Geology Reference
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run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers
come, thither they return again . . . The thing that hath been, it is that which
shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done . . . (Ecclesiastes
1:5-9)
Although both views coexist in this primary document of our culture, we can
scarcely doubt that time's arrow is the familiar or "standard" view of most
educated Westerners today. This metaphor dominates the Bible itself, and has
only increased in strength since then—gaining a special boost from ideas of
progress that have attended our scientific and technological revolutions from
the seventeenth century onward. Richard Morris writes in his recent study of
time:
Ancient peoples believed that time was cyclic in character . . . We, on the
other hand, habitually think of time as something that stretches in a straight
line into the past and future . . . The linear concept of time has had profound
effects on Western thought. Without it, it would be difficult to conceive of
the idea of progress, or to speak of cosmic or biological evolution. (1984, 11)
When I argue that time's arrow is our usual view, and when I designate the
idea of distinctive moments in irreversible sequence as a prerequisite for
intelligibility itself (see p. 80), please note that I am discussing a vision of the
nature of things bound by both culture and time. As Mircea Eliade argues in
the greatest modern work on arrows and cycles,
The Myth of the Eternal
Return
(1954),
2
most people throughout history have held fast to time's cycle,
and have viewed time's arrow as either unintelligible or a source of deepest
fear. (Eliade titles his last section "the terror of history.") Most cultures have
recoiled from a notion that history embodies no permanent stability and that
men (by their actions of war), or
2. In his subtitie, Cosmos and History, Eliade contrasts his one-word epitomes of
the visions of time's cycle and time's arrow.
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