Isaac Asimov - Of Time and Space and Other Things.pdf - Isaac Asimov - margozap

Of Time and Space and Other Things

by Isaac Asimov

eversion 1.0

INTRODUCTION

As we trace the development of man over the ages, it seems

in many respects a tale of glory and victory; of the develop-

ment of the brain; of the discovery of fire; of the building

of cities and of civilizations; of the triumph of reason; of

the fimng of the Earth and of the reaching out to sea and

space.

But increasing knowledge leads not to conquest only, but

to utter defeat as well, for one learns not only of new po-

tentialities, but also of new limitations. An explorer may

discover a new continent, but he may also stumble over

the world's end.

And it is so with mankind. We are distinguished from

all other living species by our power over the inanimate

universe; and we are distinguished from them also by our

abject defeat by the inanimate universe, for we alone have

learned of defeat.

Consider that no other species (as far as we know) can

possess our concept of time. An animal may remember,

but surely it can have no notion of "past" and certainly not

of "future."

No non-human creature lives in anything but the present

moment. No non-human creature can foresee the inevita-

bility of its own death. Only man is mortal, in the sense

that only man is aware that he is mortal.

Robert Bums said it better in his poem To a Mouve.

He addresses the mouse, after turning up its nest with his

plough, apologizing to it for the disaster he has brought

upon it, and reminding it fatalistically that "The- best-laid

schemes o' mice and men / Gang aft a-gley."

But then, in a final soul-chilling stanza (too often lost

in the glare of the much more famous penultimate stanza

about mice and men), he gets to the real nub of the poem

and says:

"Still thou art blest compar'd wi' me!

"The present only toucheth thee:

"But oh, I backward cast my e'e

"On prospects drear!

"An' forward tho' I canna see,

"I guess an' fear!"

Somewhere, then, in the progress of evolution from

mouse to man, a primitive hominid first caught and grasped

at the notion that someday he would die. Every living crea-

ture died at last, our proto-philosopher could not help but

notice, and the great realization somehow dawned upon

him that he himself would do so, too. If death must come

to all life, it must come to himself as well, and ahead of

him he saw world's end.

We talk often about the discovery of fire, which marked

man off from all the rest of creation. Yet the discovery of

death', is surely just as unique and may have been just as

driving a force in man's upward climb.

The details of both discoveries are lost forever in the

shrouded and impenetrable fog of pre-history, but they

appear in myths. The discovery of fire is celebrated most

famously in the Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole fire

from the Sun for the poor, shivering race of man.

And the discovery of death is celebrated most famously

in the Hebrew myth of the Garden of Eden, where man

first dwelt in the immortality that came of the ignorance

of time. But man gained knowledge, or, if you prefer, he

ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

And with knowledge, death entered the world, in the

sense that man knew he must die. In biblical terms, this

awareness of death is described as resulting from divine

revelation. In the 'solemn speech in which He apprises

Adam of the punishment for disobedience, God tells him

(Gen. 3:19): for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt

thou return."

But man struggles onward under the terrible weight of

Adam's curse, and I cannot help but wonder how much

of man's accomplishment traces directly back to his en-

deavor to neutralize the horrifying awareness of inevitable

death. He may transfer the consciousness of existence from

himself to his family and find immortali ,ty after all in the

fact that though his own spark of life snuffs out, an allied

spark continues in the children that issued out of his body.

How much of tribal society is based on this?

Or he may decide that the true life is not of the body

which is, indeed, mortal and must suffer death; but of the

spirit which lives forever. And how much of philosophy

and religion and the highest aspirations of man's faculties

arises from this striving to deny Adam's curse?

Yet what of a society in which the notion of family and

of spirit weakens; a society in which the material world of

the senses gradually fills the consciousness from horizon to

horizon? The nearest approach-to such a society in man's

history is probably our own. How, then, has the modern

West, which has deprived itself of the classical escapes, re-

acted to the inevitability of death?

Is it entirely a coincidence that of all cultures, that of

the present-day West is the most time-conscious? That it

has spent more of its energies in studying time, measuring

time, cutting time up into ever-tinier segments with ever-

greater accuracy?

Is it entirely a coincidence that the most materialistic

subdivision of our most materialistic culture, the twentieth-

century American, is never seen anywhere without, his

wristwatch? At no time, apparently, dare he be unaware of

the sweep of the second hand and of the ticks that mark

off the inexorable running out of the sands of his life.

So it is that the opening essays in this collection deal

directly with man's attempt to measure time. The notion

of time creeps into a number of the other essays as well;

in a discussion of units which turn out always to include

the "second"; in a discussion of catalysts which squeeze

more action into less time. For really, time is a subject that

cannot be entirely excluded from any; corner of science.

When man faces death directly, then, he studies time, for

it is by accurately handling time that he can measure other

phenomena and find a route through science. And through

science, perhaps, may come a truly materialistic defeat of

Adam's curse.

For my final essay in this book takes up the inevitability

of death, and the conclusion is that though all men are

mortal, they are not nearly as mortal as they ought to be.

Why not? That is the chink in death's armor. Why does

man live as surprisingly long as he does? If we can some-

day find the answer to that, we may find the answer to

much more.

Immortality?

Who knows, but-maybe!

Part I

OF TIME AND SPACE

1. THE DAYS OF OUR YEARS

A group of us meet for an occasional evening of, talk and

nonsense, followed by coffee and doughnuts and one of

the group scored a coup by persuading a well-known

entertainer to attend the session. The well-known enter-

tainer made one condition, however. He was not to enter-

tain, or even be asked to entertain. This was agreed to.

Now there arose a problem. If the meeting were left

to,its own devices, someone was sure to begin badgering

the entertainer. Consequently, other entertainment had to

be supplied, so one of the boys turned to me and said,

"Say, you know what?"

l,knew what and I objected at once. I said, "How can

I stand up there and talk with everyone staring at this

other fellow in the audience and wishing he were up there

instead? You'd be throwing me to the wolves!"

But they all smiled very toothily and told me about the

wonderful talks I give. (Somehow everyone quickly dis-

covers the fact that I soften into putty as soon as the flat-

tery is turned on.) In no time at all, I agreed to be thrown

to the wolves. Surprisingly, it worked, which speaks highly

for the audience's intellect-or perhaps their magnanimity.

I As it happened, the meeting was held on "leap day"

and so my topic of conversation was ready-made and the

gist of it went as follows:

I suppose there's no question but that the earliest unit

of time-telling was the day. It forces itself upon the aware-

ness of even the most primitive of humanoids. However,

the day is not convenient for long intervals of time. Even

allowing a primitive Iife-span of 80 years, a man would

live some 11,000 days and it is very easy to lose track

among all those days.

Since the Sun governs the day-unit, it seems natural to

turn to the next most prominent heavenly body, the Moon,

for another unit. One offers itself at once, ready-made-

the period of the phases. The Moon waxes from nothing to

a full Moon and back to nothing in a definite period of

time. This period of time is called the "month" in English

(clearly from the word "mooif') or, more specifically, the

"lunar month," since we have other months, representing

periods of time slightly shorter or slightly longer than the

one that is strictly tied to the phases of the moon.

The lunar month is roughly equal to 291/2 days. More

exactly, it is equal to 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 2.8

seconds, or 29.5306 days.

In pre-agricultural times, it may well have been that no,

special significance attached itself to the month, which re-

mained only a convenient device for measuring moderately

long periods of time. The life expectancy of primitive man

was probably something like 350 months, which is a much

more convenient figure than that of I 1,000 days.

In fact, there has been speculation that the extended

lifetimes of the patriarchs reported in the fifth chapter of

the Book of Genesis may have arisen out of a confusion

of years with lunar months. For instance, suppose Me-

thuselah had lived 969 lunar months. This would be just

about 79 years, a very reasonable figure. However, once

that got twisted to 969 years by later tradition, we gained

the "old as Methuselah" bit.

However, I mention this only in passing, for this idea

is not really taken seriously by any biblical scholars. It is

much more likely that these lifetimes are a hangover from

Babylonian traditions about the times before the Flood.

. . .But I am off the subject.

It is my feeling that the month gained a new and

enhanced importance with the introduction of agriculture.

An agricultural society was much more closely and pre-

cariously tied-to the season& than a hunting or herding

society was. Nomads could wander in search of grain or

grass but farmers had to stay where they were and hope

for rain. To increase their chances, farmers had to be cer-

tain to sow at a proper time to take advantage of sea-

sonal rains and seasonal warmth; and a mistake in the

sowing period might easily spell disaster. What's more, the

development of agriculture made possible a denser popu-

lation, and that intensified the scope of the possible dis-

aster.

Man had to pay attention, then, to the cycle of seasons,

and while he was still in the prehistoric stage he must have

noted that those seasons came fall cycle in roughly twelve

months. In other words, if crops were planted at a par-

ticular time of the year and all went well, then, ff twelve

months were counted from the first planting and crops

were planted again, all would again go well.

Counting the months can be tricky in a primitive so-

ciety, especially when a miscount can be ruinous, so it isn't

surprising that the count was usually left in the hands

of a specialized caste, the priesthood. The priests could

not only devote their time to accurate counting, but could

also use their experience and skill to propitiate the gods.

After all, the cycle of the seasons was by no, means as rigid

and unvarying as was the cycle of day and night or the

cycle of the phases of the moon. A late frost or a failure

of rain could blast that season's crops, and since such

flaws in weather were bound to follow any little mista e

in ritual (at least so men often believed), the priestly func-

tions were of importance indeed.

It is not surprising then, that the lunar month grew to

have enormous religious significance. There were new

Moon festivals and special priestly proclamations of each

one of them, so that the lunar month came to be called

the "synodic month."

The cycle of seasons is called the "year" and twelve

lunar months therefore make up a "lunar year." The use

of lunar years in measuring time is referred to as the use

of a "lunar calendar." The only important group of people

in modem times, using a strict lunar calendar, are the

Moh ammedans. Each of the Moharmnedan years is made

up of 12 months which are, in turn, usually made up of

29 and 30 days in alternation.

Such months average 29.5 days, but the length of the

true lunar month is, as I've pointed out, 29.5306 days.

The lunar year built up out of twelve 29.5-day months is

354 days long, whereas twelve lunar months are actually

354.37 days long.

You may say "So what?" but don't. A true lunar year

should always start on the day of the new Moon. If, how-

ever, you start one lunar year on the day of the new Moon

and then simply alternate 29-day and 30-day months, the

third year will start the day before the new Moon, and the

sixth year will start two days before the new Moon. To

properly religious people, this would be unthinkable.

Now it so happens that 30 true lunar years come out to

be almost exactly an even number of days-10,631.016.

Thirty years built up out of 29.5-day months come to

10,620 days-just 1 1 days short of keeping time with the

Moon' For that reason, the Mohammedans scatter 1 1 days

through the 30 years in some fixed pattern which prevents

any individual year from starting as much, as a full day

ahead or behind the new Moon. In each 30-year cycle

there are nineteen 354-day years and eleven 355-day

years, and the calendar remains even with the Moon.

An extra day, inserted in this way to keep the calendar

even with the movements of a heavenly body, is called an

"intercalary day"; a day inserted "between the calendar,"

so to speak.

The lunar year, whether it is 354 or 355 days in length,

does not, however, match the cycle of the seasons. By the

dawn of historic times the Babylonian astronomers had

noted that the Sun moved against the background of stars

(see Chapter 4). This passage was followed with absorp-

tion because it grew apparent that a complete circle of the

sky by the Sun matched the complete cycle of the seasons

closely. (This apparent influence of the stars on the sea-

sons probably started the Babylonian fad of astrology-

which is still with us today.)

The Sun makes its complete cycle about the zodiac in

roughly 365 days, so that the lunar year is'about II days

shorter than the season-cycle, or "solar year." Three lunar

years fall 33 days, or a little more than a full month be-

hind the season-cycle.

This is important. If you use a lunar calendar and start

it so that the first day of the year is planting time, then

three years later you are planting a month too soon, and

Isaac Asimov - Of Time and Space and Other Things.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: