Time and Experiencejwh2oFebruary 17 2007, 06:17:48 UTC
Hm is that by my hero Stephen Jay Gould??
But ... it doesn't seem to be how we really experience things -- even if there are preceived cycles (lunar, solar, biological), and even if they are somehow connected (which they aren't normally - the lunar cycle not related to the solar cycle; and living cycles that come from celestial cycles merely examples of adaptation) -- we also differentiate cycles -- i.e. this season different from the last season, etc. This isn't Groundhog Day.
So this belief in cyclical time seems to me to be anti-experiential, in the sense that it would be easy to formulate a cyclical equation (say, a sine wave) that describes something that we use to gauge the changes in our life.
Re: Time and ExperiencethoughtsmileFebruary 21 2007, 19:43:23 UTC
I agree with you. From what I know, cyclical time does indeed seem anti-empirical.
However, I would need to read more material written from the perspectives of the people of the cultures that believe in cyclical time in order to understand their rationales. Also, there are certain cycles in life, as you noted, so it seems too limiting (and Western-minded) to rule its importance out altogether, and to say that "everything is linear."
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But ... it doesn't seem to be how we really experience things -- even if there are preceived cycles (lunar, solar, biological), and even if they are somehow connected (which they aren't normally - the lunar cycle not related to the solar cycle; and living cycles that come from celestial cycles merely examples of adaptation) -- we also differentiate cycles -- i.e. this season different from the last season, etc. This isn't Groundhog Day.
So this belief in cyclical time seems to me to be anti-experiential, in the sense that it would be easy to formulate a cyclical equation (say, a sine wave) that describes something that we use to gauge the changes in our life.
Reply
However, I would need to read more material written from the perspectives of the people of the cultures that believe in cyclical time in order to understand their rationales. Also, there are certain cycles in life, as you noted, so it seems too limiting (and Western-minded) to rule its importance out altogether, and to say that "everything is linear."
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