Music Education Modern

The laws of physics do not recognize the arrow of time, at least on the micro or quantum scale. The fundamental particles do not age. Their interactions can proceed in either time direction – past to present to future, or, future to present to past. Since the macro (like us), is made up of the micro, how come we age? Macro relationships often tend to be unidirectional, past to present to future only, what we call time’s arrow or the arrow of time.

Make a film. Run it backwards. That’s what I call a pseudo time reversal thought experiment. We’ve all seen them. They are usually funny, not so much funny ha-ha, but funny peculiar. So, at what point do you go from a viewing where there’s ‘nothing strange happening here’, to ‘that’s possible’ to ‘that’s odd’ to ‘that’s really weird and highly improbable’ to ultimately ‘that’s impossible’. Or, at what point do you go from acceptance of what you are seeing, albeit back-to-front, to suspecting a time reversal, to knowing you’re watching a film backwards, and are their any generalities that can be drawn from this? Let’s look at some ordinary examples.

There’s a man sitting in his living room with the lights on, crossing and uncrossing his legs. Reverse the film – no anomaly. The man now picks up a book and reads it from front to back. Reverse the film – It’s now slightly odd in that the book is being read from back to front. The lights go out. Reverse the film and the lights come on – nothing strange. The lights go out and the man picks up a flashlight and turns it on. Reverse the film – this is very strange as the light from the flashlight is instead now entering the flashlight from somewhere stage left (or right). The lights come back on and the man lights up a cigar and smokes it. Reverse the film – Now you absolutely know the film is the reverse because the cigar smoke and ash turns into cigar which grows ever longer! Read the rest of this entry »