An Experiment with Time
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
An Experiment with Time is a book by the British soldier, aeronautical engineer and philosopher J. W. Dunne (1875–1949) on the subjects of precognitive dreams and a theory of time which he later called Serialism. First published in March 1927, it was widely read and his ideas were explored by many other authors, especially by J. B. Priestley. He published three sequels; The Serial Universe, The New Immortality, and Nothing Dies.
Contents |
Contents
- Contents to the Sixth Edition are given:
- I. Definitions
- II. The Puzzle
- III. The Experiment
- IV. Temporal Endurance and Temporal Flow
- V. Serial Time
- VI. Replies to Critics
Appendix to the third edition:
- I. A Note by Sir Arthur Eddington, F.R.S.
- II. The Age Factor
- III. The New Experiment
Index
Description
Overview
An Experiment with Time divides into two main topics.
The first half of the book describes a number of precognitive dreams, most of which Dunne himself had experienced. His key conclusion was that such precognitive visions foresee future personal experiences by the dreamer and not more general events.
The second half develops a theory to try and explain them. Dunne's starting point is the observation that the moment of "now" is not described by science. Contemporary science described physical time as a fourth dimension and Dunne's argument led to an endless sequence of higher dimensions of time to measure our passage through the dimension below. Accompanying each level was a higher level of consciousness. At the end of the chain was a supreme ultimate observer.
According to Dunne, our wakeful attention prevents us from seeing beyond the present moment, whilst when dreaming that attention fades and we gain the ability to recall more of our timeline. This allows fragments of our future to appear in pre-cognitive dreams, mixed in with fragments or memories of our past. Other consequences include the phenomenon known as deja vu and the existence of life after death.
Literary influence
The popularity of Dunne's theory was also reflected in the many authors who have since referenced him and his ideas in numerous literary works of fiction. He "undoubtedly helped to form something of the imaginative climate of those [interwar] years".
One of the first and most significant writers was J. B. Priestley, who based three of his "Time plays" around them: Time and the Conways, Dangerous Corner and An Inspector Calls.
The ideas of Dunne also strongly influenced the uncompleted novels The Notion Club Papers by J. R. R. Tolkien and The Dark Tower by C. S. Lewis. Both writers were members of the Inklings literary circle, and Tolkien also used Dunne's ideas about parallel time dimensions in developing the relationship between time in Middle Earth and "Lórien time".
Other important contemporary writers who used his ideas included John Buchan (The Gap in the Curtain), James Hilton (Random Harvest), his old friend H. G. Wells (The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper and The Shape of Things to Come), Graham Greene (The Bear Fell Free) and Rumer Godden (A Fugue in Time).
Following Dunne's death in 1949, the popularity of his themes continued. Philippa Pearce's 1958 childhood fantasy Tom's Midnight Garden won the British literary Carnegie Medal.
See also
