Podcast: ‘The Infinite Monkey Cage’ . Episode: ‘Does Time Exist?’ 06/07/2020
I frequently listen to this podcast so I was really excited when they made an episode reflecting the very subject i had been studying! Time! Obviously this will be from a more academic and comedic standpoint, as opposed to the references to art that i have been researching. The podcast invites physicists and comedians together to discuss a different subject each week. The podcast itself is hosted by professor Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince.
In this episode, they initially discuss the concept I have just been introduced to; understanding what time is. Understanding it, as scientists Carlo Rovelli and Fay Dowker discuss, depends on how we individually explore it with our own knowledge and experiences. The discussion delves into ideas that time is an illusion and Einstein's theory of relativity and time being a sequence of temporary events, ‘we experience one thing after another’.
There is a comparison between experiencing time from our own perspectives, ageing and death for example, and intellectually how we study it from scientific perspectives for example the theory of a multiverse.
Among a lot of scientific debates there are many interesting points that helped me to reflect on time as a subject in itself. They discuss time as being divided between ‘past’ and ‘future’ and how it can be understood as a direction, for example Fay Dowker expresses that the ‘past is real and the future is not’, that is to say that the past is real and memorable and tangible because its happened where as the future doesn't exist until its already happened and it then becomes the past. We can account for a perspective of time because we see things such as ice melting and things going from hot to cold over time.
There is also a reference to a play by Nigel Neil in the 1960s, the play has since been lost but the concept was that of a ‘backwards haunting’. This is a really exciting creative work, where the plot twist at the end reveals that the 18th century characters were in fact being haunted by ghosts of the future. The ghosts were revealed as being on a motorway during sirens alerting of a nuclear bomb, a very real threat during times of the A Bomb for example.
Toward the end of the podcast, an interesting idea was brought up by professor Brian Cox from his view as a physicist. He states that his death is plotted somewhere in terms of space time, with coordinates to locate it. This is an unsurprising perspective from someone known famously for their documentaries about space exploration. It's also a complete opposite view of time to that of Fay Dowker, as previously mentioned. Given that two highly qualified specialists in this area have such contrasting opinions truly goes to show how time is subjective and, as stated in the podcast, perceived by individuals. Robin Ince comments that we are all a collection of different timeline’s, which leads me to really consider the artworks I have studied in this section of the course. Their art could be considered a direct representation of their own experience of time. Even if they based it upon their experiences and education, or facts they came to learn about time, it's still an expression of their views on time.
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