Time transfixed

1. One of the greatest paradoxes of time is that even if we stop the motion of any kind of object related to or representing time, time itself will keep on moving.
2. For example if we depict time as a locomotive steaming ahead, even if we stop the train time will not stop.
3. We may think about such an aspect of time sitting by the fireplace and smoking a pipe, as a train appears in the fireplace and moves towards us.
4. Such a sudden and unexpected event could only cause a strong impression in our mind and have a great impact on the environment.
5. Incidentally according to relativity if the train moves at the speed of light a passenger on board the train will see his/her clock stop.
6. But time can also stop if we paint a clock in a painting. Such a clock does not tick and the time it tells is always the same. 
7. Another aspect is an effect which we may call ‘time reflection.’ Imagine that we have two candlesticks in front of a mirror. One candlestick is normally reflected in the mirror, but the second candlestick has no reflection.
8. How come? An explanation of this strange phenomenon is that only one candlestick really exists. The second candlestick (which has no reflection) is in fact the representation of the (one and only) candlestick into our mind.
9. Do objects have a reflection in our minds, except of course their own image by which we perceive them?
10. Furthermore if we regard time as an object (for example a train or an arrow moving forward), does time have any motion or true existence in our mind? No matter how we may depict or describe time in a painting or in a physical theory, does time have any psychological or mental significance?
11. Duration is a theory of time and consciousness posited by Henri Bergson. He became aware that the moment one attempted to measure a moment, it would be gone: one measures an immobile, complete line, whereas time is mobile and incomplete. For the individual, time may speed up or slow down, whereas, for science, it would remain the same. [1]
12. Although such a cancellation of duration is attempted in the painting, I believe that more important than the aspect of ‘transfixed time’ is the notion of ‘extended time.’
13. Edmund Husserl realized that our experience of the world would be impossible if we did not have a sense of temporality. That our perception brings an impression to our minds depends upon retention and protention. Retention is the process whereby a phase of a perceptual act is retained in our consciousness. Protention is our perception of the next moment. We perceive temporality as a flow through which each moment of protention becomes the retention of the next. Thus time is the presentation of a temporally extended present. [2]
14. If we represent time as a speeding train and its wagons as separate events, we may connect the wagons to each other any way we like. But although a certain arrangement of the wagons will give us a sense of temporality moving from the past to the future, the notion of time involves the whole train.
15. In fact all events are considered in the present, either they took place in the past or they are about to happen. Therefore all events can be seen as simultaneous conditions, either realized or not, in the extended present. Time is the process by which different events are put together in a meaningful and causal order.
16. But what decides which order is preferred, if not our own mind? Aren’t we those who consider the problem of time, which is steaming like a train from our past towards our future, while we are concerned about how fast it speeds away? Isn’t it our own will which collects things and puts them together in some order, creating thus space and time as we know it?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duration_(philosophy)]

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retention_and_protention]

8/10/2018    

Painting: Time Transfixed, Rene Magritte