Q&A: Shem Tov Gefen
Shem Tov Gefen
Question
Hi, I assume you know Rabbi Shem Tov Gefen’s article about Adamism.
I have a few questions. He argues there that the age of the universe is basically the same as the age of man, if I understood correctly, since the forms of time and space have no real relation to things in themselves and are only forms of our cognition, and therefore before man it makes no sense to speak about them.
He gives a few “proofs” there, such as that an infant’s perception of space is different from an adult’s, or that an old person experiences time as faster/shorter.
Another interesting claim is that the Torah presented the account of creation as prophecy, and since we have lost that sense, then the form of time too—in which time is perceived as “moments,” “and there was evening and there was morning”—is different.
What do you think of those claims? On the one hand they are very original; the question is whether there is truth in them? (Or at least some degree of plausibility).
Answer
I no longer remember those arguments. In general, I do not accept his claim, and I have explained this more than once. He bases it on Kant, who said that space and time are subjective (or inter-subjective) categories of ours and do not exist in the world itself. But even if time is a category that exists only within us, we can still ask how old the world is. Just as I can ask when my grandfather was born, even though I did not exist. Through those same “glasses” one can look at the past as well.
Discussion on Answer
The psychological question of the rate at which we feel the passage of time is unrelated to the issue at hand. The question is how much time has passed, in objective measures (years, days, hours).
Again, the fact that we experience the rate differently says nothing about time itself. Time is the thing that causes us that sensation. Just like the electromagnetic wave that causes us the sensation of color.
The question of how old the world is is completely precise and well-defined. That is a question in physics, not in psychology.
There are those who addressed this question using scientific tools—that is, they translated the duration of time that passed since the Big Bang into the terms of time that exist today. (Relativity determines that the rate of the flow of time depends on the density of mass in the universe, and that decreases over time.) It is a parallel discussion, but it is conducted using the tools of physics, not psychology.
So if the matter is so simple, that we are dealing here with something objective (I also agree with you), how did Shem Tov Gefen arrive at his theory? After all, it is obvious that he was an educated person with at least a basic understanding of the subject.
More generally, where does such a view of extreme idealism come from—the idea that everything exists only in consciousness and there is nothing outside us? I assume you discussed this in one of your books or in some article/column, so if you could point me to something and sharpen the issue for me, I’d appreciate it.
I don’t answer questions about how some smart person made a mistake. I said what I think, and I’m not really interested in how someone erred.
In my opinion, no one really thinks that everything is in consciousness. It’s an intellectual game that raises a logically consistent possibility and defends it.
Hi, have a good week.
Here are some of the arguments.
In our old age, time appears to us shorter than in our youth. (3) According to the experiments of the scholar De Quincey, after swallowing opium it appeared to him, in most cases, as though eighty to a hundred years had passed over him in a single night. More than that: it seemed to him that a full thousand years had passed over him from one day to the next. To visionaries during their visions it appears as though ages of the world have passed over them, even though the vision ended before the sandglass had finished emptying.
My question is whether it is reasonable to think that in evolution our form of time perception also developed and changed.
Seemingly the proof is from the prophet, who would feel time in the future and experience it as a whole period even though in practice it was only a few brief minutes.
And one more question, if I may: after all, the color red, or the sound of a falling tree, exist only in our consciousness and not in reality itself, where there is only an acoustic wave. So what is different about claiming that time as we perceive it does not exist in reality, and therefore our sense of time today is different from what it was in the past, and then the question of how old the world is simply would not be precise?
(This is just an expansion of the same question above; I hope you understand what I mean.)