We are about to embark on another journey around the Sun.
It is not a ‘rerun’. It really is a ‘new’ year… a new time slice
Newton thought that ‘time’ was some sort of axis, outside of the world, against which we could position ourselves.
Einstein showed that this was wrong… that ‘time’ was part of out world in the same sense that ‘space’ is
Paul Davies explains it better than me
Einstein’s concept of space-time is profoundly different … our journey around the sun is a line in 4D space-time … and it never repeats itself … time always flows … we do not stand still.
We went for centuries thinking the world was static. There is an historical account
had so much controversy because it showed that species change… and that was in the 1800’s.
We now accept that everything changes. The New Year really is ‘new’ and we shall be different by the end of it.
Cardinal Newman famously observed
“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often”
Newman pre-dated Darwin. He was being religious, of course, but it shows that there were clear thinkers who recognized change, long before the general population did.
So, I suppose that is what resolutions are about. The practice is ancient… apparently the Babylonians made new year resolutions… to their Gods. Today we make practical resolutions. Resolutions are at least a recognition that we can change.
The key thing about resolutions is that they are personal.
Ronald Knox said it clearly
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world,”
meaning that inspiring changes start within oneself.
A really clever question. … not sure I am up to it.
I think maybe because of our self-awareness.
“The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than mere survival.” Aristotle
Most other species are only interested in mere survival. “We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life .” Carl Jung
“One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.”
G. K. Chesterton
We clutter our lives with obsessions… including obsession with “time”
I need to qualify that statement. It is the position of the three major monotheistic religions ( Judaism, Islam and Christianity) . It is also the scientific position … time was created by the ‘big-bang’. I am unsure about other religions.
Time is currently base 60. So is rotation. It comes from the Babylonians whose number system was base 60… that is right they had 60 digits instead of ten.
Those metric revolutionaries in the 1960’s got cold feet when it came to changing time.
That is a great illustration of a space-time curve
and
it reinforces Einstein’s point that motion is relative
Our galaxy also moves relative to other galaxies, and all galaxies are moving away from the point of the supposed big-bang.
