Buried in an arctic mountainside in Norway is the Global Music Vault, a digital data storage facility that is designed to preserve selections of musical culture long into the future. Lasers shoot nanosecond bursts of code into glass, which neither decays nor interacts with anything else. So durable is glass encased in ice, says Gareth Mitchell, host of BBC’s Digital Planet podcast, that this musical data can be preserved for “an unimaginable amount of time”.
What does it mean to refer to “an unimaginable amount of time”? Colloquially, it might mean that one can’t be sure just how long such an archive will last. A thousand years? Forever? More generally and of greater philosophical interest, it raises the question of how and whether great durations of time can be held in mind at all. It also prompts reflection about what it might mean to imagine time—putting it literally, to have an image of time—in the first place.
One approach to the unimaginable is by way of classic theories of the sublime, as sublime objects escape full grasp inasmuch as their size exceeds that which can be contained in an image. We know that there are things in the world that are too mammoth to perceive in their entirety, which makes them resistant to mental representation or (to use Lyotard’s term) unpresentable. The typical examples of sublime objects advanced by philosophers such as Kant and Burke are physical objects of great power and magnitude, and I think some similar observations can be made about the epistemic elusiveness of vast spans of time.
The word imagination can mean several things. In this discussion the term does not refer to the ability to create something, as with the notion of artistic imagination. Rather, it is a kind of perceptual grasp of an object of attention. In earlier philosophical literature, that could mean perceiving an object in its entirety, getting the image of a whole thing in a single view, as with seeing an apple or a tree. In current discourse, it also connotes the ability to summon to mind a mental image of something that is not present. The senses of the term are connected, the idea being that what can be perceived completely in the moment can also be summoned as a mental image—conjuring a mental picture as though one were reenacting a perceptual experience. Mental imagery is typically considered sensory imagery, such as imagining a rose or a pear, although this phenomenon is not limited to vision. One can hold in mind a tune, a texture, a scent, a taste. (The condition of aphantasia, the inability to form mental images at all, is rare, and most people are pretty adept with visual and auditory images, although the ability to conjure up images from the bodily senses is less common.)
Of course, we don’t perceive time with any of the senses (at least the five external senses), although we do have what one could call a subjective sense of time, an idea of how long an event lasts or how long it takes to do something. Subjective time can be erratic, as sometimes relatively short periods seem endless (boredom enhances this) or longer periods go by in a flash. Think, for example, of the rapt concentration of an extended shot in a film that seems to go on for longer than it actually does. Or the phenomenon of tachypsychia, where under sudden duress time seems to slow. Experiences such as these seem to stretch longer than a clock would confirm, and reciprocally, time flies when you’re having fun. However, to consider the apprehension of the long duration that reaches into the unimaginable, we need to set aside subjective impressions in favor of understanding how and whether we form a “grasp” of very long durations.
Although imagining time of any length at all is different from summoning a sensory picture to mind, we can imagine an event that takes place over time, such as thinking about walking from home to school. Probably it takes less time to imagine that stroll than it would to actually traverse the distance, but it is fair to say that we are summoning a mental recreation of temporal duration. What are the limits of temporal imagination? What makes an amount of time “unimaginable”?
There are a number of aides that, in a sense, help us to “picture” time, to form a sense of intervals relevant to a task, a memory, or a period of history. A clock ticking away its minutes reminds one how long it takes to get to an appointment; an old calendar coordinated with a set of photographs vivifies images of a summer a decade before; an artifact sitting in a museum exhibit inspires marvel at the hands that held it in ages past; ancient circles of standing stones challenge one to imagine how very long ago our ancestors managed such feats of engineering. Symbolic representations also help, such as a timeline that situates known events in relative historical order. In these sorts of cases, one might form a mental image of something as a touchstone for attempting to comprehend a certain temporal duration.
The above scenarios assume a framework of human history, but there is a vaster and more difficult zone of time that is apt to stymie the imagination of all but the most sophisticated mathematicians, such as calculations of light years separating galaxies or the extent of the spreading cosmic microwave radiation from the Big Bang. Such notions stand as extreme examples of what Kant called the mathematical sublime: an awareness of magnitude that surpasses the imagination’s ability to comprehend the whole. As immensity increases, the mind’s ability to grasp its object falters. We can continue to count, to enumerate what is before us, but at some point, vastness exceeds imaginative capacity and the whole cannot be rendered in a complete image. (I leave it to mathematicians to debate whether a formula ought to count as an image of time. Certainly you can conjure up a mental image of a formula by imagining it written on a white board, but how about the phenomenon that the image is supposed to capture?)
To get a complete image of something, that thing must have edges, perceivable perimeters. Both huge physical objects and long durations appear to be limitless, endless. (Something similar could be said about seemingly infinite divisibility when one contemplates the components of atomic particles.) Because we cannot perceive the boundaries of objects of great magnitude, it is impossible to apprehend their forms. Time does not have edges, but intervals can be marked off in terms of starts and finishes, and long duration is as difficult to hold in imagination as giant size. The Global Music Vault aims at storage of data for ten thousand years or more. At first, it seems easy to understand what “ten thousand years” means, partly because the number can be written with an easily perceived number of zeroes (4), unlike, say, ten trillion years (13), where you probably have to count the digits, especially if the number is written without commas. Still, surely everyone reaches a limit where the “picturing” of magnitude falters and gives way to the more intellectual holding of a concept. That is, we know what ten thousand years means, but we can’t summon an adequate mental image: can’t notice the beginning and the end points simultaneously; can’t call to mind an adequate mental picture.
In the classic literature on the sublime, the unimaginability of vast magnitudes is usually illustrated with examples of huge material objects, such as the Great Pyramids of Egypt or St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Being human creations, they do have form and hence boundaries, but only from a considerable distance; up close, they are prodigiously large and escape perception of the whole in any single view. Even better examples come from natural phenomena and the universe, such as the Sahara Desert, oceans with no landmarks in sight, the stars filling the night sky—i.e., things that occupy seemingly endless expanses of space. As Burke put it, when the eye cannot perceive the boundaries of things, they seem infinite and produce an effect of overwhelming magnitude (Enquiry II: VII). According to Kant’s approach to the sublime, recognizing that the grasp of reason exceeds that of the imagination also makes us aware of the power of the mind’s freedom from the limitations of sense experience (Critique of Judgment §26).
Just as boundless physical dimensions exceed the ability to form a mental image of an object, so do temporal durations of great length. In fact, Hume considered the effort to imagine time to be even more challenging than to imagine physical immensity. He compares the contemplation of long temporal duration to a journey in space, which he declares easier to hold in the mind:
“A considerable distance in time produces a greater veneration for the distant objects than a like removal in space . . . The mind . . . being oblig’d every moment to renew its efforts in the transition from one part of time to another, feels a more vigorous and sublime disposition, than in a transition thro’ the parts of space, where the ideas flow along with easiness and facility. In this disposition, the imagination, passing, as is usual, from the consideration of the distance to the view of the distant objects, gives us a proportionable veneration for it; and this is the reason why all the relicts of antiquity are so precious in our eyes, and appear more valuable than what is brought even from the remotest parts of the world.”
(Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk II, Pt. III).
I think that Hume has an insight here, one that has not been explored as thoroughly as it might and that soundly positions time as among the objects that inspire awe and marvel, even a sense of the sublime.
Moreover, these old issues surrounding the sublime seem newly relevant given the revival of interest in archaeology and increasing discoveries that revise information about our early ancestors, pushing our cognizance of human history further and further back into the past. Judging from the pop-up news feeds that intrude on many of our computer screens these days, “relicts of antiquity” are enjoying a spike of popularity. This newly discovered circle of stones rivals Stonehenge, declares one typical headline. Remains of Noah’s Ark discovered? says another, with a back-up cautionary question mark. Neanderthal cave paintings are earliest known human art. And so forth. All fascinating, enigmatic, and not completely understood. What they share, however, is the sense that they are all from A Very Long Time Ago.
The temporal expanse that such artifacts represent is pretty hard to imagine, especially when one realizes that A Long Time Ago is wondrously vast. The philosopher Stephen Davies, who knows quite a lot about prehistoric painting, once remarked to me that the span of time between the cave paintings at Chauvet and those at Lascaux is roughly the same as the span of time between Lascaux and Picasso. It was a casual observation for him but revelatory for me because I had never thought of the comparison. It suddenly dramatized the stunning duration of prehistoric cultures, whose members evidently returned to their caves over thousands of years, adding to the pictures that still enthrall us today. I had thought I had a sense of the progress of representational culture from cave paintings to now, because I had a notion, albeit vague, of the development of representational styles. By this way of thinking, cave painting stands as the “first” kind of representation. But a hazy notion of “first” that comprises a period of over 20,000 years dissolves any impression that one might once have had of the perimeters of human prehistory.
Relics of antiquity awaken a sense of their great age. Age is a term that is less abstract and more domesticated than time, and hence possibly more readily grasped. An object’s age, in fact, figures among the aesthetic features of old artifacts. Art historian Alois Riegl argued that “age value” has an immediate impact on the emotions, producing feelings such as awe and wonder. Such affects are directed both to an object and to its endurance over time, perhaps a lot of time, which substantiates Hume’s idea that an object from the distant past can arouse a feeling of sublimity. Since an ancient relic may be itself rather small, with easily perceived edges, it is the realization of its endurance over time that prompts awe and wonder as well as the material object itself.
We can also approach a grasp of vast stretches of time if the relic is itself a place, such as a ruin or a painted cave. In that case, the two kinds of distance—temporal and spatial—merge in experience, because situating oneself amid remnants of antiquity vivifies awareness of both the time and place where they originated. This observation, of course, does not invoke the spacetime of cosmology. Rather, it is a far more human-sized notion, a kind of placetime (as it were) that aids the imagination in its attempt to comprehend long temporal duration.
In this discussion, I have fallen into the habit of thinking of imagining times past in visual terms. But it is noteworthy how many people, when in the presence of something of great age, are inclined to extend a hand and touch the wondrous object: to hold in one’s hand a flint axe and caress the sharpened knapped edge, to place one’s palm against a petroglyph handprint, to crawl into a cave and situate oneself physically where remote artists once painted galloping horses. The desire to touch is rightly inhibited in museums for the protection of objects, but the impulse does not disappear. Situating oneself literally in the footsteps of people who lived in the mists of the past can be haunting, thrilling. It is not necessarily that the mental images aroused are by any means complete, but when one’s own physical body occupies the same space as the relic, place and time are imaginatively compressed in the very contemplation of where one stands. Being in a such places invites not just mental imagery but also activity: moving around things, leaning, touching, caressing remnants of artifacts whose age seems to resonate beneath one’s fingers. Nonetheless, while one’s sense of time and age deepens, it remains tantalizingly incomplete.
Most of this discussion has considered imagining the age of artifacts from the distant past, but we can extend it into the projections we make about the distant future. And this extension inevitably links duration on an earthly, human scale with time on a more cosmic level. Will the Global Music Vault last forever? Will the famous Golden Disk summarizing Earth and its human culture, which in 1977 was sent into space with the Voyager space probes, ever be discovered by denizens of a distant planet? If so, can we even ask the question when, since time itself distorts and disappears in cosmic calculations? At some point, whether we imagine time extending back into the past or forward into the future, we reach the confounding dazzle of the sublime.
Carolyn Korsmeyer
Carolyn Korsmeyer is Research Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo. Korsmeyer's areas of philosophy include aesthetics, emotion theory, and perception, with special interest in the senses of taste and touch. After a career writing philosophy, Korsmeyer has turned to writing fiction and has published two novels.
