In 2001 I flew from Qingdao, China, to Boston, MA to study at MIT. I realized that I never left the time zone UTC+8 until then.
For the first time, I also realized that the US mainland has 4 time zones and China has only 1, even though they cover the similar longitudinal span. Why?
Nepal has a time zone of UTC+5:45. Why? Just to be different from India UTC+5:30?
[…A political scientist student might translate this into “Temporal Sovereignty and National Identity: The Case of Nepal’s Unique Time Zone” or “Political Centralization and Temporal Standardization: US vs. China”…]
I once visited Mudhdhoo Island in the Maldives. Somehow this tiny island has a different time zone from the capital city, Male!
I asked the hotel manager, “How come?” Remember, the whole country is so small you can barely see it on the map.
“You know, Jinhua, on this island, what time should it be is entirely my discretion!”
“What!? This is God like power! But why?”
“One most beautiful scene on my island is the sunrise. But the notion of waking up at 6am for most travelers is notoriously difficult. So, I change it to 7 am!”
[… a sociologist student might translate this into “The Social Construction of Time: When time itself becomes a design variable, who gets to decide and what does that reveal about power, place, and meaning in the modern tourism”…]
In Newtonian physics, time is linear, one-directional, and absolute.
In transportation, travel time is wasted, of negative utility, and to be reduced.
I took this view for a long time until I saw this painting by Salvador Dalí: The Persistence of Memory.
Time and space—not as rigid as we thought.
Time Through Six Lenses
Once I started collecting these vignettes, I realized time is one of the most interdisciplinary topics imaginable. Every field has its own lens.
A biologist observes time inside living organisms.
In 1729, Jean-Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan placed a mimosa plant in total darkness, and found it still opened and closed its leaves every 24 hours.
Centuries later, Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young discovered the molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm, winning Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2017
Life itself tells time.
A psychologist studies how humans perceive time.
Stanford’s Philip Zimbardo described six “psychological time zones”: past-positive, past-negative, present-hedonistic, present-fatalistic, future-work, and future-transcendent.
A Sicilian poet once told Zimbardo, “There is no future tense in our dialect—that’s why nothing gets done.”
Raghubir et al (2011) studies “Why does it take less time to get home?” Perceived Travel Time Between School and Home
- Home to school: 22 min
- School to home: 17 min
“The Journey Home is Never Too Long…, ” sings Bombay Dreams.
A transportation researcher (like me) examines how autonomous vehicles may change people’s perception of travel time, and therefore, their transportation decisions, location choices, and even urban structure itself.
A political scientist studies time as an act of power: a statement of who decides what “standard” is.
When China declared a single national time zone, it wasn’t geography but governance. When Nepal chose to offset its clocks by fifteen minutes from India, it was a declaration of independence.
Timekeeping is nation-building.
An artist dissolves time altogether.
Dalí painted clocks that melt: time is as fluid as imagination. Musicians compose it; filmmakers splice it; writers rearrange it.
In art, time is not measured. It’s felt.
Of course, a physicist studies time.
Einstein shook Newtonian physics:
- Time dilates by velocity: Special relativity
- Time dilates by gravity: General relativity
“Time is the suspect,” he wrote, daring to question what everyone else took as absolute.
His insight emerged from his personal experience working at Swiss Patent Office reviewing all sorts of clock designs and his daring to challenge the classic notion of absolute time.
Who study time?
Time is one of the few concepts studied by nearly every discipline, each revealing a different facet of its mystery.
Physicists, philosophers, psychologists, biologists, social scientists, engineers, and artists—all explore it from their own observations.
Seeing the World as a Scientist (and an artist)
This is how I help young students begin their scientific inquiry.
“Seeing the World as a Scientist (and an Artist)” is Step 1 of my seven step system for Scientific Inquiry Mastery.
What sets a scientist apart from everyone else?
Faced with the same experience, most people accept it as is, but a scientist pauses to notice and ask: why?
Scientific research do not always start from a grand idea.
Instead, it begins with noticing and inquiring.
“There remains simple experience
…which, if taken as it comes, is called accident;
…if sought for, experiment.”
— Francis Bacon