Читать книгу The Image Of Time - Aurelio Grande Rodríguez - Страница 8

THINGS AND TIME

Time is linked to things through the processes that constitute the principle of form, starting from the idea that where there´s movement there´s also time and where they are, there´s space and consistency of things that are born and die successively and consequently -each one existing in a particular way, between duration and permanence. In this relationship that has moments and eternity as limits, the parts and the totality of a system are involved through a kind of conceptual parallelism or phenomenological identity that, due to its doubtful ambiguity, can´t be justified using a dual logic; one is appearance and the other should be reality.

When we perceive something through sight and despite appearances or perhaps thanks to them, we never do it directly, since it´s a process in which a mediating element necessarily intervenes. It´s precisely there where we believe all things are, that there is only one source of light with relative safety that projects its structural geometry; thus remaining the visual experience, determined by an optical phenomenon based on quantity -the quantum aspect. The image of the present is, therefore the reflection of something that´s no longer there, posing a temporary paradox that reason and logic can´t accept as legitimate reality. As from its immediacy the present is always current, each image of the present would be represented on a snapshot of time; each moment is, in some way, a partial image of eternity.

It´s assumed that we don´t see it, we can´t stop it to study it nor is there the possibility of saving it for later use, it´s also assumed that it has no shape or color but even so, it´s the determining factor of our lives in particular and of the existence in general; time is like an eternal fire, like life that turns on and off to start again and thus, eternally transit. Time is something that passes while everything else happens and that aren´t things, they´re the imaginary functions that constitute the development of experience; that it isn´t a product, is a process made into existence. Everything is supposed with respect to time as they´re also supposed, some things that paradoxically only exist because they never remain; about a relation of incommensurables as contradictory and effective as bodies and movement.

According to Aristotle's opinion, time would be the representation of a movement that, in turn, was understood on two specific modalities: as a translation or alteration – having in this definition a forgivable but also unjustifiable duality -due to the excess that an explicitly ambiguous situation represents an explicitly ambiguous situation (the description of a difference between the internal and external processes of a classified system). Even that appearance that movements have, is as we already know, a relative question that has its reasons in interactive complexity; then the velocities between rest and an infinite value cast doubt on the whole argument.

Even wanting to justify it in some way, the movement is paradoxical and contradictory because it manifests itself between two immobile limits, just like all things that stay still or change places; this is crucial to understanding the development of imagination and the organizing mechanisms of perception. And it isn´t by chance that this is so, the movement is like the form and even though it´s very different, an apparent matter of natural understanding that, as we already know, is not real. They are, on the contrary, the effects that make a world made of appearances seem effective and concrete, which as such don´t even remain.

The phenomenon of translation is generated by distance, which in turn is the active reason for a trajectory that, describing its complexity through the succession of its moments, would give rise to the primitive course of time; an abstract ingredient that according to science, is a relative factor that doesn´t depend on bodies but on speed -another abstract concept and there is more.

Saint Augustine, who also had his own opinion on the matter, stated the following about all this: nothing can justify that time is a kind of distance, separation or space that mediates between two events; and the man had his good motives because like the form, in all separation there was his negation. For Saint Augustine, time was the resulting effect of change, because, in his opinion, it occurs even if there´s no movement; eliminating the problem of the relative speed between rest and a snapshot -describing neither more nor less with this, that Aristotelian alteration -while still being ideologically Platonist. Saint Augustine was very astute and came very close to solving the problem, but he was never able to define exactly the specific meaning of the change and its connection to time, something that he very cautiously, had to admit.

Later and as is usual in the history of ideas, seeing that in every question there was a challenge that entailed an answer, there were many attempts to define this concept as something real and tangible that made it clear and predictable. However, in general terms they only remained as slightly modified descriptions of those old conceptions, because even when it accompanies the phenomenon of life, defining time unequivocally was never easy; like linking the abstract and the concrete; assuming this difference exists.

Time was and still is, the same thing that, emulating the words of the old Christian philosopher, we all believe we know and dominate by the fact that we can perceive and even measure it; although of course, indirectly. We do this through its effects, such as forces and motion; good, like all knowledge. But when the moment comes to have to justify it as a principle in itself and describe its specific and distinct properties, that intangible conception of reality, is instantly diluted as its own existence; like those things from which its very conception is derived - because curiously, without the volatility of things, time would have no meaning. Without moments there´s no succession and this succession is the reflection of a time that can be said, it is a process that determines processes - which are no longer things, they´re only trends.

Galileo's version corresponds to the beginning of modernity and about this, the founder of modern mechanics expressed more or less the following from his mechanistic perspective: if something is in absolute rest because it doesn´t move or change, we can say with assurance that there will be no time to measure or process to argue; then he concludes, this condition wouldn´t be longer temporary but eternal. It was clear that Galileo didn´t take into account the activities that determined the internal structures and neither did he consider the most important details, since over an eternity where there´s no before and after, everything would be the same from before and forever. He failed to understand that this was a definition of being and not of existence; concepts each one by their side, of reality and appearance. This hypothetical immutability of apparently immobile things is contradictory by the fact of its very existence, since it couldn´t be sustained by the same reflection that determines it. The verification necessarily implies an observational procedure that is carried out in time, introducing what´s observed in the duration of the process; Galileo couldn´t understand that this supposed immobility was part of a process that was observed and recognized in time. Nor could he understand the most important thing, that everything that exists is necessarily a product of time and by the mere fact of its composition, has a meaning that is derived from the form and its internal activity.

The meaning of things, it seems, wouldn´t be longer in them but in how they´re understood, that´s, of the beliefs about them, of the prejudices and under what ideology they´re interpreted.

Any phenomenological parallelism between a process and a state constitutes a relationship between incommensurables that as such, in logical terms, is prohibited; as it would be in this case, the observation of something that is supposed to exist outside of time. As this logic is irrefutable and the experience as a process is something proven, there´s an irreducible temporality within a system where all the factors are equivalent. Where there´s a way, time runs inexorably over apparent immobility; whether they work or not, even watches age.