美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Why Time Flies' Investigates How Humans Experience Time

 

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: 

Time, according to a couple of studies, is the most commonly used noun in the English language. I learned that from reading Alan Burdick's new book, "Why Time Flies," a study of time that he calls a mostly scientific investigation¹. Alan Burdick, thanks for joining us today.

ALAN BURDICK: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

SIEGEL: And this inquiry² into the nature of time is, you should explain, mostly scientific because it's also philosophical³ and it's also a lot about watching your twin sons grow up.

BURDICK: Yeah, that's right. It - you know, something had to happen in this book, and what happened was a lot of time passing and watching my kids get older.

SIEGEL: You examine time in a very granular way, getting down to the shortest possible time spans we can imagine. But you're also talking about long spans of time and are trying to - you're trying to hold on to the times of dealing⁴ with your twin boys. Same thing - we're talking about time in both cases?

BURDICK: Yeah. You know, really one of the first things that I learned about time - I mean, I would go around to scientists and ask them - what is time exactly? And they would all turn it around on me and say, well, what do you mean by time? The point being that what we call time is actually a lot of different experiences. It's understanding what the time of day is, but it's also understanding the difference between before and after.

So watching my kids grow, I realized it was very much an experience of me educating them about what time is. Not just, you know, how do you tell time, but what does it mean to wait? What does it mean to hurry up? These are all experiences that we learn, that we exchange with each other and kind of convey as a culture to the next generation.

SIEGEL: One question that sums up much of what you write about is what is the meaning of now? Now that I've finished posing that question, it's already in the past. Your answer is about to depart the future and join it in the past. So after all of your investigations⁵, what is the present? What is now?

BURDICK: If you were to ask St. Augustine, Augustine would say that there is only now. There's no past, present and future. There's only your current awareness⁶ of the past, which is your memory. And there's only your current awareness of the future, which is expectation. And there's only your current awareness of the present, which is your attention. Everything is present for him.

SIEGEL: Now, once we think we have a grip on what the present is, we then encounter some experimental work in psychology⁷ that's been done that challenges our very ideas. And there's experiment that I'd like you to describe. I found this fascinating. The subjects of the experiment struck a computer keypad to produce a flash in a box on a screen. And at some point, they experienced the illusion that the flash preceded their keystroke, that the cause actually came after the effect. Describe that.

BURDICK: You know, your brain - our brains do a lot of work to kind of hide what you might call reality from us. So, you know, every time you type, for instance, on a computer keyboard there's actually about a 35-millisecond delay between you pressing a key on the keypad and that letter appearing on the screen. But as far as your brain is concerned, it happens instantaneously. There's no gap. It's actually been shown that your brain can sustain about a tenth-of-a-second delay between your action and its consequence.

SIEGEL: You still think it's instantaneous.

BURDICK: You still think it's instantaneous. David Eagleman, a neuroscientist who's now at Stanford, rigged up this experiment where he had a mouse and you could move this mouse around to various spots on the screen. You'd click the mouse and it would move to the next spot. And what he did is he sort of trained you to expect a 100-millisecond delay between your click and the thing moving. And after a while, you just didn't notice it. And then he removed the 100-millisecond delay. And the weird⁸ thing is once that delay is removed, your brain is so expecting a 100-millisecond delay that it seems as though the cursor has moved before you've clicked the mouse.

SIEGEL: In effect, during that earlier clicking our brain is calibrating⁹ to make that feel like now, like instantaneous.

BURDICK: That's exactly right, yeah. And your brain is doing this calibrating all the time. And it can be fooled. And when I did it, I have to say it was funny and really eerie¹⁰.

SIEGEL: I mean, clearly you write this book - this is a narrative¹¹, and your personal experience is interwoven with what you're learning about the study of time. Clearly, at some point, time became a - is obsession¹² too weak or strong a word to use for you, or a preoccupation?

BURDICK: A preoccupation. It was a bit like peering into the bottom of existence. I mean, man, it got really existential (laughter) for a while. You can't really talk about the perception of time and the perception of now without addressing somehow consciousness. My ability to perceive a present is very wrapped up in my ability to perceive a self. And yeah, you know, I spent, like, 10 years peering into that well, and came out of it and felt like I had a long white beard and flying cars were flying through the sky.

SIEGEL: Alan Burdick. Thanks a lot for talking with us about time and about your book, "Why Time Flies."

BURDICK: Thanks for having me.

1 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

2 inquiry   

n.打听，询问，调查，查问

参考例句：

• Many parents have been pressing for an inquiry into the problem.许多家长迫切要求调查这个问题。
• The field of inquiry has narrowed down to five persons.调查的范围已经缩小到只剩5个人了。

3 philosophical   

adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的

参考例句：

• The teacher couldn't answer the philosophical problem.老师不能解答这个哲学问题。
• She is very philosophical about her bad luck.她对自己的不幸看得很开。

4 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

5 investigations   

（正式的）调查( investigation的名词复数 )； 侦查； 科学研究； 学术研究

参考例句：

• His investigations were intensive and thorough but revealed nothing. 他进行了深入彻底的调查，但没有发现什么。
• He often sent them out to make investigations. 他常常派他们出去作调查。

6 awareness   

n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智

参考例句：

• There is a general awareness that smoking is harmful.人们普遍认识到吸烟有害健康。
• Environmental awareness has increased over the years.这些年来人们的环境意识增强了。

7 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

8 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

9 calibrating   

v.校准( calibrate的现在分词 )；使标准化；使合标准；测量（枪的）口径

参考例句：

• The value of the threshold strain is determined by calibrating the coating. 阈值应变的数值是靠对涂层进行标定测出来的。 来自辞典例句
• Dewpoint hygrometers provide an absolute measurement of humidity and therefore are essentially self-calibrating. 露点湿度计可提供湿度的绝对量测值，因此它基本上是自动标定的。 来自辞典例句

10 eerie   

adj.怪诞的；奇异的；可怕的；胆怯的

参考例句：

• It's eerie to walk through a dark wood at night.夜晚在漆黑的森林中行走很是恐怖。
• I walked down the eerie dark path.我走在那条漆黑恐怖的小路上。

11 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。

12 obsession   

n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感)

参考例句：

• I was suffering from obsession that my career would be ended.那时的我陷入了我的事业有可能就此终止的困扰当中。
• She would try to forget her obsession with Christopher.她会努力忘记对克里斯托弗的迷恋。