Chapter 11. Time coding
There is no such thing as ‘time’ – it cannot be seen and touched, like distance or weight can. It is not possible to look to the future in the way that you can look to the horizon, so we quantify time by representing events using a linear system called a calendar. You cannot hold time like you can hold a bag of potatoes. You think about it in your mind, see it with a diary, and use your wristwatch to inform you of the present by way of a number system. Time is not a ‘thing’ but a concept or, perhaps more accurately, a metaphor, given the number of analogies we have to describe time, such as ‘killing time’, ‘time to waste’, ‘time on your side’.
In Chapter 4, ‘time’ was introduced as a filter on our experience (see also
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