Our first class of time covered the introduction and interpretation of time. I learnt that time is Scientific and Philosophical at large. The definition of time has been interpreted differently over the years by people who belonged to completely different eras and cultures. For example, the Egyptians said that time was either linear or cyclical, the Greeks claimed that time can be divided in five main phases: 1. Age of the titans, 2. Driven by the gods of Olympus, 3. Age of Demi-gods (Hercules),4. Age of Heroes (Achilles), 5. Age of man.
Newton’s understanding of time fascinated me because it left a visual imagery in my mind. He felt that time was like a river, which would slow down on the bends and then speed up.
Further, we spoke about the Hippie movement which made me realise that the hippie culture dates back to the 60s; Sahelanthropus is the the missing link between humans and apes; Yuri Gagarin was not the first man to visit space, it was actually a group of Russians. These are some of interesting discussion that I could register.
I had seen the practice of loading a bullet into one chamber of a revolver, spinning the cylinder, and then pulling the trigger while pointing the gun at one’s own head in movies and this class taught me that it is termed as Russian roulette. I was intrigued by the practice of decimation where every tenth man in a group was executed by members of his cohort as a punishment for the mistakes he had made during war.
There are a lot of things that I had just heard about but the this class made me understand why and how those incidents took place. Initially, I felt lost because the class was all about discussions on various topics and I was unable to connect them together but then I understood that the main motive of the class was help us identify abstraction, relate and draw inspiration from past events in order to open up our minds to think beyond the horizons.
Sirina’s blog 