Puzzles

I, like a number of you others out there in internet-country, am going into finals this week. I'm overworked and feel as if I'm entering the last, long stretch of a grueling race.

I usually try to choose subjects which complement one another--one of the benefits of Jesuit Education is the emphasis on epistemological interconnectivity. That is, the Jebbies like to think that there's a lot of crossover in between the various subjects. I wasn't sure I believed in it until I put a copy of the T-distribution diagram into my notes for Phenomenology.

It wasn't a fluke--I discovered that the bell-curve shape t-distribution was a perfect graphic match for the Phenomenological (specifically Husserlian) conception of time as it relates to human observers.

For those of you who are having trouble with this, I want you to think of a bell-curve, draw it out if you'd like. Divide it vertically through its tallest part. On the furthest right side, write "THE FUTURE." On the furthest left side, write "THE PAST." on the vertical line going right through the middle write "NOW."

If you were to remove the bell-curve shape, you'd have the standard idea of time. An axis stretching from what was to what will be, along which we move; a filmstrip that passes through our minds showing us the world around us.

This is not time.

Mentally add the bell-curve again. On the right slope of the curve write "protention" with a right-pointing arrow, and on the left slope write "retension" with a left-pointing arrow.

We protend--that is, we expect, we assume--that which has not happened yet. The dropped plate will fall to the floor; its destruction is protended more weakly, being further in the future, happening "after" the fall.

We retain--which is not to say that we remember--that which has just happened; we may or may not remember it at some point in the future, but it has not yet quite faded from our minds.

This has very little to do with the t-distribution, which is a tool for extrapolating probability based on the results of data taken previously. But the occurrence of that shape--the cresting wave that is, for me, both "Now" and "might be"--struck me as a fascinating occurrence.

Perhaps I'm just seeing illusory correlations, but they seem to be significant in some way, if not outright meaningful. And if they are not significant in the outside world (as the shape of the wave is not significant in the outside world) they are epistemologically significant, being inherent in the way people structure their knowledge of the world and of ourselves.