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From: steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: Re: Visualization of `time'
Message-ID: <589@scc.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 11-Jan-86 18:50:36 EST
Article-I.D.: scc.589
Posted: Sat Jan 11 18:50:36 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Jan-86 23:17:26 EST
References: <1909@utcsri.UUCP> <829@rtech.UUCP>
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Organization: Don Steiny Software
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> > 
> > It would be interesting to hear from other people how they visualize or
> > otherwise perceive time.
> > Also, if anybody knows of any publiced studies on the subject I would be
> > interested in looking up the reference.
> > 					Panos Economopoulos
> 
> When I took a course on cultural anthropology, I read about a tribe in which
> the people visualized themselves standing still, with the future at their
> backs and the past in front of them.  
	[Thus the past is in front of them and the future behind them]
> Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.)

	"Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakeoff (the noted linguist)
discusses this and how we represent abstract things in general.
Jeff's example is there along with many others.
Numbers, time, and such are abstract and do not exist in the world
we share with others.   In order to "understand" such things we
need some sort of an internal representation.  We select something
that "stands for" the abstract thing.   Since time, numbers, and
so on are not things we can look at, point to, and say: "it
looks like that", we have to make up our own representation.
The representation is not necessesarily a picture, though about
85% of Americans use pictures (though the pictures are different).


-- 
scc!steiny
Don Steiny @ Don Steiny Software 
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