The Psychology of Time.

Sounds interesting...who's the author?

wasn't it in great expectations? dicken's?

mite be way off here....

Oh...if that's what she was talking about then I've read it too. That would be a good one to re-read. I remember thinking that Mrs. Haversham (sp?) was so creepy and sad...that character was sort of mystical in my little 13 year-old mind. I wonder, reading it as an adult, if my perception of her would change because my own view of time has changed?

dlowan have you re-read it as an adult?

so was it dickens? i remember reading it to my kids, bits and pieces if it's the same one dlowan was talking about. they loved it

"Pip Pip" - by Jay Griffiths.

Just searched the barnes and Noble website for you - no luck. I wonder if it is in the USA yet? Is that where you are?

Yep, I'm in the US. I couldn't find it at Amazon, but looks like another of his books "Sideways Look at Time" is offered there.

aha - Pip Pip is available in Great Britain and Australia - you could order it easliy, if you wished.

Pip is, indeed, the protaganist of "Great Expectations" - but pip pip is from the BBC time signal, I believe. (We had pips in Oz, too!)

so there was a pip in great expactations too?...

i just looked thru my stack and all i could find was oliver twist.

i'm on a mission now, i just called my daughter....she'll be furious at me for calling at this hour.

So what does "Pip Pip" say about the psychology of time?

I always wanted to be like miss havisham ever since I was a little girl!

Phoenix;

I hope you were trying to be funny; otherwise you have a severe reality "gap" to deal with! (I broke up )

Fresco; your technical tour de force, albeit 'borrowed' is also a source of severe chuckles - tp = (((1/*age)*5k)* tc) i love it; the fact that it is entirely, and wantonly invented, (from the air, so to speak)
surely should not detract from its accuracy!

I rather think that time is time, and an hour of it at age sixty, is very similar to an hour at twentyfive, or for that matter, at two.
But i would subscribe to Craven's percentage perspective; the more time you have encountered, the more you are likely to minimize its importance as being 'the rest of your life'!

Crikey! I have only read a weeny bit of it -and promptly lost it.

It was looking at different cultures' conception of and relationship with time when it disappeared.

Bo and All

Yes - I too had a good laugh at this "discursive" use of a mathematical model !

"Time" being subject to "measurement" leads to other interesting peudo-mathematical considerations. For example not only does time appear to be psychologically "non-linear" but it seems to be almost "helical". For example when we are on vaction in some new location, previous years locations seem pretty recent. But when we are not on vacation, these locations and their details seem to fade into history.

Perhaps we have separate "memory paths" in the brain running on different time scales.

Another interesting question is about cultures whose languages don't discriminate between past and future as we do. (I think may be Hopi which is an example with only "the now" versus "the not now"). A very interesting concept of time !

I've been reading about how it seems to be psychologically easier for people to view time as circular, even in western cultures, for example through belief in destiny or fate -- "Everything happens for a reason." So in retirement, I wonder if thinking of time as linear -- having a beginning and an end -- would make it seem to go by faster than if time was thought of as being circular? Or vice versa -- although I think one reason that time seems to fly (maybe) as we get older is that we see an end through linear thinking and try to fight it. The concept of "the now" vs "the not now" seems circular, as it doesn't acknowledge either a beginning or an end.

Fresco;

I look at the brain in a metaphorically computerlike manner, that i find most often seems to work well.

memory works as do buffers; containing information already retrieved from disk (the 'inner' limits), ready to be utilized, altered, augmented, erased.

Thus even within the confines of the brain, information that the brain's 'processor' (you) feels is currently applicable, being 'available' in this buffer, would seem more accessible; nearer (in time, perhaps) than more 'remote' ideas.

Thus catalogued information might seem artificially compressed or closer to the present, temporally, than unrelated archive 'stuff'. (Thus the 'vacation' effect!)

And Liberty;

as for the linear/circular nature of time, i think we could look at 'local' time as infinitely small quanta of a continuum, helping to define relationships between events in an orderly fashion, but on a larger scale fully maleable as to direction, and speed.
As you may have read elswhere, i see time as a measurement device defining relationships between objects in the universe as it is 'happening'.

LibertyD

I agree that there is an essence of determinism in "the now " versus "the not now" since this implies no distiction between "causal" and "teleological" (goal directed) explanation. Such cultures (as the Hopi) are also heavily into the spirit world which may have a powerful influence over perceived reality.

I should add however that the above is influenced my my own tendency towards the "Whorf -Sapir hypothesis" (languge influences perception of reality) and is tangential and simplistic with repect to the psychology of time.

Proust explored time and its influence on how our lives are structured. The book and film "The Hours" was Proust inspired more than Virginia Woolf inspired. I believe we concentrate on the passing of time more when we get older so it seems to pass more quickly. However, I have memories of years of my youth that seemed to go by in a flash. Ah, well, I am embarking on a re-reading of Proust (a heavy task indeed!)

BoGoWo



I was dead serious, thoughI must admit, a bit droll[/color][/b]!

BoGoWo



I was dead serious, though I must admit, feeling a bit droll at the time!

HOW DROLL! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHEEEEEHOOOHEEHA HUH UM HA HOOEE HUh.!