A Few Historical Remarks on Time, Mind, and Symmetry

Abstract

The ideas of symmetry (duality, twoness, pairing, etc.) and asymmetry (directing, aiming, beginningend, evolution, attraction, repulsion, polarity, oppositeness, etc.) must have occurred to the human mind early in the history of science, for there are many “obvious” symmetric and asymmetric pairs in nature. People have two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, two hands, two feet, etc. Yet, the hands are asymmetric; for eating, drinking, using tools, or fighting imply different tasks for each hand. The two hands demonstrated the right and left (or preferable) aspects of everything. In addition all animal life is dominated by the “polarity” of sex, every animal is either male or female, i.e., human and animal life is, at the same time, symmetric and asymmetric. Moreover, every symmetry appears necessarily under an embedded asymmetric aspect; things are soft or hard, hot or cold, dry or moist, large or small, up or down, gravitated or dispersed.