溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Is Time a Stretching-Out of the Mind?
When we measure time as long or short, is the ruler in the world, or in the mind?
Time is nothing other than a distension — a stretching-out.
Augustine's answer — "time is the mind's distension" — was an insight that found the mind's role in the very act of measuring. The question split into two directions in the modern age. Newton set an absolute time flowing uniformly whether or not any mind measures it, making it the foundation of physics; Bergson, conversely, sharply divided the homogeneous time the clock measures from the flowing time we actually live (duration), taking up Augustine's line. Measured time and lived time, the time of physics and the time of mind — this division of two times flows still today, layered as two strata of our life.
The experience of one same hour flowing utterly differently in boredom and in joy revives daily this question — that time is a work of the mind.
Augustine asks how we measure time at all.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Augustine asks how we measure time at all. The sound that has passed is no longer, the sound to come is not yet, yet we know one sound is longer than another. He answers: what we measure is not the sound but the impression it leaves in the mind. Time is the mind's distension, stretched out through memory and expectation. I sense this answer touches the time beyond clocks — the time we actually live. Before the mystery that one same hour runs long on some days and short on others, I stand too.
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