Saturday, August 27, 2022

The Greeks on the other hand: TIME

 The Ancient Greeks had two words for time: the time we can measure, linear, and the time we experience within that expands and contracts, some call it soul time. 


Chronos which we've already spoken of and

Kairos...

Kairos The opportune moment. 

It is one of two words that the ancient Greeks had for 'time'; the other being chronos (χρόνος). Whereas the latter refers to chronological or sequential timekairos signifies a proper or opportune time for action.[citation needed] In this sense, while chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative, permanent nature.[2]   

Some attribute to Einstein this quote, it's not, but that's not the point: 

“When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.”  ... and that describes kairos. 

In the literature of the classical period, writers and orators used kairos to specify moments when the opportune action was made, often through metaphors involving archery and one's ability to aim and fire at the exact right time on-target. For example, in The Suppliants, a drama written by Euripides, Adrastus describes the ability to influence and change another person's mind by "aiming their bow beyond the kairos." Kairos in general was formulated as a tool to explain and understand the interposition of humans for their actions and the due consequences.[5]

Kairos is also an alternate spelling of the minor Greek deity Caerus, the god of luck and opportunity.[6]  --Wikipedia 

Kairos through the eyes of Francesco Salviati in a 16th-century fresco

In Hippocrates' (460–357 BCE) major theoretical treatises on the nature of medical science and methodology, the term kairos is used within the first line. Hippocrates is generally accepted as the father of medicine, but his contribution to the discourse of science is less discussed. While "kairos" most often refers to "the right time," Hippocrates also used the term when referencing experimentation. Using this term allowed him to "express the variable components of medical practice more accurately." Here the word refers more to proportion, the mean, and the implicit sense of right measure.

Hippocrates most famous quote about kairos is "every kairos is a chronos, but not every chronos is a kairos."[22]