Living in a world that’s out of time

good, everything holds good.’’ A reflection on our dependence on time and its imposed structure.

An expedition from the University of Portsmouth, in Britain, discovered an Amazonian tribe, the Amondawa, whose members have no concept of time or dates.

They don’t even have words for ‘‘ time,’’ ‘‘ month’’ or ‘‘ year’’. Professor Chris Sinha argues that this is the first time we have proof that ‘‘ time is not a deeply entrenched human concept, as previously thought’’.

‘‘ For the Amondawa, time does not exist in the same way as it does for us,’’ Sinha said.

To them, time is not a concept which can be measured, counted or talked of in the abstract. So do these people ‘‘ live outside time?’’ No! But they live in a world of events rather than events embedded in time.

They were found to have no words for the concepts of ‘‘ last year’’ and ‘‘ next year,’’ but just divisions of night and day and rainy and dry seasons. Also, nobody had any age.?

They change their names to reflect their life stage and position in the community. A little child will give up his or her name to a newborn and take on a new one. That seems a nice idea, like giving part of yourself and also realising that nothing is permanent. I reckon the Amondawa have probably got it right.

The best theoretical physicists agonise about time and the timespace continuum. At one end the Big Bang and at the other – who knows? Somewhere in the middle is you ( or me) – a baby and finally a corpse. And is there a ‘‘ now’’? If time flows can there ever be a now? Does now exist frozen in time even for the briefest moment? Surely now is either past or future? Our sense of ‘‘ now’’ is something special that time flows past. It is an illusion which we create in our heads.

It was Sir Isaac Newton in the 17th century who started to stick the knife into time. His laws of motion were the first to capture time in mathematical equations. It was soon natural to depict motion graphically with time on the horizontal axis. Once that was accepted the concept of ‘‘ now’’ became totally subjective.

Later, Albert Einstein dealt the final blow to the concept of ‘‘ now’’ with his special theory of relativity which says that there is no way to specify events that the people who experience them agree happened simultaneously. Two or more events that are both ‘‘ now’’ to those experiencing them will happen at different times if they are all moving at different speeds.

Physicist Sean Carroll, from the California Institute of Technology, says, ‘‘ Other people will see a different ‘ now’ that contains an element of yours – but equally might not. You can define it, but people won’t necessarily agree.’’

Professor Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute, in Canada, suggests that the only things that are real about the past and future are signs of them in the present. That sounds good to me as the only time of perception is the present. On the other hand, Huw Price, Cambridge University, Britain, says, ‘‘ The whole idea of a privileged present moment is incoherent.’’ How does all this fit with the fact that we perceive time as flowing? Something to ponder over the new year period? I think my bias is towards the Amondawa!

We wish you all a happy New Year and hope 2014 will be a good one for you.