Monday, September 16, 2013

Reader Response: What Is Time?

In the second part of the "What Is Time" reading, the author explores the relationship between time and one's "personal awareness of phenomena."  I thought it was interesting how throughout the text, Whitrow repeatedly describes the passage of time as a consciously perceived sensation, as it somewhat relates to the perception of time as relative, and therefore reliant upon one's perspective, which he coins as "temporal duration."  Essentially, he asserts that time is not static, but fluid through multiple perspectives.  He then goes on to introduce memory (or lack thereof), asserting its ultimate importance and fluid nature as key in one's perception of time and phenomena.    

Whitrow's placing of memory into the context of time's passage was helpful throughout the process of completing the homework, which was illustrating one's first memory.  For me at least, I find that memories are more impressionistic than detail-oriented, as I can recall the tone and feeling of a past moment more effectively and strongly than specific, ungrounded details.  Whitrow indirectly comments upon this, stating that "'long distance' remembering is not a simple re-excitation of innumerable fixed traces but is essentially an imaginative reconstruction depending upon our frame of mind at the time of recall" and remembering "only a few striking details which are actually remembered."

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