Why Time Flies

As time warps and bends in the COVID era, I got curious about why we perceive time as we do. Reading Alan Burdick's Why Time Flies provides some of the answers. Burdick examines time through the eyes of philosophers, biologists, historians, neurobiologists and bureaucrats. It's a wide-ranging account that, in just 258 pages, answers questions like:

- Who establishes the world's official time and how?

- What drives our circadian clocks?  (The etymology of circadian, by the way, is the Latin circa -- approximately -- and an alternate spelling of diem -- day.)

- When someone goes into a dark cave for four months how does the body's clock adjust and why?

- Does time really slow down when you are falling, or heading into a fender-bender?  

- Why does time seem to go faster as we get older?

As interesting as the answers to the questions above are, equally interesting is Burdick's discussion of the experiments designed to address them. How do we step out of our own perceptions to become objective reporters of how we experience time? 

As Burdick writes, "we're accustomed to thinking that the brain's main job is to help us think. The brain is essential to that task, but ultimately what it does is help us to anticipate, to move, and to select the best movement for whatever situation the body faces in the moment." It's a new perspective on our reason for being. And Burdick's book can give you an interesting awareness of how you experience time.

Review of Why Time Flies, by Alan Burdick, Simon and Schuster, 2017

Lisa Frusztajer