Physics Midterm - Eastern vs Western Perspective On Where We Are In Time

Foundations of Chinese Medicine was one of the first courses that I took here at the Academy of Chinese Culture and Health Sciences.  The class was taught by Phil Settels, and in one of his first lectures he asked the class to imagine time was a condensed down to a line that ran through the room & he was standing in this moment on that line.  The question that Phil posed to the class was this; which way should he be facing on that timeline?

My thought was that time is unidirectional, it always proceeds forward.  The future becomes the present and then the past. As such, it was my view that Phil should face into the direction that time is moving.  That he should face “forward” into the future. This is a very Western Monochronic Time perspective of where we stand in time. Always planning for the future, rigid, eyes on the horizon, innovating new ways to forage ahead and create the future that we desire.

Phil’s point was that in the Eastern Polychronic Time perspective one can only see what has already come to pass. Just as the western saying goes “hindsight is 20/20” so to is the perspective of Eastern thought.  The viewer on the timeline must face towards the past, as that is the only known time that one has physically seen. The logic follows that the eyes should face towards the past. The future cannot be seen or known so the viewers back is toward the future.  The importance is placed on knowing and learning from what has already happened in order to inform the viewer as they move into the unknown future.

In our Physics we discussed the differences between Western Monochronic Time and Eastern Polychronic Time.  I find that the thought experiment that Phil had us participate in was a great example of how ethnocentrically entrenched each of us is in our view.  As was exemplified by our M-Time interpretation of the where the viewer faced on a timeline.