In Noēma, Jonathon Keats unspools a thought-provoking essay about time—specifically, about how every organism other than humans experiences time, and how one key to undoing humans’ ecological impact might just be appreciating those other experiences. To wit: an “arboreal clock” that measures and displays time from the perspective of a massive tree.
Fluctuations in the bristlecones’ growth rate, affected by environmental conditions ranging from local rainfall to planetary climate change, will be measured by analyzing the thickness of tree rings in microcores retrieved from the mountain each year. These data will be used to determine the center of gravity for the pendulum, which will swing slower or faster depending on the tree ring thickness. Though the clock face will display time in the usual way, it won’t serve as a mechanism for human planning — a technology to impose order on the environment for our convenience — but rather to pace our lives to match the lived reality of other organisms.
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