The hands of a clock go around and round. They move unendingly along the circumference of the clock-face in a continuous repetition or they move eternally along an infinite line. But that is not how we experience time. While clock-time tends to be seen as a steady, external, mechanical, objective movement, in contrast, the movement of subjective time which is the opposite and manifests itself as immediate internal experience is not some kind of stuff like the sand in an hour-glass that we can measure. Time is rather an enigmatic cosmic phenomenon that started with the big bang, some 13.8 billion years ago, or so to speak: with the beginning of time. This pure explosive mobility that started the expansion of the universe set in motion the entropic processes of dark energy that seem to be pushing space apart into the ever-widening extension of complexities and thus speeding up the growth of the universe as it is known now in time. But it is hard to find words to describe time. Time is not a relation like gravity or an entity like matter. As the cosmologist Sean Carroll says, “we cannot fill a container with a cup of time.” And when we say that we have to travel a short or a long time, or when we say that the time it takes to go for a walk or a hike is two hours long, we actually express or describe time in terms of spatial measurements: length, distance, presence or absence as in having no time left.
When we check what time it is, when we look at the time on the screen of our watch, the face of the clock or of some other time piece, we temporarily step out of time. While looking at the clock which tells us that, right now, it is ten minutes past three, we seem to be simultaneously confirming and denying the reality of this “now” moment of time. We have to step outside of time to observe the time (because, ironically, we cannot live it and observe it at the same time).
Selected Readings:
Bergson, H. (1899). Le Rire: Essay sur la Signification du Comique. Paris: Revue de Paris.
Bergson, H. (1955). An Introduction to Metaphysics. New York: Macmillan.
Bergson, H. (1991). Matter and Memory. New York: Zone Books.
Bergson, H. (2001). Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. New York: Dover Publications.
Bergson, H. (2005). Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. New York: Dover Publications.