Perceptions of Time

This paper describes interdisciplinary practical work in physics classes aimed at the study of time perception. The experimental part includes the evaluation of minute intervals by a person who relies on an internal sense of time. This lab is done in pairs: the experimenter and the tested person. The paper suggests that certain topical, interdisciplinary issues – issues typically excluded from physics and psychology courses – are a means toward interaction of two radically different branches of knowledge (physics and psychology) within the educational process. Such use of interdisciplinarity increases both the students’ interest in physics and the quality of physics education. The paper also summarizes and offers for dispute some additional results (quantitative data) about types of time perception. Most students (over 250) demonstrate underestimation and overestimation of time intervals: tachychronia (“accelerated” time sense) and bradychronia (“decelerated” time sense).

Français [English abstract follows].

« Sur l’horloge de l’histoire », note Adam Rayski, « les aiguilles avançaient plus vite pour les Juifs que pour les autres populations de l’Europe occupée. Le temps des autres n’était pas exactement le nôtre… » [Adam Rayski Nos illusions perdues, Paris, Balland, 1985, p. 91]. Cependant, les Juifs ne peuvent pas faire individuellement l’expérience du temps à un rythme constant. L’expérience du temps n’est en effet jamais uniforme. Concernant celle des Juifs de France pendant l’Occupation, elle n’a guère été vraiment interrogée, tout comme la manière dont leur temporalité est structurée durant ces années. À travers l’exemple rémois, notre propos entend démontrer l’importance de ces questions dans la compréhension de la condition des Juifs de France au cours de cette période. Il mobilise dans ce but de nombreux témoignages, ainsi que des concepts et notions de psychologie en plus des outils de l’historien. Au terme de notre démonstration d’inspiration phénoménologique, une temporalité en majeure partie différente dès 1942 de celle des non-Juifs se dessine, composite, saccadée. Elle traduit une persécution qui s’étend au final jusqu’à l’architecture soutenant la vie des Juifs de France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

* Romain Dupré, « The Lived Time of the Jews of France during the Second World War : the example of Reims ».

« On the clock of history », says Adam Rayski, « the hands advanced faster for Jews than for the other people of Europe that was under occupation. The time of the others was not exactly like ours… » [Adam Rayski Nos illusions perdues, Paris, Balland, 1985, p. 91]. Meanwhile, the Jews cannot individually experience time at a constant rate. Their experience of time is indeed never uniform. For the Jews of France during the Occupation, Time was hardly really questioned, like how their temporality was structured over the years. Using the example of Reims, our purpose intends to show the importance of these issues in the understanding of the status of the Jews of France during this period. For this purpose, he mobilises many testimonies and psychology concepts, in addition to the tools of the historian. At the term of our phenomenologically-inspired demonstration, Temporality contours between Jews and non-Jews show the emergence of major differences from 1942 onwards; Jews’ time being more interrupted, less constant. It reflects a persecution which in  the end extends to the architecture supporting the life of the Jews of France during the Second World War.

Aristotle long ago posed a puzzling question about time. Does it belong to the class of things which exist, or to the class of things which do not exist? In Book IV (chapter 9) of the Physics he supplies us with reasons for thinking it belongs to the realm of the non-existent. After all, "one part of it has been and is not, while the other is going to be, but is not yet . . . One would naturally suppose that what is made up of things which do not exist could have no share of reality." In addition to the past and future there is, of course, the present. But if, as it can seem natural to suppose, this is no more than the durationless boundary (or limit) separating the past and future, then even if we hold the present to be among the things which exist, we have not succeeded in gaining much by way of reality for time per se.

Timeless awareness is the essence of Dzogchen. Time experienced within timeless awareness is also an expression of the essence of Dzogchen. Dzogchen is an ancient form of Tibetan mystic humanism. Dzogchen makes the essential distinction between mind and awareness. A person can be located in mind alone and locked in time. As a person shifts from being located in mind alone (mindfulness) and goes beyond mind alone (mindfulness), one becomes aware of their own awareness. As we focus our awareness on our own innermost awareness, vast dimensions of awareness begin to open and self-reveal its nature to us. Awareness is a multidimensional experience and this awareness is infinite in its horizons. The innate qualities of awareness are spaciousness or openness or emptiness. Another quality of our awareness is luminous radiance and still another is awareness as energy. Awareness is alive and is both vast stillness and unceasing movement. The Union of Mind and Awareness When a person is able to experience the union of their mind and their awareness, then the person has a simultaneous experience of being in time and in timeless awareness. The mind is the place of thinking, feeling, sensation, memory and imagination and the mind is the mode of knowing singularity and difference in the world. This is the realm of ordinary knowingness and this is the realm of duality. Our mind is the realm of time. This time bound knowing is the knowing of you and I, us and them, this or that in time and place.

Historians occasionally use timelines, but many seem to regard such signs merely as ways of visually summarizing results that are presumably better expressed in prose. Challenging this language-centered view, I suggest that timelines might assist the generation of novel historical insights. To show this, I begin by looking at studies confirming the cognitive benefits of diagrams like timelines. I then try to survey the remarkable diversity of timelines by analyzing actual examples. Finally, having conveyed this (mostly untapped) potential, I argue that neglecting timelines might mean neglecting significant aspects of reality that are revealed only by those signs. My overall message is that, once we accept that relations are as important for the mind as what they relate, we have to pay closer attention to any semiotic device that enables or facilitates the discernment of new relations.

Chapitre 9 de la thèse de doctorat de Bruno Restif, soutenue en décembre 2004 à l'Université Rennes 2 Haute-Bretagne sous la direction d'Alain Croix : La Paroisse, cadre d'application de la Réforme catholique en Haute-Bretagne (diocèses de Rennes, Dol et Saint-Malo). Histoire d'un processus de transformation religieuse et culturelle (XVIe et XVIIe siècles). Titre du chapitre 9 : Mutations et résistances d'un monde ancien.

Medieval prophetic writings consist of various standard literary elements, such as motifs, oracles, canonical citations as well as scriptural exegesis. The latter not seldom serves to support the apocalyptist’s universal history, which is generally presented in a typological framework. Typologies are literary devices that pair long-gone Old and New Testament events and characters with more recent, contemporary counterparts. In this paper it is argued that typologies (biblical as well as extra-biblical) form an essential compositional method in medieval Greek apocalypticism. Moreover, this study investigates what kind of time perception apocalyptic typologies are prone to convey. The Last Vision of the Prophet Daniel has been chosen as the primary source of this study. This prophecy is a pseudonymous, historical apocalypse that can be viewed as a typical representative of medieval Greek apocalypticism. The paper consists of three parts: First, the Pseudo-Danielic prophecy is introduced with regard to its date, content and influence. Second, its most significant typological models are identified and briefly discussed. Third, a number of inferences are drawn from the foregoing analysis, which characterize the Byzantine perception of apocalyptic time.

In this article the problem of perception is highlighted from a philosophical, physiological and psychological point of view. The essay (second update) is followed by a list of publications, journals and websites about perception. The author would be delighted to receive comments. He can be contacted at j[underscore]kuijper[at]online[dot]nl.

The Dramatisation of Time. On the interrelations between Historical and Musical Time-Experience in the Late Eighteenth Century, with a Study on the Main Movement of Mozart's Symphonie K 338

The experience of historical time, scholars such as Reinhart Koselleck have argued, is itself subject to historical modification. In the late eighteenth century, especially in the wake of the French revolution, a new understanding of history as an irreversible process producing ‘new’, unpredictable events came into being. Such a new understanding of historical time, one is prone to assume, might have also influenced the contemporaneous experience of musical time - a speculation which forms the starting-point of Karol Berger's study “Bach's Circle, Mozart's Arrow”. Indeed, the musical language of Haydn and Mozart (and, arguably, most of their contemporaries) dramatizes time insofar as it enhances the unpredictability of musical events on the micro-level, the possibility for the composer to ‘surprise’ his (or her) listeners. However, musical forms in the Classical period also tended to rely on repetition, reprise and symmetry, which seems to contradict any perceived analogy between the experience of historical and musical time ca. 1780-1800. But in fact dramatization and symmetry were necessarily dependent on each other during the Classical period. A study of the peculiar sonata-form of the main movement of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart's Symphony in C major K 338 seeks to demonstrate this, and speculates that this movement was a kind of ‘first draft’ to the overture of Mozart's oncoming major compositional project, “Idomeneo”.

The only life we are consciously aware of is the present life. We have no idea of how we felt before birth or how will we feel after death. The concept of ‘the Punishment of Grave’ , however, suggest that there is a level of awareness after death. The author, in this paper, has made an attempt to understand what these levels of awareness are.

His analysis suggests that our perception of the past and the future is viable only when there is a flow of information between our consciousness and memory (awake and dream states). Once this flow of information is blocked (partitioned), either temporarily during deep sleep or permanently after death or before birth, it only lives in the present. It feels what it is made to feel without our experience of the past or the anticipation of the future to rely upon. It feels the pain or the pleasure of what it is made to feel after death. Its feeling before the birth is probably neutral, neither pain, nor pleasure, since it has not gone through the trials and tribulations of this life.

Summary:


The book, Greek Festivals, Modern and Ancient: A Comparison of Female and Male Values, is a product of studies in ancient history combined with fieldwork and anthropological analysis of today’s Mediterranean societies. The central theme of the project is the values of the Greek people. Important topics discussed are whether peoples’ beliefs and customs reflect one or several value-systems, and how do these relate to men and women. The comparison is based on ancient and contemporary Greek religious festivals, on which an analysis of the fertility-cult in ancient and modern society is conducted. This is followed up by an examination of modern and ancient value-systems, as expressed through the relationship between official religion and popular belief.
The festivals are presented from a cyclical perspective, as they follow a ritual calendar where celebrations are performed in connection with important phases during the agricultural year. The belief in fertility-rituals is present both in ancient and modern society, and these rituals are connected with women. They are the most competent performers of the rituals. Their knowledge of fertility magic means that they have the power to both, promote and prevent fertility in society. Therefore, an investigation of the relationship between women and fertility, and the importance of the cult within the society in general, is required. In ancient and modern official festivals and rituals linked to life-cycle passages, fertility-rituals are of focal importance.
The fertility-cult plays an important role within the official male value-system. This is the value-system, which the festivals and the society, which they reflect, traditionally have been considered from. The absence of the female value-system leaves previous analyses one-sided and incomplete. Therefore, a comprehensive analysis requires the female point of view to be included. Hence, the study argues for the importance of changing our approach when working with ancient culture. Taking account of the female sphere in Greece provides us with a basis for considering the female part of society. But, by so doing, the official male perspective, which is similar to the Western male perspective generally applied within Greek studies, has to be deconstructed. The study locates two contradictory views in ancient and modern sources, one connected with the female sphere and the other connected with the male sphere. This means that there is not an one-way power or male dominance in the Greek cultural area, but rather competing powers, related to men and women and their respective spheres. The two opposing value-systems are nevertheless both complementary and interdependent.

To read full version of the article, visit the journal website: http://www.dmd27.org/avetisian.html

"The perception of narrative time and space is a complex cognitive process. During the act of reading, a reader interacts with the narrative world by perceiving its temporal and spatial dimensions. Due to the human ability to perceive narrative time and space, the reader can understand deeper meaning of fiction.
The article presents a comparative study of the perception of time and space in Russian and Georgian émigré literature of the 20th century. The article deals with the concept of time and space in Vladimir Nabokov’s 'Mary' and in Grigol Robakidze’s 'The Snake’s Skin'. The author of the article has presented an analysis of the reader’s perception of narrative time and space taking into account the protagonists’ experience and their perception of time and space in the novels."

“Barbed Wire Dreams” is short story collection by James C. Stewart published by Paranoia Press. It includes three short stories: “The Haunting of Doric Lodge” which originally appeared in The Haunts and Horrors Megapack (Wildside Press 2013), “Alecto’s Smirk” which originally appeared in Crosscurrents (Gadfly Productions 2003) and “The Penteract Factor” which is previously unpublished.

Our first task is to follow the notions of 'nostalgia' and 'past' into their relation with phenomena such as 'weakness' and 'resistance'. Respectively - if past can be interpret as resistance against its passing, and if nostalgia can be considered as weakness in personal experience of past. Second task of the article is to study the origin of nostalgia and its engage with the past. This relation is be interpreted following the discourse of philosophical-existential approach. The major aim will be to answer the question: how it possible to think for history through individual, particular, experience of past - diminished to one concrete person?

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Fleeing from social and economic problems in their homeland, since 2010, thousands of Haitians have been making their way through a long journey of insecurities to Brazil, in search for a place where they can build a new life. Instead of actually arriving at the place of destination, however, these migrants get stuck in a temporary shelter at the Brazilian border, where they have to wait for a visa and a work permit to be emitted. Yet, this waiting period has been lasting far longer than expected, with migrants staying over four months. There, living conditions are often worse than those faced in their homeland. Even with constant political instability, social disregard and economic crises in Haiti, most migrants had roofs over their heads, beds, and basic hygiene conditions back home. In the shelter, over 600 people share a space for 200, with too few mattresses to sleep on and often times no food or clean water.
My research is focused exactly on that period of waiting, this gap in which they have fallen during the process of migration, and from which they are desperate to leave. There, I wished to understand how migrants interpret their life investments, as either temporary or permanent profits. I wanted to know if all the social, labor, economic and cultural skills and knowledge they had previously acquired in their homeland would still be useful in the new settlement, where they sough the opportunity to (re)build their lives. In order to reach this conclusion, I first reflect on the insecurities they face on a daily basis, and how they differ from the ones they faced back in their homeland. Secondly, I analyze the strategies they use to deal with these insecurities. And, thirdly, I research their aspirations for the future. Regardless, although the shelter is meant to be temporary, the long waiting period seems to force migrants to develop strategies to survive the dire circumstances and attempt to find ways to leave the premises as soon as possible. These strategies they have to come up with to survive in the shelter are different from ones migrants usually dispend once having reached a permanent settlement – the place where they are migrating towards. Furthermore, having their minds always busy with strategizing and undergoing dire living circumstances, migrants in the shelter seem to have a hard time sharing their memories of the past. Moreover, their abilities to strategize concrete plans and foresee possible outcomes for the future in Brazil seem to have been blurred by the circumstances in the shelter and its temporary character.
As a conclusion, this research suggests that contemporary migration can be interpreted as a rite of passage from one context to another. Furthermore, it frames the temporary character of the shelter as an inherent trait of supermodernity, in which space, time, and ego, are overabundant, resulting in an everlasting confusing network of connections (and disconnections) between places inscribed with meaning and ‘non-places’ - areas of transit marked by a contradictory communal feeling of solitude. The shelter, thus, a non-place, is a stage of interplayed survival strategies and social dynamics which bring about constant displays of anxiety, frequent claims for recognition of individual identities and growing feelings of despair. In search for new life securities, these migrants end up falling into period of farther more insecurity; and that seems to be the (often unrecognized) case in similar temporary migrant settlements around the world.

“Night Alleys” is short story collection by James C. Stewart published by Paranoia Press. It includes three short stories: “The Wasonica Correction” which originally appeared in The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack (Wildside Press 2012), “Rags” which originally appeared in Two Strange Tales and a few Words of Artistic Observation (Gadfly Productions 2005) and “The Saint Mary’s Incident” which is previously unpublished.

“Shivering on Acid” is short story collection by James C. Stewart published by Paranoia Press. It includes three short stories: “The Mnemosyne Deviation” which originally appeared in Paradox: The Magazine of Historical and Speculative Fiction (April 2003), “Plato’s Bastards” which originally appeared in The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack (Wildside Press 2012) and “Cast-off Creek” which is previously unpublished.

Synchronizing a motor response to a predictable sensory stimulus, like a periodic Xash or click, relies on feedback (somesthetic, auditory, visual, or other) from the motor response. Practically, this results in a small (<50 ms) asynchrony in which the motor response leads the sensory event. Here we show that the perceived simultaneity in a coincidence-anticipation task (line crossing) is aVected by changing the perceived simultane-ity in a diVerent task (pacing). In the pace task, human subjects were instructed to press a key in perfect syn-chrony with a red square Xashed every second. In training sessions, feedback was provided by Xashing a blue square with each key press, below the red square. There were two types of training pace sessions: one in which the feedback was provided with no delay, the other (adapting), in which the feedback was progressively delayed (up to 100 ms). Subjects' asynchrony was unchanged in the Wrst case, but it was signiWcantly increased in the pace task with delay. In the coincidence-anticipation task, a horizontally moving vertical bar crossed a vertical line in the middle of a screen. Subjects were instructed to press a key exactly when the bar crossed the line. They were given no feedback on their performance. Asynchrony on the line-crossing task was tested after the training pace task with feedback. We found that this asynchrony to be signiWcantly increased even though there never was any feedback on the coincidence anticipation task itself. Subjects were not aware that their sensorimotor asynchrony had been lengthened (sometimes doubled). We conclude that perception of simultaneity in a sensorimotor task is learned. If this perception is caused by coincidence of signals in the brain, the timing of these signals depends on something— acquired by experience—more adaptable than physiological latencies.