How does learning a language allow you to travel through time?
Are we just supposed to accept this plot point? Ridiculous.
shareNot travel through time - rather they were given a language to think about time. Apparently a way that makes all things deterministic.
shareOkay, I guess I can believe in a species that doesn't experience time the way we do, that has a non-linear frame of perception and language.
But because humans experience time in a linear fashion, I cannot believe that any human could learn such a language.
As I saw it language is a tool that both allows us to explore information and shapes the way we think. In the story some people learning the alien language literally rewired their brain to the extent they started to experience time differently.
No, I don't think I can believe that human brains rewire that easily!
This would be a good question for an anthropologist, because I think that all humans, in all times and in all cultures, experience time in a linear fashion - past, present, and future. Now if it's true that all people from all cultures and in all time periods think of time that way, then it's something that's hard-wired in the human brain.
Yes, but perhaps we think of time is such a simple way because we lack the tools to understand it in any other way?
For me the story takes the idea that language is far more important than most of us think in our casual usage and extrapolates - which is pure science fiction.
And perhaps as a supporting argument look at physicists who use the language of mathematics to see the multidimensional world of string theory or the massive energy of the very small.
"Yes, but perhaps we think of time is such a simple way because we lack the tools to understand it in any other way?"
I think we lack the neurological tools to think of time in any other way. I mean, humans have been trying to foresee the future for thousands of years now, using every method and mind-altering substance conceivable, but nothing has worked (or been proven to work).
Now I realize you meant linguistic tools, not neurological tools, but since I know more about neurology than linguistics then that's what my mind goes to. And since we use our brain cells and neurotransmitters to think about language, then neurology overrules linguistics. We literally can't think of stuff our brain cells won't process.
And BTW, it made me think of Douglas Adams's rant in a sci-fi book about how the real problem with time travel wasn't physics - it was grammar! I mean, how do you refer to your future when you've traveled to the past, or what you will do when you're in the past?
The short story on which this movie was based is basically an extreme, sci-fi example of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.
I actually haven't watched this film, so I don't know if the movie made it more absurd, or difficult to suspend one's disbelief in order to understand.
Language does shape our perception of reality to some extent. For instance, some languages have gender-specific terms for absolutely everything, far more than English. If your mind has been shaped by that language, how easily will you grasp the concept of anything gender-neutral?
But I think the concept of time, of past, present, and future, is built into our neurons and isn't a function of language or social conditioning, and I did see an article in the science news about "Time Cells" being identified in the brain, cells which direct our basic perception of time, and I'd post a link if I weren't on my phone.
So while I liked the movie, I didn't buy the idea of a new language changing a human's perception of time, and for me, the film's finale fell a bit flat.
Fair enough. That idea is basically the primary twist of the original story (and it pulls the entire tale together). But if one doesn't buy it, it would just come off too fantastical to stomach, and the finale (and story) would just fall flat as you said.
I've never heard of that time cell concept you just mentioned; I honestly just assumed the same as you: that modern science would suggest that our conceptualization of time is entirely neurological. We're 4 dimensional beings because that's how our brains function.
But I still found the story entertaining nevertheless. I don't know how deeply the film explains it, but just the way the language itself was described in the story was pretty surreal to begin with. Perhaps that's also why I was able to accept the twist when it came. The idea that the very first stroke of a "sentence" could contain all the information of the sentence that would be yet written, in real time conversation is totally impossible.
I still need to get around to watching this movie. I thought the story unfilmable, but I am curious as to see how the movie translates the story.
Here's an article about the discovery of a neural network that guides the brain's perception of time, which was written two years AFTER the movie came out. So my idea that the brain is hard-wired to experience past, present, and future in that order was just a supposition of mine when I saw the movie, but I'm as happy as anyone to find out that there were scientists backing up my thinking.
https://neurosciencenews.com/time-perception-9771/#:~:text=A%20neural%20clock%20that%20keeps%20track%20of%20time,a%20strong%20time-coding%20signal%20deep%20inside%20the%20brain.
Because how can we learn from experience if our brain decides it's now before the experience? How can we make commitments to other humans if we don't believe there's such a thing as the future, it's all "now"? How could human relationships and society ever develop, if we didn't all perceive time in the same way? And how could all civilizations come to a similar perception of past-present-and-future at every time and place, if we didn't have something in our brain cells all telling us the same thing?
I do think that language affects our brain function when we are children, I don't think rewiring the brain in adults is easily doable in a short amount of time. Although, I think that Louise had some ability before she learned the alien language..
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