The absence of the time variable from the fundamental equations, as discussed in Part Two, is plausible—but on the form of these equations debate still rages. The origin of time pertaining to quantum noncommutativity, of thermal time, and the fact that the increase in entropy which we observe depends on our interaction with the universe are ideas that I find fascinating but are far from being confirmed or widely accepted.
What is entirely credible, in any case, is the general fact that the temporal structure of the world is different from the naïve image that we have of it. This naïve image is suitable for our daily life, but it’s not suitable for understanding the world in its minute folds, or in its vastness. In all likelihood, it is not even sufficient for understanding our own nature, because the mystery of time intersects with the mystery of our personal identity, with the mystery of consciousness.
The mystery of time has always troubled us, stirring deep emotions. So deep as to have nourished philosophies and religions.
I believe, as Hans Reichenbach suggests in one of the most lucid books on the nature of time, The Direction of Time, that it was in order to escape from the anxiety time causes us that Parmenides wanted to deny its existence, that Plato imagined a world of ideas that exist outside of it, and that Hegel speaks of the moment in which the Spirit transcends temporality and knows itself in its plenitude. It is in order to escape this anxiety that we have imagined the existence of “eternity,” a strange world outside of time that we would like to be inhabited by gods, by a God, or by immortal souls.* Our deeply emotional attitude toward time has contributed more to the construction of cathedrals of philosophy than has logic or reason. The opposite emotional attitude, the veneration of time—Heraclitus or Bergson—has given rise to just as many philosophies, without getting us any nearer to understanding what time is.
Physics helps us to penetrate layers of the mystery. It shows how the temporal structure of the world is different from our perception of it. It gives us the hope of being able to study the nature of time free from the fog caused by our emotions.
But in our search for time, advancing increasingly away from ourselves, we have ended up by discovering something about ourselves, perhaps—just as Copernicus, by studying the movements of the heavens, ended up understanding how the Earth moved beneath his feet. Perhaps, ultimately, the emotional dimension of time is not the film of mist that prevents us from apprehending the nature of time objectively.
Perhaps the emotion of time is precisely what time is for us.
I don’t think there is much more than this to be understood. We may ask further questions, but we should be careful with questions that it is not possible to formulate properly. When we have found all the aspects of time that can be spoken of, then we have found time. We may gesture clumsily toward an immediate sense of time beyond what we can articulate (“Fine, but why does it ‘pass’?”), but I believe that at this point we are merely confusing matters, attempting illegitimately to transform approximate words into things. When we cannot formulate a problem with precision, it is often not because the problem is profound: it’s because the problem is false.
Will we be able to understand things better in the future? I think so. Our understanding of nature has increased vertiginously over the course of centuries, and we are continuing to learn. We are glimpsing something about the mystery of time. We can see the world without time: we can perceive with the mind’s eye the profound structure of the world where time as we know it no longer exists—like the Fool on the Hill who sees the Earth turn when he sees the setting sun. And we begin to see that we are time. We are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia. We are longing for a future that will not come. The clearing that is opened up in this way, by memory and by anticipation, is time: a source of anguish sometimes, but in the end a tremendous gift.
A precious miracle that the infinite play of combinations has unlocked for us, allowing us to exist. We may smile now. We can go back to serenely immersing ourselves in time—in our finite time—to savoring the clear intensity of every fleeting and cherished moment of the brief circle of our existence.
THE SISTER OF SLEEP
The brief arc of our days,
O Sestius,
prevents us from launching
prolonged hopes. (I, 4)
In the third part of the great Indian epic the Mahābhārata, a powerful spirit named Yaksa asks the oldest and wisest of the Pandava, Yudhistira, what is the greatest of all mysteries. The answer given resounds across millennia: “Every day countless people die, and yet those who remain live as if they were immortals.”128
I would not wish to live as if I were immortal. I do not fear death. I fear suffering. And I fear old age, though less so now that I am witnessing the tranquil and pleasant old age of my father. I am afraid of frailty, and of the absence of love. But death does not alarm me. It did not scare me when I was young, and I thought at the time that this was because it was such a remote prospect. But now, at sixty, the fear has yet to arrive. I love life, but life is also struggle, suffering, pain. I think of death as akin to a well-earned rest. The sister of sleep, Bach calls it, in his marvelous cantata BWV 56. A kindly sister, who will come quickly to close my eyes and caress my head.
Job died when he was “full of days.” It’s a wonderful expression. I, too, would like to arrive at the point of feeling “full of days,” and to close with a smile the brief circle that is our life. I can still take pleasure in it, yes; still enjoy the moon reflected on the sea, the kisses of the woman I love, her presence that gives meaning to everything; still savor those Sunday afternoons at home in winter, lying on the sofa filling pages with symbols and formulae, dreaming of capturing another small secret from among the thousands that still surround us. . . . I like to look forward to still tasting from this golden chalice, to life that is teeming, both tender and hostile, clear and inscrutable, unexpected. . . . But I have already drunk deep of the bittersweet contents of this chalice, and if an angel were to come for me right now, saying, “Carlo, it’s time,” I would not ask to be left even long enough to finish this sentence. I would just smile up at him and follow.
Our fear of death seems to me to be an error of evolution. Many animals react instinctively with terror and flight at the approach of a predator. It is a healthy reaction, one that allows them to escape from danger. But it’s a terror that lasts an instant, not something that remains with them constantly. Natural selection has produced these big apes with hypertrophic frontal lobes, with an exaggerated ability to predict the future. It’s a prerogative that’s certainly useful but one that has placed before us a vision of our inevitable death, and this triggers the instinct of terror and flight. Basically, I believe that the fear of death is the result of an accidental and clumsy interference between two distinct evolutionary pressures—the product of bad automatic connections in our brain rather than something that has any use or meaning. Everything has a limited duration, even the human race itself. (“The Earth has lost its youthfulness; it is past, like a happy dream. Now every day brings us closer to destruction, to desert,” as Vyasa has it in the Mahābhārata.129) Fearing the transition, being afraid of death, is like being afraid of reality itself; like being afraid of the sun. Whatever for?