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Naoshi Sugiyama's conference — March 9, 2016

• The relativity of time

Two main issues were addressed at the final discussion of the Physics Workshop of the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), on March 9: the difference between the concept of time in physics and the perception of time by living organisms, and the invariable aspects of time in relativity.

Eliezer Rabinovici

For physicist Eliezer Rabinovici, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the ICA's Senior Committee, whoever speaks the physical-mathematical language clearly sees what it means to add time as an extra dimension and the implications of having four dimensions. "The time dimension has different characteristics, but can be called so as it is a mathematical term. But it becomes confusing to talk about the fourth dimension in ordinary language, so it is best not to use the expression."

Physicist Naoshi Sugiyama, associate director of the Nagoya University's Institute for Advanced Research (IAR), commented that dimensions are numbers required to specify the existence of something. As an analogy to the four dimensions of spacetime, he said that if someone needs to tell a friend how to find them, they will tell them the building address, the correct floor and the time when they will be there.

Naoshi Sugiyama

Taking part in the discussion on the perception of time and the time in physics, physicist Peter Goddard, a researcher and former director of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, said that to relate everyday experiences with what happens beyond can be confusing: "As humans, we can not have the experience of special relativity, because we can not travel at the speed of light."

Another mistake, he said, is to claim that something exists independently of the observer. "In the Newtonian thinking structure, space and time were considered uniform. One can not include relativity in this structure. What does exist at any given time? The answer to that depends on the observer."

Chemist Hisanori Shinohara, Director of the IAR, recalled that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics predicts the increase of entropy in an isolated system and asked if time will still make sense when the entropy of the universe as a whole ceases to increase, with it reaching a perfect state balance and, consequently, dying.

Sugiyama said that one can not predict the temperature and the time of the universe if we think of an infinite future. Moreover, "if there is dark energy, the universe will expand forever and in that sense will never come to an end." On the other hand, "if there is no dark energy and the universe is flat, it will stop expanding at some point, but this will be in an infinite future."

Hisanori Shinohara

Rabinovici has also commented on the issue exposed by Shinohara. He said that, in fact, entropy increases permanently, but it depends on the analyzed system. According to him, even in the universe the existence of long periods of increasing entropy and other ones of decreasing entropy should be considered: "And in a time far, far away, the universe will again be what it once has been. But I say to young students that this kind of issue is very deep and it is best to leave it aside for now and concentrate on simpler ones."

Sugiyama said there is a famous analogy about the return of the universe to a previous condition: "A monkey hits the keys of a typewriter. If it does this for a long, long time, it will evolve to Shakespeatre by chance."

Anthropologist Naoki Nomura, from the Nagoya University, has also participated in the discussion. In his view, the idea of relativity does not belong only to the physics but is also a matter of epistemology. He has even questioned the consistency of the theory of relativity: "When it previews a single nature for time it stops being relative and becomes contradictory."

Naoki Nomura

When responding to the comments by Nomura, Rabinovici said that one of the dangers of this type of workshop "is the use of words because they mean different things to each person." He added that the term relativity was incorporated into the theory's name wrongly: "It is not a theory of relativity but a theory of invariance. In the process of searching for what is not relative, one discovers that many things considered invariable are actually not. Newton thought that some things were absolute, when they are actually relative. But not everything is relative. The order in time (something happening after another), this can not be negotiated. If two things are simultaneous while measuring time or not, this is negotiable, and it depends on certain factors."

Goddard also commented Nomura's statement: "The personal experience of time is one thing and the time in physics is another. The theory of relativity is consistent and has nothing to do with the subjective experience. It is very important to keep these separate."

Peter Goddard

Martin Grossmann, former director of the IEA and also a member of the ICA's Senior Committee, wondered whether Goddard finds it impossible to relate time in the way it is thought in physics with the way it is seen by social sciences and humanities.

Goddard said that it is not impossible, but that one has to be careful with the words, as Rabinovici said. In his opinion, the confusion in the use of terms of one area in another one are partly the fault of the physicists who "like to use figurative speech, because metaphors can be quite productive while doing science."

Valtteri Arstila, from the University of Turku, wanted to know the opinion of Goddard about a text on spacetime that has been published at the Stanford University's website. According to the text, the general theory of relativity makes the spacetime less relative than the one in special relativity: "The absolute space and time of Newton are kept. They are merely amalgamated and enriched with the most flexible mathematical skeleton."

Valtteri Arstila

Goddard did not agree with the statement by Stanford. For him, time does not cease to be relative in the general theory of relativity because there is a "symmetry between mass and geometry of spacetime, given that Einstein conceived the intensely related spacetime and matter."

Time Acceleration and Post-Democracy: Violence and Communication is the theme of the seminar that IEA’s Humanities and the Contemporary World Research Group will hold on October 1, at 2 pm, in the Institute’s event room.

According to philosopher Olgária Matos, professor at USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences and coordinator of the research group, the idea is to analyze the time dimension in the contemporary world and to question “what is temporal and what is timeless in modernity". To do so, the meeting will discuss the metamorphosis of the individual due to technological innovations, focusing on the acceleration of the pace of life process.

“The intention is to understand the new figures of otherness, identity and interiority of the new individual, particularly in relationships that require an extensive and qualitative temporality, such as love, friendship or parenting,” she explained.

The theme will be addressed from three analytical perspectives: the thought of French philosopher Henri Bergson on body and memory, the phenomenon of digital culture, and the film "The Strange Case of Angelica," by Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira.

The exhibitors will be philosopher Rita Paiva, a professor at the Federal University of São Paulo’s School of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (EFLCH), sociologist Mauro Rovai, also from the EFLCH, and anthropologist Massimo Canevacci, a visiting professor at the IEA-USP. Mediation will be in charge of Matos.

The event will be broadcast live on the web.

Image: Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (1927).

According to anthropologist Massimo Canevacci, digital culture challenges the classic distinction between space and time by promoting syncretism between both dimensions and by breaking with hegemonic dualistic thinking. Canevacci, a visiting professor at the IEA, spoke on this subject at the last conference of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) on April 27.

His exposition focused on the notion of “ubiquitime,” a neologism he created to define, from an ethnographic viewpoint, “the uncentered and non-linear experiences of space-time” promoted by contemporary digital communication.

In his view, the notion of ubiquitime combines three central notions: simultaneity, “an aesthetics made of fragments from metropolises and technologies,” as advocated by Futurism, the art movement; chronotope, established by philosopher Mikhail Bahktin to denote the dialogic relationship between the spatial and the temporal horizons that “has become essential to the development of literary polyphony;” and ubiquity, a metaphor that expresses the ability to be anywhere at the same time made possible by the potential for global connection of the global digital networks.

Ubiquity

In Canevacci’s assessment, ubiquity is a key concept in digital culture, because it “characterizes human and non-human space-time relationships on the Internet.” He recalled that the traditional definition of the term has a theological undertone and relates to the idea of an omnipresent, invisible and inescapable godhead that observes everything and everyone: “God knows everything and will judge you,” he summarized.

The metaphorical nature of the definition proposed by Canevacci expands the threshold of ubiquity to the material world of everyday life, and extends “the presence of all human or divine beings to everywhere.”

Ubiquitous individuals can move about between different identities, spaces and times, giving rise to the multividual, according to Canevacci. The multividual emerges from the multiplication of subjectivities beyond fixed identities: “Ubiquity defies identity, which becomes more flexible. The ubiquitous subject of ethnographic experience is a multidividual.”

Empirical cases

Canevacci presented four empirical cases that exemplify the experience of ubiquitime in various cultures, starting with the Greek mythological deity Kairós, who symbolizes “a moment in an indeterminate period in which something special happens,” i.e., a propitious moment for decision or action.

Unlike Chronos, the god of chronological time, whose nature is quantitative, Kairós represents unmeasurable temporality and refers us to the idea of carpe diem – living intensely in the moment – and the power to make decisions. According to Canevacci, the concept of Kairós “does not fit restricted definitions because it is situated between two concepts: action and time, expertise and skill.”

He said that the ubiquitime dimension in Kairós refers to what he calls “methodological stupor” or “undisciplined methodological wandering” – an attitude of openness toward the unknown that enables “ethnographers to turn and move, stride and walk with abandoned slowness and attention to detail,” always willing to observe and grasp spontaneous and casual study objects.

The second case mentioned by Canevacci was the post-Euclidean architecture of Zaha Hadid. According to him, Hadid builds hybrid forms that break with the classic rules of composition and representation of space-time. “[Hadid] transforms non-normative geometry into mysterious, distorted and impure geometric shapes,” he said.

The funeral rites of the Bororo, an indigenous people studied by Canevacci, was the third empirical case presented at the conference. The rites are long and complex, and involve burying the body in a shallow ditch, waiting for the decomposition of tissues, cleaning the skull, and special ornamentation for the final farewell ceremony.

Canevacci explained that in the final stage, which lasts three days, time is suspended. “It is a period when there is time, only the celebration of the ritual that reaffirms that no distance exists between life and death, between space and time.”

The last example, also related to the Bororo, was the “multividual subjectivity” of Kléber Meritororeu, a Bororo native. For Canevacci, Meritororeu embodies the idea of the multividual because he traverses from one identity to another: he is at the same time a native who lives his culture on a daily basis and a teacher at the Indigenous State School “Sacred Heart of Jesus” in Meruri village, in the city of General Carneiro, state of Mato Grosso.

“He has two identities: he is a Bororo and teacher,” Canevacci said, stressing that Meritororeu faces the challenge not only of connecting these two identities, but also of self-representing himself with the aid of digital technologies – all this without letting go of the traditions of his people – to combine digital culture and Bororo culture.

“The use of technology by the natives helps the development of a decentralized network that cannot be compare with any analog network,” he explained. “The dichotomous relationship between technology and culture, science and arts is obsolete,” he added.

Naoshi Sugiyama, a physicist from the Nagoya University, spoke about time according to the Einstein's special and general theories of relativity on March 9, at the Physics Workshop of the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), in Nagoya.

Sugiyama's approach has been didactic and simplified for a proper understanding of the audience, with several participants from the humanities and the social sciences.

He explained that the special theory of relativity (1905) is based on two principles:

• Principle of Relativity, which states that all inertial frames of reference (moving at a constant speed) are equal;
• Principle of Invariant Light Speed, which is the same for all inertial frames of reference.

According to him, the understanding of these principles makes it easy to understand why time is relative and not absolute, as considered before Einstein's theories, which he quoted: "If the observer is still, the clock of a moving system beats more slowly." This is called dilution, Sugiyama said.

He added that in the General Theory of Relativity (1915) Einstein included the effect of gravity in the theory ("with the presence of strong gravity, time is also retarded") and established the equivalence principle, in which gravity and inertial strength can not be distinguished.

Regarding practical life, Sugiyama demonstrated how this dilution of time needs to be considered in the operation of a Global Positioning System (GPS). "It takes at least four satellites to determine x, y, z and t (the three spatial dimensions and time), and to calculate the distance from them by means of very precise measuring of time."

This precision is important because as the speed of light is 300,000 km / s if there is an error of a second the determined location will be at a distance of 300,000 km from where it actually is.

For the location to be identified with a margin of error of 10 cm, time needs to be measured with a maximum tolerance of 3/10 of a billionth of a second.

The effect of dilution by relativity implies the identification of spots on the Earth's surface outside their actual location: "In the case of special relativity, as satellites travel at high speed (4 km / s), the estimated location gets 25 cm away from the actual position at each second. In the case of general relativity, as gravity at 20,000 km high is weaker than that on the Earth's surface, the difference between the assumed location and the actual one is 160 cm."

To be precise, the GPS has to deal with the dilution of time caused by the satellite's speed and the weak gravity at the height of its orbit, said Sugiyama.

Time in Astronomy was the subject of the conference of Hideyo Kunieda, deputy dean of research and students at Nagoya University (Japan), at the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) on April 21.

Kunieda, who is also professor of the university’s Department of Physics, addressed in particular the advances in the observation of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with the help of X-ray telescopes, his area of ​​expertise.

According to him, this area of ​​research has contributed substantially to the understanding of astronomical phenomena predicted by the Theory of Relativity, such as black holes, the bending of light, and the deformation of space-time in the presence of supermassive objects.

Echoes from the past

“The light of heavenly bodies we see today was emitted long ago. Looking into space is like looking into the past,” Kunieda said, noting that this is due to the huge scale of the universe: “The propagation of light in space is measured in years,” he added.

For the professor, one of the positive aspects of light’s “delay” is to make it possible to study the evolution of the universe over time, from the Big Bang to the present day.

According to the Big Bang theory, dominant among scientists, the universe came about 13.7 billion years ago, from a huge explosion. Planets, stars and galaxies were like splinters that progressively moved away from the center of detonation, causing the universe to expand continuously.

“The universe was fairly uniform after the Big Bang. But then the fragments grew and the stars and galaxies came about. We currently can observe a broad variety of objects,” said Kunieda.

According to him, to observe faint, lighted objects in space, with little glare, is like observing the early stages of the Big Bang, when the fragments began to take shape. “To look at distant galaxies is to see how these galaxies were in the early universe.”

The idea of a moving and expanding universe, a notion that underlies the Big Bang theory, was strongly influenced by Hubble’s Law, according to which there is a relationship between a galaxy’s distance from Earth and the speed with which it is moving away: the farther, the faster.

The law was formulated by observing a phenomenon known as “redshift,” or changes in the frequency of the waves that make up the spectrum of light caused by the relative velocity between the observer and the source of emission. If the object moves away from the observer at high speed, low frequency waves become more visible and their color is shifted toward red; and if the object is approaching, the high frequency waves become sharper and the color is shifted to violet.

Thus, it was ascertained that most galaxies display a redshift and that the greater the deviation, the greater the distance between said galaxies and the Earth. “By Hubble’s law, the time axis is converted into depth in space,” summed up Kunieda.

Black hole

Predicted by the Theory of Relativity, a redshift also occurs in the presence of a strong gravitational field. Kunieda’s research on active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is based on observations of this phenomenon through images captured by X-ray telescopes.

AGNs are supermassive (with mass up to 1 billion times that of our Sun) and very bright (up to 100 billion times brighter than the Sun) celestial bodies.

According to the professor, astronomical observations using different techniques suggest that AGNs harbor black holes – regions in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Formed from the gravitational collapse of a star, known as supernova, black holes are the result of the curvature of space-time, the system of coordinate that underlies the Theory of Relativity.

“Near a black hole, space-time is more curved. Because of this, time seems slowed down and the light emanating from that region seems redder,” Kunieda said, referring to the gravitational redshift.

He explained that the brightness of AGNs does not derive from the black holes themselves, which are invisible, but from the radiation produced by the accretion disk – the agglomeration of particles and gases surrounding supermassive objects. Because they have a very powerful gravitational field, black holes suck in all surrounding matter. And when sucked in, matter does not fall into the hole in a straight path, but rather in spirals, like a whirlwind, giving rise to a disk that gradually adds mass to the central object.

According to Kunieda, the heat produced by matter moving toward the gravitational body radiates in the disk’s surface, which is visible. The redshift occurs under the action of gravity, which causes an increase in the length of the light waves. He said this phenomenon is the curvature of the light under the effect of gravity, as predicted by the Theory of Relativity.

The professor’s observations involve accretion disks in the center of host galaxies. He said images obtained by him and other researchers point to the existence of supermassive objects – in this case, black holes –, as determined by the Theory of Relativity.

The Milky Way

In Kunieda’s assessment, certain images of the Milky Way provide evidence that black holes exist. Obtained through infrared radiation or x-rays, these images show at first a common galaxy, with no central bright object, and therefore devoid of an active nucleus.

However, stressed Kunieda, one cloud of particles at one end of the galaxy displays an unusual light pattern, as if it was lit from below and reflected the light emitted by an object in the vicinity. According to him, this is what astronomers refer to as “reflection nebula.”

“By measuring the distance between the reflection and the light source, one can calculate how long ago the light was emitted. The center of the galaxy was 10 million times brighter 350 years ago,” he said, noting that the reflection nebula provides evidence that the center of the Milky Way was once an AGN.

“It’s a kind of astronomical archeology. It allows us to look at past activities in the center of the galaxy,” he compared. "In this case, the time axis is converted in a two-dimensional distribution."

Supernovae

According to Kunieda, observations of supernovae (explosions that herald the beginning of the death of stars) have also contributed to our understanding of the history of the universe.

The professor explained that stars, like our Sun, are bright because of the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium, a process that results in loss of mass and the formation of an increasingly dense core.

When the fuel runs out, the core of the star shrinks and becomes a compact object, with an extremely strong gravitational field. The star then begins to attract all matter to its center, up to a point where the high density becomes unsustainable and the supermassive body collapses, expanding matter in a great explosion – the supernova. What remains of this collapse gives rise to black holes.

Kunieda stressed that “the records of these explosions are very useful to understand the evolution of supernova remnants that we see today.” The remnants are nebulae formed from material ejected during the gravitational collapse, which speed away from the core. “In this case, the time axis is converted in a two-dimensional intensity distribution,” he said.

What is the relationship between discerning the consciousness of self – in the sense of an individual’s apprehension of his own existence – and the perception of time? Psychoanalyst Leopold Nosek devoted his conference on April 25 at the Intercontinental Academia to an analysis of this matter.

He said that, given the fact that consciousness of self includes temporality and that humanization presupposes perception of time, one cannot but wonder how time presents itself to, and is perceived by, human beings.

In his reasoning, Nosek made use of analogies with works by “two writers who addressed the relativity of time from within the rationalist tradition:”  The Magic Mountain (1924) and Doctor Faustus (1947), both by German-born Thomas Mann (1875-1955); and The Leopard (1958), by Italian author Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896-1957).

In the passage from The Magic Mountain quoted by Nosek, Hans Castorp, the main character, has just reached the conclusion that, for the mind, time does not flow uniformly; the mind only assumes it does so to maintain the proper order of things. Therefore, all measurements of time are no more than conventions.

According to Nosek, time and consciousness of self are contemporary themes. He mentioned Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) as one of the landmarks, from the viewpoint of perception, for most texts that discuss Modernity.

He said that in this work by Freud one can see the loss of our naïve trust in the conscious mind and the inexorable breach between the conscious and the unconscious. For Nosek, we could speak of Modernity as the awareness of disruption.

Addressing the emergence of this disruption, Nosek said we must remember how brief the Renaissance actually was, “with its glorious view of the individual as part of circumstances over which he had control.” However, it did not take long for Mannerism to come about, “with its distorted figures, its suffering subjectivity.”

He said that art historian Arnold Hauser (1992-1978) saw Mannerism as the onset of the perception of modern man, “the perception of a shattered unity, of a broken harmony.”

As for The Leopard, Nosek noted that the novel is set in the mid-19^th century, the time of Italy’s reunification and modernization. The main character, Don Fabrizio, prince of Salina, after a dance, realizes that he, unlike others, captures the passage of time, which is accompanied by “progress, destruction of old structures, creation of new wealth and new desolations.”

According to Nosek, “the prince of Salina, in a sudden glimmer of his own skin, grasps his circumstances, his historical destiny and his subjective self; his own place is revealed to him. What more could he obtain?”

For Nosek, grappling one’s circumstances and one’s time blends in with the apprehension of the limits and the space of human existence: “We continue, therefore, within our theme: the interconnection between the consciousness of self, the awareness of one’s ‘proper place,’ and the image of time defined by frustration and limitation.”

In Doctor Faustus, the main character, the musician Adrian Leverkühn, makes a pact with the devil, Mephistopheles, giving his soul in exchange for 24 years of genius as a composer. Nosek noted how Mephistopheles warns the musician to pay attention to the hourglass.

For Nosek, Mephistopheles’ warning means Leverkühn should remain aware of life. As a result of the pact, Lerverkühn becomes part of Modernity, “through atonal spaces, the spatial expansion of musical contradiction, accompanied by scientific inquiries and by the theory of uncertainty and chance.”

He finished his presentation with some propositions by psychoanalyst Donald Meltzer (1922-2004) in his book Explorations in Autism (1975), where he organizes the space of life in a “geography of fantasy" that moves along in time.

According to Meltzer, experienced time can be a cloister where events are not available to memory and to thought (as happens in autism); it can be circular, undeveloping, where there is no death; or it can be oscillating, moving from within to outside the object and vice-versa, a continuous operation of omnipotence that makes the differentiation of self from object reversible, and also makes the direction of time itself reversible.

According to Nosek, remaining unidirectional and linear, from birth to death, requires a painful process, never completed, of renouncing the fusion between the self and the object, of struggling against narcissism, of assuaging omnipotence.

Photo: Leonor Calasans/IEA

Neuroscientist Ruud Buijs

In a conference at the Intercontinental Academia on April 21, Buijs discussed this interaction, illustrating his exposition with numerous examples from studies of animals and humans.

He initially gave a schematic overview of the workings of the hypothalamus, a part of the brain highly connected to primitive parts of that organ and, via the autonomic nerves of the spinal cortex, to other parts of the body, sending them commands from the brain. “In addition to being essential for us to move our hand and other actions, the spinal cortex is also indispensable for the proper functioning of physiological processes. To achieve this type of physiological control we need the hypothalamus.”

The biological clock, which receives information about light and dark directly from the retina, is located in the hypothalamus, near the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the primary center for regulating circadian rhythms.

According to Buijs, it is now possible to remove the biological clock of the brain of a guinea pig and keep it functioning in vitro, maintaining electrical activity in a cycle of approximately 24 hours, autonomously, without having to do anything else.

Accuracy

To illustrate the accuracy of this mechanism, he said that forensic medicine can determine with great precision the time that someone was murdered by analyzing the expression of the biological clock in their organs, especially if the victim is found within 48 hours of death.

The moment when someone comes into the world is likewise determined by the biological clock. He showed a graph showing that the birth of the first child of pregnant residents of Amsterdam peaks at around 8:00 am. (In the Netherlands, babies are generally born with the help of a midwife.) Another chart showed that the peak time was between 4:00 and 5:00 am for the second or subsequent children, something that Buijs attributes to the fact that women become more savvy regarding labor. A third chart, however, shows a peak around noon and refers to births with obstetricians, when “babies are born in the doctor’s time, who induces labor or performs a cesarean section.”

In some cases, the moment of an individual’s death can also be determined by the biological clock, as shown by the fact that the peak of heart attacks occurs in the early part of the morning, with greater incidence on Mondays (perhaps due to the deregulation of schedules over the weekend, ventured Buijs).

Hormones

In Buijs’ view, the biological clock resorts to several mechanisms to enforce rhythms upon the body, using in many cases the hormone corticosterone. “In experiments with mice, corticosterone peak occurs soon after the night period (we know that mice are active at night), while the peak of the hormone melatonin occurs at night, indicating it induces activity in animals.” In humans, melatonin also peaks at night, but unlike what happens to mice, melatonin promotes sleep in humans.

To study this process in an animal antithetical to the mouse, one with diurnal habits, Buijs used the Arvicanthis ansorgei, a wild African rodent. These animals are active in early and late daytime. “We say that the biological clock prepares our body for the onset of the active period. When measuring corticosterone in the animal, it was found that the peak occurs just before active periods, so there are two corticosterone peaks in 24 hours. This means that, somehow, the biological clock adapts to the animal’s life style and adopts two peaks of activity.”

The hypothalamus contains specific areas that control temperature, heart rate and food intake. The biological clock imposes a temporal pattern to them all. “These connections are strong and there is no escaping the biological clock.”

Buijs said that the areas of the hypothalamus linked to food intake exert a type of influence similar to that of the biological clock, and work in harmony with it. He cited as an example the role of temporal and metabolic factors in modulating body temperature. In animals with nocturnal habits, the temperature is higher at night, then lowers and finally rises again, anticipating the active period.

The metabolism influences temperatures, so that, during the daytime period (of repose), they are low. If the biological clock is injured, the rhythm of temperature variation disappears and remains unaffected even by the metabolic factor, confirming the relationship between metabolism and biological clock.

To produce corticosterone, the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus produces a hormone that leads to the production, in another part of the hypothalamus, of the adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which stimulates the production of corticosterone in the adrenal glands. Therefore, it was to be expected that upon examining the daytime and nighttime levels of corticosterone in an animal, we would find a relationship with the levels of ACTH. But that is not what happens.

To investigate this, Buijs inserted a virus similar to that of rabies in the adrenal glands of mice. Because this virus has the property of being absorbed by nerve terminals, reproducing itself in the body of the cell and migrating to other cells via the nerve terminals, it is possible to follow the chain of command from the brain to the glands.

Thus, it was possible to establish that neurons in the spinal cortex communicate with the adrenals. It was also possible to follow the impulses of the biological clock, proving that it uses not only hormones to send commands to the organs, but also autonomic pathways. This is advantageous, because something introduced into the bloodstream will take a certain amount of time to reach the organs. With a direct connection to the organs, the biological clock prepares them for what is coming in the blood and also for the arrival of hormones.

If the biological clock uses these means to communicate with the body, what means do the organs use to respond to biological clock? “Many scientists still think the biological clock is an autonomous timepiece that requires no feedback. Of course, this is not true. We have evidence that it needs feedback. The biological clock is in constant interaction with the body.”

In mammals and many other animals, this response is regulated by melatonin, which leads the body to bypass the biological clock cycle. Buijs displayed graphs showing the increased production of melatonin in a reindeer in Finland in the autumn, when the duration of night increases from less than one hour at the end of July to more than 11 hours in mid-September. Also in Finland, where the temperatures of certain periods of the year make the night flight of mosquitoes impossible, bats begin making diurnal flights to hunt for food. “Each organism makes manifold efforts to get in balance with the environment, where the length of the day/night cycle will determine the standard daily rhythm and the pace that the animal will adopt.”

According to Buijs, different areas of the brain produce the same neurotransmitter. The biological clock is one of the areas that produce vasopressin, an antidiuretic hormone with vasoconstrictive effects that also acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain. The biological clock produces vasopressin for an area that is also influenced by gonadal hormones.

Buijs showed images of two areas in the brain of a mouse with vasoconstrictive innervation, one that is influenced by gonadal hormones and another sensitive to the biological clock. When the mouse is neutered, vasoconstriction in the first area disappears, but remains in the area that is sensitive to the biological clock. This would indicate the possibility of an eventual loss of vasoconstrictive innervation for physiological or functional reasons. According to Buijs, this possibly occurs through the reduction of gonadal hormones, e.g., during preparation for winter, when the animal hibernates.

The size of the testicles and the testosterone levels of the European hamster (an animal that hibernates) are much greater in summer than in winter. Both the size and the level decrease abruptly between late July and late August, apparently preparing the animal to survive the coming winter. “The hamster goes into hibernation for four or five days, wakes up for 24 hours and eats, drinks and urinates a little, then goes back into hibernation, in a very well-organized process in temporal terms. If testosterone is given to the animal during this period, it will not hibernate, will attempt live in open spaces and will die.”

Images of certain area of the hamster’s brain (the same one observed in the mouse of the previous example) are completely different in the summer and in winter, indicating how the animal’s rhythm influences the central nervous system. The decrease of gonadal hormones prepares the animal for winter. The loss of vasoconstriction in the septum allows it to adapt its physiology and plummets its temperature to 5°C.

Type 2 diabetes and obesity

Two other examples of disordered physiological processes possibly caused by a desynchronization between the biological clock and the physiological mechanisms themselves are, according to Buijs, the onset of type 2 diabetes and the development of obesity.

In the case of type 2 diabetes, this might have to do with the fact that the brain needs more glucose for the active period of the individual’s daily cycle. The amount of sugar (glucose) consumed by the brain in 24 hours is 100 g and the quantity available for the rest of the body is 5 g. “The selfish brain competes with the rest of the body for energy. ‘Compete,’ however, is not a good verb, because the brain is the boss and orders that the sugar be given to it.”

An experiment was carried out with people suffering from type 2 diabetes and had twice the glucose levels of people without the disease. Although the level of glucose is already quite high in patients, it begins to rise even further around 5:00 am, preparing the body for the active period of the day.

The explanation for this, according to Buijs, is that the brain becomes more active and requires more energy in the beginning of the period of greater activity. To meet the demands of the brain, the biological clock prepares the body to make more glucose available.

When the body provides more glucose, it peak in the bloodstream quite rapidly, but then the level drops in a short time. By observing this phenomenon throughout the day, it was found that peaks in blood glucose levels decrease until the onset of the active period.

Interestingly, if you compare both phenomena, you’ll see that the glucose peak in the blood corresponds to lowest glucose peak in the muscles. “This means that the biological clock is doing two things at once: on the one hand, it is stimulating the production of glucose; on the other, it is making the brain absorb more glucose. A perfect preparation for the active period of the day.”

What is the role of the biological clock in obesity? Buijs said one of the correlations has to do with the period of sleep: the shorter the period, the greater the chances of developing obesity. But there’s another correlation, related to factors that promote the growth of fatty tissue.

Actually, the autonomic nervous system involves two systems (the sympathetic and the parasympathetic), by means of which the brain sends commands for the fatty tissues to grow. By injecting a virus similar to that of rabies in retroperitoneal fat (the back of the abdominal cavity) of mice, it is possible to identify the area of the brain that controls the parasympathetic system – which is, in general, the system for repose. “When cutting the innervation of the system, the uptake of glucose decreases, indicating that a command from the brain is required for the fatty tissue to absorb it.”

By analyzing the abdominal fat of two 14-year old boys, one non-diabetic and the other diabetic, the clinical finding was that the accumulation of fatty tissue in the gastrointestinal compartment is associated with the disease. According to Buijs, understanding that the parasympathetic system is important for the accumulation of fat suggests that the system’s commands for the gastrointestinal compartment may be stronger than the commands for the subcutaneous area. This might mean that both regions need other body signals; otherwise, the brain will not be able to distinguish between the compartments.

To resolve this doubt, markers were injected in abdominal tissue of mice and it was found that in the autonomic center (which commands the fatty tissues) there is a pair of different nerves to command the fat of each compartment. The differentiation of nerves may be followed up to the hypothalamus, where the differentiation can actually be seen in one of the structures that receive information from the biological clock. Thus, we find that the biological clock has nerves that communicate only with some part of the body not with another.

The conclusion of these experiments is that different controls for different tissues is what enables the centralized control of fat distribution. According to Buijs, this can be seen in the fact that individuals who accumulate abdominal fat suffer an imbalance in the body’s fat compartments, suggesting that some cases of diabetes and hypertension may involve this type of imbalance in the commands of the autonomic nervous system – not only in commands stemming from the hypothalamus, but in those from the biological clock itself.

Buijs’ working hypothesis for future research is that disarray in the reciprocal relationship between the biological clock and the organs – at any level and at any stage of life – can result in illness. “The disease can be induced, for instance, by ingesting food at the wrong moments during the 24 hour cycle.”

The largest measured span of time is the 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang. The smallest is 10^-18 second: one millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a second, measured in atomic excitation. From this time spectrum, physicists try to understand the experience and the flow of time.

In his lecture, Building Time in Physics – Attempts, on April 20 at the Intercontinental Academia, physicist Eliezer Rabinovici, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI), addressed some concepts that were discovered and developed to study the large and small scales of time, especially those used to explain the constitution of matter in unified theories and in string theory.

An expert on particle physics, Rabinovici was director of HUJI’s Institute for Advanced Study and creator of the proposal that resulted in the Intercontinental Academia.

Unified theory

“Although most of us measure from 1 to 2 meters, we boldly presume to explain the entire universe, from the smallest to the largest aspects. We want to explain and reduce everything to what is simplest. We believe we can put in one page all the equations that describe matter in the universe. That’s quite a feat.” Rabinovici’s comment seems to indicate that, at the very least, he sees with some reservation the possibility that physics will arrive at a unified theory combining all the forces that affect matter (electromagnetism, gravity, the weak interaction and strong interaction).

He said that in the 1920s scientists knew two interactions of matter, electromagnetism and gravity, which at low energies occur in four dimensions – three spatial ones, the fourth being time. “When energy was increased in particle accelerators, it was found that there is one basic interaction, gravity, and five dimensions. This was a great leap in our understanding of matter.”

According to Rabinovici, to evade the notion that an omnipotent equation may unify all the forces affecting matter (electromagnetism, gravity, strong interaction and weak interaction) and fully explain the constitution of matter, all we have to do is give it an infinite number of solutions. “In string theory, where strings (the components of matter) move in ten dimensions, this is what happens: we have an equation with, as far as we know, infinite solutions.”

Dualities

Rabinovici mentioned that the current work of physicists is impregnated with many mysterious things that seem dualities. “Initially, all known mathematical principles become ambiguous or seem to have the same theory. One of these concepts concerns the number of existing dimensions. The theory of five dimensions provides the same description as the theory of ten dimensions. And one of the dualities is the Big Crunch [the collapse of the universe due to contraction caused by gravity], which would be a terrible event for some and magnificent to others, with each explanation being as good as another.”

Relativity

Everyone now says everything is relative. This is not true, according to Rabinovici. “One of the worst representations of a theory is the fact that the Theory of Relativity is called Theory of Relativity. Einstein knew that the word was not appropriate. When asked five years later whether it might be better to change the name, he answered, ‘It’s too late’.”

According to Rabinovici, the Theory of Relativity is an attempt to isolate what is not relative, to become a theory about what every observer can agree on. “Time has relative aspects, but it is part of something that is not relative. Cause and effect relationships are not relative. The decay time of a particle (neutrons decay in 14 minutes) is not relative.”

Symmetry

He said that laws of physics are roughly the same in both directions of the flow of time, but there is a small “breach of time” that can be measured in reverse symmetry. Even if the laws of physics are symmetric, why isn’t their manifestation symmetric? Why something destroyed cannot return to its previous state? To this question, Rabinovici said that that is not how things happen, because over a long course of time (“zillions of times the age of the Universe”) reconstitution might occur and that something could become quite similar to what it was.

Space-time

Rabinovici said that everyone learns at school or in popular readings that time merges with the space and only space-time exists, being impossible to think of each of them separately. “Time and space do indeed merge, but some things are invariant,” according to the physicist. “Space-time and gravity are closely linked and time and space are average quantities; however, they are not fundamental because they emerge from something else.”

Because humans are subject to extremely weak gravity (compared to other places in the universe, such as black holes), we have a relatively stable perception of time: “Because the universe expands, it has a radius. We can say where we are in terms of the size of that radius. That is our clock.”

Photo: Leonor Calasans/IEA-USP

The participants of the first edition of the Intercontinental Academia will gather in March (6-18) for the second phase of the project. Almost a year after the meeting in São Paulo, organized by the IEA, the thirteen young researchers will complete their studies on the subject "time" in Nagoya and present the content to a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).

This phase is being organized by the Nagoya University's Institute for Advanced Research (IAR) with the technical support of the IEA. In addition to the former director of the Brazilian institute, Martin Grossmann, also a member of the scientific committee of the project, two employees of the IEA will be in Nagoya. Rafael Borsanelli and Sergio Bernardo have been invited by the Japanese institute to integrate the technical team of the event.

Toshihide Maskawa	Ryoji Noyori

The programme includes conferences with two Nobel Prize winners: physicist Toshihide Maskawa, awarded in 2008, and chemist Ryoji Noyori, awarded in 2001. Maskawa will give a master class on March 7, at 1.30 pm (Nagoya time), followed by Noyori, who will speak at 3 pm. Maskawa and Noyori are two out of six Nobel Prize winners from Nagoya University.

Besides them, more than 30 specialists in biology, physics, humanities, social sciences and arts will give conferences throughout the 12-day meeting. The president of Nagoya University, Michinari Hamaguchi, will discuss higher education and academic research in Japan (March 7, at 6.30, Nagoya time). The former director of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, Peter Goddard, will talk about the development and the role of institutes for advanced study (March 11, at 1.00 pm, Nagoya time).

The activities will take place on the campuses of Nagoya University and Waseda University, in Tokyo. The full programme can be found here.

All conferences will be broadcast live on the websites of the IEA and the Intercontinental Academia. The videos will also be available on the IEA website later.

The Intercontinental Academia is a project of the University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS), a network that brings together 36 institutes for advanced study of universities from all continents. The IEA-USP and the IAR-Nagoya are responsible for the first edition. The phase held in Brazil was part of the Global Networks of Young Researchers program of the Olavo Setubal Chair of Arts, Culture and Science, based on IEA with the support of Itaú Cultural.

The second edition of the Intercontinental Academia will begin on March 7, in Israel, with the theme "human dignity". The organizers are the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung - ZiF), of the Bielefeld University. Akemi Kamimura, a lawyer and human rights activist, is one of the 21 young researchers that will participate in the project, after being nominated by the IEA and approved by the organizing committee.

The footage of the online course that the participants of the first edition of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) are producing on the theme "Time" started this Monday, March 6. In Ubatuba, at the "Clarimundo de Jesus" Research Base of USP's Oceanographic Institute (IO), five young researchers who are part of the project will be focused until March 10 to record the lessons of the four sections that make up their Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). With a total of two hours, the course shall be hosted at Coursera's database.

MOOC recording backstage
Nikki Moore prepares to start filming

The group of 13 participants is being represented by David Gange, from the University of Birmingham; Eduardo Almeida and Helder Nakaya, both from USP; Nikki Moore, from Rice University; and Valtteri Arstila, from the University of Turku. During this week, they will be supervised by members of the ICA Senior Committee Martin Grossmann, from USP's School of Communications and Arts (ECA), and Regina Markus, from USP's Institute of Biosciences (IB).

The ICA is a program of the University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS), a network that brings together 36 institutes of advanced studies from universities of all continents. The IEA-USP and Nagoya University's Institute for Advanced Research (IAR) are responsible for the first edition. The meeting in São Paulo took place from April 17 to 30, 2015, and the second phase in Nagoya, between March 6 and 18 of last year.

The project brings together young researchers from different nationalities and areas of knowledge to develop studies on a common subject. Its accomplishment was possible thanks to the partnership and support of the Deans for Research of USP and Nagoya University, besides Itaú Cultural, which finances a major part of the costs through the programme Global Networks of Young Investigators of the Olavo Setubal Chair of Art, Culture and Science.

The researchers arrived in Ubatuba after having prepared the scripts to be filmed by a video producer. After the recordings, the course is expected to be completely ready to air in June.

Photo 1: IO-USP; Photos 2 and 3: Richard Meckien / IEA-USP

David Gange (University of Birmingham), Nikki Moore (Rice University) and Helder Nakaya (USP), three of the participants, presented the Closing Report to the members of the project's Senior Committee during the last session of the encounter.

Goals of the MOOC

According to them, the MOOC to be produced will be a kind of interactive online guide for students and researchers who want to develop or expand their interest in the concept of time. For now, there are three name options for the course: "On Time", "Thinking with Time" and "What Time Is It?".

The expectation is that the users of the MOOC acquire skills to synthesize arguments from large areas of knowledge, learn to analyze evidence in order to form their own ideas on the raised issues, develop the ability to deal with conceptual materials and think transversely to the disciplines involved.

Students should collaborate in the construction of scientific knowledge at the same time as they develop their framework of knowledge

Course structure

The young researchers have in mind a MOOC with four central themes chosen after a group evaluation on the key subdivisions of the concept of time.

All content will be studied from 14 topics, 13 of them related to at least one of the four core subjects and involving various disciplines, both the sciences and the humanities. The completion of the course will have an additional topic which will focus on the future of the concept of time.

Core subjects

Is time essential or a cognitive phenomenon? Does it require change? What exists in time? Is time an independent entity as suggested by physics and philosophy? Is it absolute or relative? These questions will try to answer the question of the first central theme: "What is time?".

“How is time perceived?” is the question that defines the second central theme. It raises a number of issues to be studied, including the following:

• Can we perceive time?
• Is it possible to make reliable judgments about temporal properties?
• Can one perceive time without change?
• What is the relationship between experienced time and neural time?
• How is it possible to experience events that last in time (movement, change, succession, melodies) as something extended in time?

The functional concept, the mutant concept and the standardization of time, the mental time travel (chronesthesia), the opposition between linear time and cyclical time, and (in anthropology) between deictic time and sequential time will be analyzed in the third central theme: "How is time conceptualised?".

The question that defines the fourth central theme is "How is time used?". The issues to be discussed approach time as something relevant to subjects such as astronomy, biology, chemistry and medicine as well as how narratives use it creating linearity, circularity or even its fractionation. The importance of time in social interaction (time management, punctuality, working and leisure hours), history, traditions and other aspects also deserve attention.

Topics of study

The 14 topics of the course have been established through specific questions which are broken down into sub-questions:

• How is time measured?
• What traces does time leave?
• Is there a relationship between time and causality?
• Is time relative?
• What are temporal illusions and what can we learn from them?
• Does time have a history?
• Why is the present special?
• Can we predict the future?
• How do different rhythms interact?
• What does symbolic representation do for human understanding of time?
• Do non-humans have individual time?
• Is time running out?
• How do we value time?
• What is the future of the time concept?

Means

Each topic will be covered in a class which will feature videotaped speeches, animations, questions and 5-8 films of 7-15 minutes each.

There will be a discussion forum in which the students will be encouraged to provide answers on questions raised by the course and other students.

There are also plans for a multimedia reading list, a kind of database with links and relevant content separated by levels of complexity. The idea is that students can write short comments on the presented material's support itself.

Target audience

The MOOC will be designed at a level of scientific complexity that should be "suitable for intellectually ambitious graduates." However, it will not be necessary that the students have previous specific qualifications as this would not match the diverse academic profile of those responsible for the initiative, who do not have an area of common knowledge to everyone. It would also be incoherent with the general spirit of this type of course.

The introduction of complex ideas will be made from the basic concepts domain, since each student is a beginner in at least some of the subjects comprised in the MOOC.

Additional results

Biologist Helder Nakaya presented the potential additional results that the Intercontinental Academia can provide besides the MOOC.

The first one is to send a "letter to the editor" of some interdisciplinary journal of world prestige. This contribution will address the importance, the key features and the project's results.

Even the contact of the young researchers throughout the project should result in interdisciplinary scientific articles, which might also be possible from the processing of the data to be collected through questionnaires answered by the students of the MOOC.

The production of a video with various multimedia features on all the work being developed in the Intercontinental Academia will be considered.

The first conference of the Intercontinental Academia on the subject of “Time”, on April 21, addressed what is known about the history and the possible future of the universe, as well as the concept of “arrow of time,” which posits only one direction for the flow of time, and considers that past and future are different, a notion closely related to cosmology.

The lecturer was theoretical physicist Matthew Kleban, from NYU, who dedicates himself to the study of string theory and the early history of the universe.

He noted that, contrary to what is assumed by the arrow of time, there are physical laws that posit dual direction, i.e., symmetry between past and future, although he stressed that this idea is still very confusing to physicists.

Entropy

According to Kleban, if this idea is correct, then the difference between past and future must be related “to an ‘environmental’ aspect, to an accident of history, such as the difference between North and South Americas, albeit universal, applicable anywhere and anytime.”

When entropy (“disorder”) is low, it tends to increase and the direction of its increase defines the future, said Kleban. Thus, entropy, which was very slight in the early universe, is the “environmental” factor that distinguishes the past from the future. “However, nothing prevents the arrow of time from having a reverse movement due to some other ‘environmental’ aspect.”

Cosmology

With regard to cosmology, he first defined what this science is: “The branch of astrophysics that studies the structure of the universe in the largest accessible scale; this includes the study of the birth, death (or future) and evolution of the Universe over time.”

However, because the universe is 14 billion years, we can only see a portion of it, although quite vast, corresponding to the distance traveled by light in these 14 billion years, he said. “Looking at the past, we see that the universe was hotter and opaque 14 billion years ago, so we cannot see (at least directly) its birth.”

Continuing with his presentation, Kleban addressed the current contents of the universe. He said there are about 100 billion galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars. The Milky Way has nearly 300 billion stars and a colossal black hole exists in the center of the galaxy, called Sagittarius A*, with mass equivalent to 4 million Suns, but with radius (at least in theory) only 17 times the size of the Sun. The solar system also orbits the galactic center, but the orbit lasts 200 million years.

Hubble's Law

The panel on galaxies was used by Kleban to introduce his comments about the expansion of the universe. The central figure here was American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1989-1953), whose telescope in the 1920s was able to observe approximately 50 galaxies (the Hubble Telescope, orbiting the Earth for 25 years, allows us to observe 10,000 galaxies when aimed at each 10/1,000,000 slit of the heavens).

Kleban explained that Edwin Hubble noticed something odd in the galaxies: the farther away they were, the faster they moved away from Earth. This observation led to the so-called Hubble’s Law: v = Hd, where H is a constant with units of 1/time. With this law, it became possible to calculate when the entire content of the universe was bundled together, so to speak: 14 billion years ago.

Kleban then reversed the arrow of time, as if the history of the universe moved backward, from when galaxies were just gas, through the increased warming, the opacity, the nucleosynthesis of protons and neutrons of helium and lithium, the inflation (when the volume of the universe spiked dramatically in a tiny fraction of a second), until reaching what is known as the singularity, “where even mere speculation collapses.”

He pointed out that each of these phases of the universe produced enormous entropy and that, even today, entropy is increasing. “Life can be seen as a process that accelerates the production of entropy, as stars and black holes do even more so.”

Hubble’s observations about the expansion of the universe created a profoundly strange idea, namely, the notion of the Earth as the center from which everything moves away, a kind of resumption of Ptolemy’s geocentrism.

Relativity

Kleban explained that in 1916, ten years before Hubble’s observations, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) developed the General Theory of Relativity, a sequence to the Special Theory of Relativity (1905), which had unified space and time (and energy and momentum). “In Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, time is relative, elapsing slower for an object moving at high speed or immersed in a gravitational field. Even in relativity, however, time does not flow in reverse.”

According Kleban, general relativity is a theory of gravity and also a radical reformulation of the nature of space and time that establishes their intimate and dynamic connection. Thus, the apparent force of gravity ceases to be a common force and becomes something like a “pseudoforce” or “fictitious force.”

After detailing some implications of this scenario, including the curvature of space-time, Kleban explained why Hubble’s Law works: “It is because the universe is expanding, and this has implications for the past and for the future.”

With regard to the future, some believe that the expansion will continue infinitely; the speed of expansion will decrease gradually, but will never cease. According to this hypothesis, Kleban explained, stars will eventually consume all their fuel and the universe will become cold and dead, even though this would probably not be the end, which would occur later.

Other researchers think the expansion will reach a maximum level and the universe will then begin to contract. After a finite span of time, density will be infinite, a singularity that is called “Big Crunch” (major collapse).

There are also those who consider that a threshold situation is possible between these two scenarios.

However, Kleban explained, these hypotheses hold two surprises: the first is that over the last billion years the expansion of the universe has accelerated because of dark energy. The second is that the speed of the expansion seems to be very close to the threshold speed. This would mean that the universe will continue to expand forever and will never reach zero degree or undergo an actual “hot death.”

Multiverse

And how about the beginning of everything, the Big Bang? Kleban said, “some well-intentioned additions to the laws of physics can dramatically affect the nature of the Big Bang and remove the singularity without altering any experiment carried out on Earth.”

One of his main interests is the so-called “multiverse” of string theory. “In string theory, the Big Bang was not a singularity or the beginning of time. It was the birth of a ‘bubble’ of a new ‘phase’.” The multiverse could harbor the emergence of numerous such bubbles.

String theory allows us to understand what existed before the Big Bang and what exists “beyond the universe” (or rather, what exists outside the visible bubble where the observable part of the universe is inserted), according to Kleban. However, he cautioned that the theory does not work with regard to “big crunches” (due to the arrow of time, actually) that the theory itself envisages. “Likewise, the theory does not work in low entropy situations.”

In conclusion, Kleban said that, for him, the most attractive idea is an overall timeless universe, where almost all of time in a state of balance with near‑maximum entropy – only rare fluctuations of reduced entropy, which would produce a local arrow of time. However, “this idea does not seem to work, but rather predicts miracles.”

Photo: Sandra Sedini/IEA-USP

The launch will take place during the 6th UBIAS Directors' Conference, which will gather representatives from institutes for advanced study linked to universities on all continents. This will be possible thanks to the partnership between USP's Dean of Research and Coursera.

The MOOC is the result of debates undertaken by 13 young researchers from various fields and several countries participating in the first edition of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) in 2015 and 2016. Organized by the IEA and the IAR, the project's theme was "Time."

The ICA is a UBIAS program in which two institutes for advanced study from different continents organize periods of immersion in conferences and debates on an interdisciplinary theme. The fourth edition will be held in 2021 and 2022 around the theme "Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence."

Facets of time

The aim of the course is to present a comprehensive overview of the main formulations about time in science, philosophy, and the arts. The discussed issues range from the dynamic or static time of the pre-Socratics to Heidegger's phenomenology, from the discussion about the arrow of time towards the future to the inexistence of the concept of time in quantum gravity, and from geological time to the circadian cycles that control the human organism.

During the periods of intense activity at the IEA (April 2015) and the IAR (March 2016), the young researchers had the opportunity to participate in dozens of conferences by senior specialists on the conception and importance of time in anthropology, physics, neurobiology, chronobiology, psychoanalysis, environmental sciences, and other areas.

So that a synthesis of the debates raised by these conferences and the working meetings could reach a wide audience, the researchers were tasked with producing a MOOC.

IEA's director at the time of ICA's first edition and a member of the senior committee of the project, Martin Grossmann recalls that the idea of producing the MOOC came from chronobiologist Till Roenneberg (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich - LMU) during a meeting of the committee at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), in September 2014.

Consisting of 17 video classes divided into four modules and a total length of five and a half hours, the course has been produced by six of the young researchers.

The content coordination has been in charge of Nikki Moore (Wake Forest University), Marius Müller (Federal University of Pernambuco), and Valtteri Arstila (University of Turku). Eduardo Almeida and Helder Nakaya, both affiliated to USP, and David Gange (University of Birmingham), have participated as creators and exhibitors.

The filming, under the audiovisual direction of Priscila Lima, took place at the "Clarimundo de Jesus" Research Base of USP's Oceanographic Institute (IO), in Ubatuba, coast of the Brazilian state of São Paulo, in 2017.

According to Grossmann, the MOOC has met the objectives of the ICA, since "the expectations in relation to the results were quite broad and not very well defined."

He considers that the course format has become even more relevant due to the demands of today: "The position of teachers, who still attribute a secondary role to MOOCs in education, tends to change in the face of the reality of online interactions during the pandemic." Grossmann says that he used to consider the format to be very limited, as it tried to reproduce the classroom formula, "but the result achieved by the researchers' work surprised me."

Preparation for recording one of the MOOC classes

For him, the interdisciplinary course on "Time" is introductory and influenced by the cultural and scientific universe of the young researchers of the ICA. "There is no ambition to address issues more assertively."

He finds it difficult to define the MOOC's audience. He believes that the course will attract graduate students from different areas in addition to "restless undergraduates with the need to venture into different fields."

According to Grossmann, the course also leaves a legacy of confirmation that the UBIAS network can work with such initiatives and propose similar ones in the future.

Participants' experience

Two of the six researchers involved in the production of the MOOC, Eduardo Almeida and Marius Müller, will act as pedagogical coordinators of the course at Coursera.

Almeida classifies the experience of producing the course as "incredible," as it required "the harmonization of visions, knowledge, and interpretations from areas as diverse as literature, mathematics, history, psychology, biology, physics, bioinformatics, arts, and philosophy in a discussion that would make a minimum of sense for everyone involved."

For Müller, it has been a difficult process "not only in relation to the theme but also in terms of intercultural interaction." Despite the difficulties, he considers that the work "was a great and very rewardinglearning experience."

The choice of the theme "Time" has been an advantage, according to Almeida, "because it is a dimension of existence that permeates any area of knowledge and is challenging in all disciplines."

Two obstacles stood out in the execution of the work, in his opinion. One of them is the fact that the greater the specialization in an academic area, the more difficult it is to understand the perspectives (conceptual basis, problematic aspects, theoretical questions, history) of the other areas, although "philosophy sometimes acts as a bridge between some of these knowledge islands." The other is the difference between languages from different areas ("even having English as a language of communication"), which "makes understanding the concepts themselves very difficult." For him, this is due to the adoption of a jargon typical to each discipline "and, I believe, even by the ways of thinking and arguing that differ between people who represent these areas."

All of the topics addressed by the MOOC were challenging, says Almeida. In his case, the topics that are not part of his scope of action as a scientist in the biological field were especially demanding. "The discussion about the physical nature of time is difficult because the mathematical basis or the very abstraction of theories is counterintuitive at first; the perspective of time in a work of art follows principles even more distinct from those that I consider reasonable for my perspective as a scientist."

He reported that his participation in the production of the course caused a mixture of curiosity and skepticism ("I think something somewhat enigmatic") among his department colleagues, because it was something different from the usual activity of researchers.

"I gave a seminar on the topic in the department and several colleagues were curious to know a little more. At the time, the MOOC had not yet been completed. It will be interesting to find out if the course can generate reflections in the colleagues who attend it."

Almeida stated that the online course has been his first experience in scientific dissemination on a larger scale, as his common activity in the area takes place through lectures, extension courses, and small fairs. Müller said that he had already participated in scientific dissemination, "but that the production of a MOOC was very specific and a valuable experience."

According to Almeida, the discussions among the participants have evidenced the feeling that everyone had their academic activities influenced by their work. He said he was more skeptical about some certainties and more attentive to the perspectives that varied disciplines bring about some subjects. He also believes he has become more careful about communicating ideas and being able to speak to an audience broader than his closest circle.

For Müller, participating in the project has influenced his academic mind and "opened up the interest in working and acting in different academic areas in the future."

Both the ICA on "Time" and the production of MOOC were sponsored by the Itaú Cultural Foundation with support from the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), FRIAS, the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study (WIAS), and the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) at LMU Munich.

With the theme 'Time,' the edition has gathered 13 young participating researchers in two meetings that took place at the IEA-USP in April 2015 and at the University of Nagoya's Institute for Advanced Research (IAR) in March 2016. The documentary of the São Paulo phase is also available on the website. A third film that compiles both phases will also be released.

The 12-minute long video reporting the activities held in Nagoya presents testimonials of the majority of the young researchers on the importance of the interdisciplinary dialogue regarding the concepts of time. They also talk about the production of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on 'Time' as the final outcome of the initiative. The other testimonials are from Hisanori Shinohara, director of the IAR, and Martin Grossmann, director of IEA during the São Paulo phase of the project, both members of the Senior Committee of this first edition.

Editions

The Intercontinental Academia is an initiative of the University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study network (UBIAS). The partnership between the IEA and the IAR for the inauguration of the project has been sponsored by Itaú Cultural and supported by five institutions: FAPESP, CNPq, the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study (WIAS) and the Center for Advanced Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. The edition also featured Coursera (where the MOOC will be available soon) as a partner.

The project is currently in the final preparations for the start of the third edition, whose theme is 'Laws: Rigidity and Dynamics,' with meetings at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in March 2018 and at the University of Birmingham's Institute for Advanced Studies in March 2019.

The second edition was entitled 'Human Dignity' and was held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Israel Institute of Advanced Studies in March 2016, and at at University of Bielefeld's Center for Interdisciplinary Research in August of the same year.

In a videoconference of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) held on April 20, Sami Pihlström, professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Helsinki (Finland) addressed the notions of time and eternity from a philosophical perspective.

Pihlström, who is also director of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, dedicated his exposition more to raising topics for reflection by ICA's participants than to providing answers. He began his lecture by raising two central philosophical problems about the metaphysics of time and of temporality: “What is time? Is time fundamentally real or is it just a way for man to categorize reality?”

According to him, these questions lead to two major concepts of time: that of Realism, which sees time as “a basic feature of the space-time universe,” endowed with objective truth; and that Transcendental Idealism (developed by German philosopher Immanuel Kant), according to which time is a subjective construction of human cognitive faculties, derived from intuition.

These concepts, in turn, bring up the clash Realism vs. Anti-Realism regarding the existence of “objective and independent truth values ​​of the mind” underlying historical statements. In Pihlström’s assessment, these two philosophic currents take opposite positions: while the former states that the past is objectively determined, the latter denies the existence of objective reality in any temporal dimension.

ETERNITY

The second part of Pihlström exposition was devoted to reflecting on the scientific and philosophical relevance and coherence of the concept of eternity. “Is there or can there be something that is eternal?”, he asked.

He observed that ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle held that the natural world has an eternal existence; Judeo-Christian monotheism, on the other hand, believes that the world as we know it has a beginning (the time of creation) and an end (the time of apocalypse).

However, although believing in the finitude of the world, Pihlström said, Judaism, Christianity and other religions also believe in eternal life, seen “as an endless continuation of corporeal or incorporeal existence, probably in very different form than that of earthly existence.”

For him, the idea of ​​eternal life refers us to what English philosopher Bernard Williams called the “tedium of immortality” – a state of profound dejection when faced with the infinity of time. This is because immortal beings, unencumbered by time constraints, could do anything at any time, which would lead them to postpone any action indefinitely. “There would be no motivation for anything,” he emphasized.

TIMELESSNESS

On the other hand, stressed Pihlström, the concept of eternity can be interpreted not as immortal existence in infinite time, but as timelessness. In his view, “life itself can be seen as a subspecies of eternity, even if one does not believe in any kind of infinite extension of temporal existence.”

He argued that, in this case, eternal life would amount to living the present moment, as proposed by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Unfortunately, this idea can be easily trivialized in self-help literature and popular culture,” he added.

Referring to the philosophy of religion inspired by Wittgenstein’s ideas, of which British philosopher Dewi Zephaniah Phillips is the leading exponent, Pihlström said religious, and particularly Christian, concern with the question of immortality/eternity begins with a radical affirmation of one’s finitude and of human immortality. “Only by waiving the quest for the infinite continuity of life can one adopt the perspective of eternity that a proper ethics for life requires,” he concluded.