The passage of time and finiteness are basic human experiences. What a person experiences, he experiences in time.” This is how the physicist Helmut Fink sums it up. Together with the perception psychologist Rainer Rosenzweig, he has published a brilliant popular science anthology on the tricky fourth dimension. In it, twelve philosophers and scientists approach this complex topic at a high level in ten easily understandable chapters that can be read independently of one another.
Although consciousness is temporal through and through, time is one of the greatest mysteries. It is an abstract ordering relationship, not a physical stimulus that can be perceived like light or sound. After all, studies have already discovered how and where processes take place in the brain that are fundamental, for example, for internal clocks and the estimation of time spans, for the perception of external movements and one’s own actions, for memory (past) and expectation or planning (future). A “mental arrow of time” is formed by spatial concepts that are partly astonishingly universal – the past is “behind”, the future “forward” – but partly also depend on the culture, especially the direction of reading (time flow to the “left” or “right”). The book provides exciting insights into this topic and is highly recommended as an introductory overview. So it is worth taking the time to read about time. Rüdiger Vaas
Helmut Fink, Rainer Rosenzweig (eds.)
Time – Mind – Brain
Neuroscience and time experience
Kortizes, 187 p., € 19,80
ISBN 978-3-948787-07-3