Concept of Time

The concept of the passage of time is very familiar to most people regardless of cultural heritage. The days and nights come and go, and with each passing day and night humankind grows older. In today’s highly mechanized world, there are numerous clocks and watches that ceaselessly tick away time and determine the schedules by which hundreds of millions of people live. Thus, it would seem that the concept of the passage of time should be second nature to humankind and thoroughly understood by all people ( ).

However, developing an awareness of the concept of time is not a simple phenomenon but a gradual process ( ). Most people, regardless of cultural heritage, remember a time when their perception of the passage of time was altered. Such occasions might have been during times of boredom or of highly emotional and stressful events. During these events time might have seemed to have passed very slowly, or it might have seemed to have passed all too quickly. It must be remembered that a sense of time is not innate but is developed early as a result of everyday experiences that are common to all people. Thus, a sense of time results from learning. It becomes a part of human nature before one is conscious of its presence. Even infants perceive the essence of time. Infants are fed on demand or according to a strict timetable and experience the succession of day by night. Infants are thereby exposed to regular rhythmic changes that are reflected in rhythmic changes in bodily conditions, including being sated, awake, or asleep. Thus, one phenomenon of time is its association with rhythm and change.

Infants grow, develop, and begin to move through crawling. The speed with which crawling occurs determines the time it takes to get from one place to another. Thus, even this simple task makes individuals aware that time is associated with speed and velocity, which is the second phenomenon of time. As individuals grow older, they learn speech as they listen to stories that begin with “once upon a time.” It is through these storytelling sessions that children learn that things did happen before they were born; thus, time is associated with history and goes backward as well as forward with the succession of events. As the growth and development of the child continue, an awareness of punctuality is developed. Children may be punished for being slow or late, and regardless of their reaction to it, the punishment contributes to the formation of character and the development of the understanding of time. Therefore, the third phenomenon of time is its association with social behavior ( ).

The child begins to become conscious of time and asks questions such as “Where was I before I was born?” and “What did God do before He created the world?” and “What will happen to me after I die?” Such questions lead to an understanding that time is associated with philosophy and religion. Children are taught to read time on a clock, and as they grow to adulthood, they learn that the clock is ubiquitous and that life is governed by the clock. Thus, there is an erroneous identification of time with the clock. Through questioning, individuals begin to contemplate existence on earth and to develop an understanding that time is associated with something external over which there is no control and that appears absolute ( ; ).

Developing an understanding of the definition of time by looking at the developmental process is clearly too simple. The development of the awareness of time is directly influenced by earlier ideas and prejudices that are mostly unconscious. However, because it is the nature of humankind to have a questioning frame of mind, ideas and prejudices may become conscious.

Other considerations concerning time include the question of whether time is concrete or abstract. Time is perceived as real in the sense of being concrete and having direct effects, or it is regarded as not real in the sense of being abstract. The mathematical and physical sciences adopt the view that time is an abstract dimension with only a locational or reference function ( ). On the other hand, the biological sciences adopt the view that time is an essential ingredient in many life and behavioral processes, such as gestation, healing, and metamorphosis. This difference in conceptualization of time may be related to an obvious difference between the physical and biological sciences and how each treats the concept of entropy. For the physical sciences, entropy, or randomness, continuously increases over time, whereas the biological sciences see organization, structure, and information residing within the organism and in the organism’s relation to its environment as increasing over time.

Measurement of Time

Time has two distinct, although related, meanings. The first meaning is that of duration, which is an interval of time. The second meaning is that of specified instances, or points in time. These two meanings are related because a point in time is identified as being the end of a time interval that starts at an arbitrary or fixed reference point, such as the founding of Rome or the birth of Christ. Thus, if one asks the question “What is the time?” and the answer given is “It is 10:00 a.m.,” this answer refers to a point in time. At the same time, the answer refers to a time interval, since it indicates the time from a certain reference point, which in this case is midnight the previous night ( ; ). The two meanings are quite different and must not be confused with each other. Measuring devices are meant to determine intervals of time, and clocks and watches are designed to read direct points in time. Clocks and watches therefore have to be standardized against a standard clock. The purpose of a standard clock is to measure accurately the time interval up to the present time. This phenomenon goes back to one universal standard clock against which all standard clocks are calibrated.

The purpose of a universal standard clock is to define operational time in terms of both time interval and point in time ( ). The purpose of measuring devices is to define time; however, people need to have intuitive ideas about time to specify the properties of the instrument. Measuring devices of a phenomenon such as time are more accurate than measuring devices of some other phenomena. For example, if a person wanted to measure the weight of another person, this weight could be defined operationally as a point or reading on a scale. Thus a good scale would give accurate weight, just as any good clock would give accurate time. On the other hand, if an individual wanted to define a person’s intelligence quotient (IQ) as the score obtained on an intelligence test but there was no general agreement about what constituted intelligence and what constituted a good intelligence test, the scores would not be so relevant or so meaningful as the weight or time measures.

Throughout the history of humankind, there have been two obvious standards of time: the day and the year. The day is a remarkably easy period of time to recognize because of the experience of daylight and darkness, which result from the earth’s spinning on its axis. The year is also easy to recognize because of the passage of the seasons, which are caused by the tilting of the earth’s axis. Thus, a day is the period of time required for one complete revolution of the earth about its axis, whereas a year is the time taken for the earth to move one complete revolution around the sun, which takes just under 365.25 days. Therefore, it is completely natural that we choose to mark the passage of time by first marking the days and then marking the years. Time measurement during the day has been divided into hours, and the hours in turn have been divided by 60 to give minutes. The minutes have been divided by 60 to give seconds.

Very early in the history of civilization, the middle of each day was determined as the point when the sun was at its highest point during the day. This point was defined as noon, and clocks were made to read 12 when it occurred. Thus, if it is noon in one place, it is midnight at the opposite side of the earth and different times at other places on the earth. To understand how time varies, the earth must be viewed as a circle that passes through both the North Pole and the South Pole.

Traditionally in science, Greenwich, the observatory in London, has been taken to have 0 degrees of longitude; the longitudes of all other places on Earth are given as so many degrees east or west of Greenwich. Therefore, one half of the earth’s surface has a longitude of up to 180 degrees east of Greenwich, whereas the other half has a longitude of up to 180 degrees west of Greenwich. The times of all places east of Greenwich are ahead of that of Greenwich, and the times of all places west of Greenwich lag behind that of Greenwich. For example, if a person started from Greenwich and traveled eastward to a longitude of 45 degrees, the time would be 3 hours ahead of Greenwich time. The converse is that if a person started at Greenwich and traveled westward to a longitude of 180 degrees, the time would be 12 hours behind that of Greenwich. In simpler terms, if it is 2 a.m. on Sunday morning at Greenwich, it is 2 p.m. on Sunday at a longitude 180 degrees east of Greenwich and 2 p.m. on Saturday at a longitude 180 degrees west of Greenwich ( ).

This phenomenon of time presents some interesting effects on persons who travel great distances. For example, it is possible for an international traveler to have two birthdays (birthday anniversaries); that is, if a person crosses the international date line traveling eastward at 2 a.m. Sunday morning, at which point it suddenly becomes 2 a.m. Saturday, that person has Saturday all over again and thus is able to celebrate the birthday again. If this same international traveler who is about to celebrate a birthday on Saturday leaves from the point of origin at 2 a.m. on Saturday but crosses the international date line westward, the traveler suddenly finds that it is 2 a.m. Sunday morning, and apparently almost the entire day of Saturday and the birthday have been missed ( ).

Social Time Versus Clock Time

The word time immediately presents an image of a clock or calendar. However, the term social time is not equivalent with clock time. Social time refers to patterns and orientations that relate to social processes and to the conceptualization and ordering of social life. For centuries, many of the great thinkers have argued that social time must be distinguished from clock time. As early as 1910, Henri Bergson insisted that the homogeneous time of Newtonian physics was not the time that revealed the essence of humankind. On the other hand, Phillip , an anthropologist, showed that an Indian wake could be meaningfully analyzed in terms of “gathering time,” “prayer time,” “singing time,” “intermission time,” and “meal time.” None of these times has a particular relationship to clock time. They all simply imply the passage of the mourner from one time to another by consensual feelings rather than by the clock.

According to some sociologists, certain kinds of psychological disorders may be viewed in terms of the individual living wholly in the present, the implication being that the past and the future are completely severed from consciousness. The difference, therefore, between social time and clock time is that the former is a more inclusive concept whereas the latter may or may not be. conducted a study on Mexican Americans and proposed that Mexican Americans have a present-time orientation that may account for the tendency to be late for appointments. It is believed that present-time orientation, particularly in high-risk settings such as mental health facilities, may result in a crisis approach rather than a preventive one. For example, a client who has an immediate need at home may be late for appointments at the clinic or hospital or may miss them altogether. The nurse should also keep in mind that clients with a present-time orientation may be reluctant to leave an appointment simply because the time is up.

This same lack of correlation between social time and clock time can be seen in mystical beliefs. According to mystical thought, magic can be used to negate the temporal order that infers causality. For example, an Indian warrior who is wounded by an arrow may attend to his pain by hanging the arrow up where it is cool or by applying ointment to the arrow. What the Indian warrior is attempting to do is to reverse the clock time—that is, wrench the present back into the past to alter the course of events. For people who have mystical beliefs, temporal intervals are not simple, homogeneous series; rather, they contain an inherent quality and meaning or an essence and efficacy of their own ( ). Therefore, the objectivity represented by clock time is unknown to a person with mystical beliefs.

Many sociologists believe that people who lack or minimize clock time also lack regularity or temporal measurement. The natural and social phenomena may dictate regularity and measurement. provides several examples of natural events that have been used to time human activities: (1) the arrival of the cranes in ancient Greece marked the time for planting; (2) the return of the swallow marked the time for the end of pruning; (3) the South African Bushmen note the rising of Sirius and Canopus and are able to depict the progress of winter by the movement of these celestial bodies across the night sky.

Archaeologists have been able to piece together the history of humankind by measuring the passage of time, using the method of geologists. This measure of time is based on rates of deposits to and erosion of natural early elements. An example of this kind of measurement is tree-ring chronology ( ).

Worldview of Social Time Versus Clock Time

People throughout the world view social time and clock time differently ( ). For example, noted that the division of time by weeks reflects social conditions rather than mechanical Newtonian divisions. Most societies have some kind of week, but the weeks vary in length from 3 to 16 or more days. In most cases, weeks reflect the cycle of market activities. The Khasi people have an 8-day week because they hold market every eighth day, and they have named the days of the week after the places where the principal markets occur ( ).

Some cultural groups exhibit a social time that not only is different from clock time but also is actually scornful of clock time. For example, there are peasants in Algeria who live with a total indifference to the passage of clock time and who despise haste in human affairs. They have no notion of exact appointment times, they lack exact times for eating meals, and they have labeled the clock as the “devil’s mill” ( ). Some Amish keep “slow time.” When those around them adjust their time to go from daylight savings time to standard time, the Amish set clocks a half-hour ahead ( ; ; ; ). This has important implications for the nurse who is trying to emphasize the importance of keeping medical appointments.

Despite the way people in various cultures view clock time as opposed to social time, the nurse must remember that clock time should not be regarded as unimportant or irrelevant. Although for some people in some cultural groups there is no necessary correlation of clock time and social time, clock time does not take on paramount importance in a social context such as the modern Western world, where the watch or the clock can become something of a tyrant. In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver never did anything without looking at his watch, which he called his “oracle.” He said that his watch pointed out the time for every action of his life. Because of Gulliver’s obsession with his watch, the Lilliputians concluded that the watch was Gulliver’s god.

Aside from literature, many actual examples of human obsessive behavior in regard to clock time can be found. wrote that he was exactly 43 years old and had probably only 227,760 hours to live, and he proceeded to detail how he would maximize the use of those remaining hours of his life. He concluded that if he reduced his sleep time from 8 hours to 6 hours, the 2 hours a day saved from sleeping would amount to 18,980 hours over a period of 26 years. If this savings were converted into 18-hour days, which is the equivalent of about 2 years and 11 months, he could virtually lengthen his remaining time alive by 2 years and 11 months. This example illustrates how human life can be turned into a lengthy succession of minutes and hours, with the individual’s existence reduced to a compulsive and frantic effort to avoid waste.

conducted a study of the role of time in television news work. They found that time is a major factor in the production of unscheduled “hard” news. The definition for “hard” news refers to events such as fires, homicides, and accidents, which have a certain urgency to them. They summarized the findings of their research in three propositions. In the first proposition they concluded that the news value of an event is directly proportional to the time invested in covering it. An event may turn out to be relatively minor in the sense of not involving the trauma or shock value that was anticipated, but this factor is not considered when a news crew has invested time in the event, and the story is likely to be used in the evening news program anyway. They found in the second proposition that what is considered news by the news crew depends on when it happens and how long it lasts. Although viewers tend to believe that what they see on the evening news is a compilation of the universal news events for that particular day, what is telecast each evening is actually a compilation of news events that the news crew was able to learn about, get a story line on, capture on film, and then process and edit on film. The researchers found in the third proposition that bias in the news reflects occupational assumptions and temporal constraints more than it does the political or social views of the news crew. More important than political and social biases are the assumptions that the news crew makes about what will make good news on television and the severe time constraints on those persons assigned to locate film and write about events in time for the evening news program. The researchers concluded that because of deadline pressures, it is inevitable that events are reduced to surface actions and that the visuals seen each evening are of only the most dramatic events.

In today’s modern technological society, clock time is of paramount importance. However, we must remember that even in a modern society the clock may be a relatively peripheral part of social life. Not all people in a modern technological society function under the inevitable tyranny of the clock. In a survey of a representative sample of the French population, approximately 21% of the respondents indicated a belief that there was no urgency about being punctual and also stated that they had not experienced the feeling of wasting time ( ). It is the perception of some people in some cultural groups that there is little correlation between being punctual and wasting time ( ). Hein further postulated that assumptions and definitions in regard to time are determined by culture and cultural variables and are reflected in interactions with others, personal views concerning punctuality, use or waste of time, and value and respect for time or a lack thereof. Waiting is a cultural counterpart to time because a particular behavior, person, or event is anticipated within a particular time frame. Waiting may have a meaning similar to that of time for some African-American clients. The nurse may schedule an appointment for an African-American client and wait for the client to arrive for the appointment. However, the client may not arrive for several hours, or perhaps even a few days, because of other important issues that in the client’s mind took precedence over the appointment. Although the nurse viewed this time as waiting and therefore wasting time, the client for whom the appointment was made was not wasting time ( ).

In some cultures, for example, among some persons of Asian origin, time is viewed as flexible, and so there is no need to hurry or be punctual except in extremely important cases. Asians may spend hours getting to know people and view predetermined abrupt endings as rude ( ). Nonetheless, the nurse should emphasize the importance of keeping scheduled appointments. Hispanics or Latinos as well often have difficulty with scheduled appointments and are sometimes said to be on “Latin time.” However, this is sometimes explained by Hispanics as the result of consideration for others who were not ready to leave for the appointment ( ; ; ).

In the American nursing profession, many nurses have related professionalism and success in their careers to a sense of precision about clock time. For example, in many health care facilities, a medication error is considered to occur when a medication is not given within 30 minutes of the prescribed time, even when the medication is given daily and is not a time-released medication. Thus the nurse must complete a medication error form for not giving a routine daily medication such as a vitamin or laxative, which is neither time released nor urgent.

Most agencies relate medication errors to disciplinary action and dismissal. In some facilities the nurse is expected to complete all morning or evening care in a precise time frame, even though many clients may not operate in the same time sphere as the facility schedule for client care. For example, a client may become upset when the night nurse refuses to help the client to shower at 3 a.m. because showering is a stated day-shift activity. In this case the client may be used to starting the day at 3 a.m. and unwilling to wait until 7 a.m. to do so. Another example is early-morning vital signs, which may be taken by the night nurse to facilitate a timely assessment of the client’s condition for the physician who makes early morning rounds. The client may be annoyed at being awakened for such a brief procedure and then instructed by the nurse to return to sleep.

According to analysis of the temporal order of the hospital, any unit of clock time is equal to any other unit, whether one is talking about minutes, hours, days, or weeks. However, Zerubavel concluded that different days mean quite different things to different people. Because people perceive days differently, it is important to remember that some days are more or less desirable for some people. For example, some health care personnel may perceive the fact of working two weekends in succession as unfair. Similarly, evening or night duty is usually considered less desirable than day duty. Thus it is important for hospital administrators to understand the necessity for fairness in scheduling. Some hospitals have a policy that all personnel are expected to work their share of the less desirable times. In other hospitals the staff are paid differentials for working what are perceived as the less desirable times—that is, evenings, nights, weekends, and holidays.

Structure of Social Time

The structure of social time is a complex phenomenon. To understand it, three broad areas of social time must be analyzed: temporal pattern, temporal orientation, and temporal perspective.