reference to an ephemeral fragment of precolonial music from Uganda. The article outlines two overarching temporal frameworks—unilinear developmentalism and cultural relativism—as the fundamental global antinomies of colonial governance. By examining inherent pattern formation and beat entrainment in amadinda music, the article directs its findings to the general question of meter and rhythm in music and, by extension, the dialectics of colonial time itself. Instead of relativizing or provincializing this concept of time—a refinement of its historical critique—the article gestures toward recentralizing universal standards along more equitable and inclusive lines.
Awe Expands People's Perception of Time, Alters Decision Making, and Enhances Well-Being
When do people feel as if they are rich in time? Not often, research and daily experience suggest. However, three experiments showed that participants who felt awe, relative to other emotions, felt they had more time available (Experiments 1 and 3) and were less impatient (Experiment 2). Participants who experienced awe also were more willing to volunteer their time to help other people (Experiment 2), more strongly preferred experiences over material products (Experiment 3), and experienced greater life satisfaction (Experiment 3). Mediation analyses revealed that these changes in decision making and well-being were due to awe's ability to alter the subjective experience of time. Experiences of awe bring people into the present moment, and being in the present moment underlies awe's capacity to adjust time perception, influence decisions, and make life feel more satisfying than it would otherwise.
The Persistence of Memory: How the Brain Encodes Time in Memory
Time and memory are inextricably linked, but it is far from clear how event durations and temporal sequences are encoded in memory. In this review, we focus on resource allocation models of working memory which suggest that memory resources can be flexibly distributed amongst several items such that the precision of working memory decreases with the number of items to be encoded. This type of model is consistent with human performance in working memory tasks based on visual, auditory as well as temporal stimulus patterns. At the neural-network level, we focus on excitatory–inhibitory oscillatory processes that are able to encode both interval timing and working memory in a coupled excitatory–inhibitory network. This modification of the striatal beat-frequency model of interval timing shows how memories for multiple time intervals are represented by neural oscillations and can also be used to explain the mechanisms of resource allocation in working memory.

Other Resources for Thinking about Your Relationship to Time

"What You Can Do: Make the Most of Your College Year" (video) -- Harvard Graduate School

"Time Is Memory and You Control It" by neuroscientist Lila Davachi (TEDWomen 2016 video) -- TED Archive

"How Our Memories Hold the Key to Time" by biologist Robert Lanza (article) -- Psychology Today

"For 'time cells' in the brain, what matters is what happens in the moment" by writer Jon Hamilton (article) -- NPR All Things Considered

Considering Time: Films

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Stanley Kubrick redefined the limits of filmmaking in his classic science fiction masterpiece, a contemplation on the nature of humanity, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Stone Age Earth: In the presence of a mysterious black obelisk, pre-humans discover the use of tools--and weapons--violently taking first steps toward intelligence. 1999: On Earth's moon astronauts uncover another mysterious black obelisk. 2001: Between Earth and Jupiter, the spacecraft's intelligent computer makes a mistake that kills most of the human crew--then continues to kill to hide its error. Beyond Time: The sole survivor of the journey to Jupiter ascends to the next level of humanity.
Interstellar (2014)
As Earth's atmosphere grows inhospitable to human life, a team of astronauts embarks on a dangerous mission through a wormhole in order to find a habitable planet in a distant galaxy and ensure the survival of humanity.
Moon (2009)
Astronaut Sam Bell is completing a three-year contract with Lunar Industries to mine Earth's primary source of energy on the dark side of the moon: Helium-3. His declining health is causing headaches and hallucinations that lead to a near-fatal accident, rendering him unconscious. After recuperating, an unexpected discovery leads him to doubt his sanity, his identity, and the integrity of the company. Believing he is alone on his mission, his sole purpose is getting back home on his own.
Space: The Longest Goodbye (2024)
In the next decade, NASA will send astronauts to Mars for the first time. Separated from Earth, and unable to communicate with ground in real time, crew members will experience extreme isolation that could gravely affect their three-year journey. This Sundance-premiering documentary follows a savvy NASA psychologist tasked with protecting daring space explorers.