Seconds, Please
Dan Falk
In Search of Time: Journeys Along a Curious Dimension
National Maritime Museum, 2009
352 Pages
£14.99
ISBN 978-1906367190
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Canadian science writer Dan Falk’s decision to base his latest book, In Search of Time: Journeys Along a Curious Dimension, on the subject of time is either cheeky or downright foolhardy; reading through this work, the troubling tautologies arising from any meaningful discussion of this slippery subject quickly become apparent. Falk’s method is to offer brief glimpses into what disciplines as varied as geology, archaeology, anthropology, cosmology, and neuroscience have to say about time. In undertaking this interdisciplinary project, Falk cheerfully subjects readers to various forms of mental time travel, finding time as well for a discussion of timepieces and the burden of legacy they impose on posterity.
Falk’s main concern is to trace our changing relationship with the measurement of time. From scanning the skies and reading the motion of the sun to glancing at the digital display on ubiquitous mobile devices, and from uncovering history in rock formations to detecting traces of the cosmological past by directing telescopes at distant galaxies, the spatial dimension of time proves considerable. In an interview with Falk, mathematical physicist Roger Penrose urges the scientific community to reconsider the need for a physical model of the universe with a built-in time asymmetry reflecting nature’s “arrows of time”. Even the Western world’s fixations with the linearity of time and with the artifacts of civilization’s progress reflect a complex geo-temporal framework.
More fascinating than pendulums and quartz oscillators, though, is the organic time the ancient Maya cherished and strove to keep in tune. Indeed, the modern redefinition of organic time (prompted by scientists’ realization that the length of a day varies over time)—from 1/86,400 of a mean solar day to 9,192,631,770 vibrations of the cesium 133 atom—underscores the choice we have between reading time in the context of nature’s cycles or imposing time, with ever-increasing accuracy, onto these movements in the heavens.
While Falk masterfully works his way through the heavy, quantifiable time of natural science, the more abstract notion of psychological time seems to elude him, threatening to float away from him the very second he begins investigating its ethereal properties. But notwithstanding the elusive and (arguably) illusory nature of the topic, Falk’s presentation is vivid and unfaltering, suggesting that there may yet be a way to reconcile what we subconsciously know about time with what we can confidently say about it.
Monic Radhika Gupta graduated in 2009 with an MSt in English Literature from Merton College, Oxford.
