Untrodden paths
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Andrei: Well, I understand your analogy. But it applies to space, it’s hard to comprehend how Time can be the universal measure in such a case.
Victor: Don’t we measure cosmic space by light years?
Andrei: Well, that’s the Cosmos…
Victor: Don’t we measure the distance to a nearby bus-stop or a kiosk by how many minutes it takes us to walk there?
Andrei: Sure, but we imply an average distance that we cover in a minute. Besides, one can compare only things of the same quality. Space and Time are totally different entities which, as far as I know, have not even been precisely defined.
Victor: Quite right! It’s this absence of precise definition, or rather understanding of the nature of these things which in our minds makes them qualitatively different, incomparable. But these differences are relative…
As I’ve already said, the character of one’s perception depends on the speed, frequency of perception. Depending on its speed, the picture of the perceived thing can range from chaotic to dynamic or static.
If our perception of a thing or a process produces a picture of chaos, it means that in the multitude of the picture’s elements our mind failed to find anything familiar, repetitive.
If our mind begins to single out and recognize as recurring these or those periodically appearing and disappearing elements, a dynamic picture will emerge. A stable periodicity of such repetitions is generally considered as Time.
Naturally, this stable repetitive element must be vital to the observer. I mean whatever gadgets we might invent to measure time: mechanical, electronic, or atomic clocks – the Sun and the Moon will remain as the defining measure of all our life cycles.
If we are to give a brief scientific definition, then Time is a result of a juxtaposition of two frequencies, with the received fraction being periodical.
Andrei: What, again frequencies-amplitudes, again physics?
Victor: Yes, what I’ve done, in effect, is pure physics, where Space and Time are simply ways of arranging, interpreting information, a set of stereotypes.
Andrei: Isn’t your work yet another stereotype?
Victor: It is, but more precise, detailed and therefore of greater practical value.
Andrei: It’s funny to discuss the stereotype of Time in the institution where even possession of instruments for measuring it is strictly prohibited.
Victor: You mean watches?
Andrei: Well, maybe not just them. I guess I mean there must be some missing link in your logical chain, or to put it plainly, you must have gone astray somewhere somehow. Anyway that’s the conclusion all my knowledge and personal experience would rather lead to, unless my knowledge and personal experience are patently insufficient to understand your point. If I follow your logic correctly, the pattern, the path of our development is not determined by the resulting sum of internal and external forces, but by Time?
Victor: Quite right. It’s Time which determines these things, both the array of forces, and the pattern, the path of development of both animate and inanimate worlds. As for your reservation that my statements contradict your knowledge and experience, I’m afraid one has to conclude that you, my friend, have not yet acquired even the humblest of knowledge and experience which Ecclesiastes used to have, to observe that everything happens in its good time; that there’s time for birth and time for death, time for killing and time for healing.
Andrei: Time for sorrow and time for joy. Yes, that was a clever move to put me down, considering that
Ecclesiastes is the only author in the Old Testament I have any regard for. But, to tell you the truth, I’ve always regarded him as a great lyricist and viewed this passage as lyrics, not as physics. You seem to have a physicist’s point of view on everything, resorting here and there to physical terms, did you study physics?
Victor: On the contrary, the education I received two decades ago graduating from a conservatory is rather of a lyrics than a physics nature. Until my enlightenment I used to be a musician and played with the
Moscow philharmonic orchestra.
Andrei: Why did you quit? A musician in a philharmonic orchestra is an excellent job.
Victor: Because
Well, concerning my choice of physical terms, I must stress that if you seek to explain something, you should choose the language which can offer us its most succinct description. And physics can offer us the most precise picture of our present-day reality. Of course, this language should be comprehensible to the audience you address. But you seem familiar with physics’ basics?
Andrei: Yes, quite. I simply cannot understand how a musician…
Victor: could grasp the language of physics? It’s the result of lengthy practice of yoga, of work with one’s own body and mind. You see, neither our body nor mind differs in any way from the rest of physical instruments, except that they are more complex. It’s only natural that I in my work come to the same conclusions which physics make, that’s why I use their language.
Andrei: Funny thing: yoga has always been regarded as an idealistic, religious teaching, while you are proving to be a rabid physical materialist.
Victor: I’m neither. Idealism – materialism are simply points of view, instruments, say, kind of glasses we use to look at the world, some glasses we select are good for reading newspapers; others are good for watching TV. Religion starts where knowledge in its impotence gives way to faith, reason to morals and ethics; the borderline between them is always relative and conditional.
Bachkov, approaching: Sunbathing?
Andrei: What else is there to do? I guess we’ll have to spend the rest of the holiday season here.