As we prepare to ring in the new year, few of us will worry too much about the mysteries of time, writes Dick Ahlstrom.
Many of us will be counting down the seconds, a glass of something in our expectant hands, as the New Year approaches, but how many will puzzle over what we are actually counting out.
Does time need a clock to prove it exists or does it happen anyway? Has time a physical aspect when it exists as space-time or is it just a method for separating past and future with a thin slice of "now" in the middle?
Former head of geology at Trinity College Dublin and emeritus professor Charles Holland pondered long and hard on such questions before the publication of his book The Idea of Time in which he considers these and many other time-related issues in a most engaging style.
For most people time is no more that a handy way to organise events, and Holland can't understand why it so preoccupies some. "Why do people philosophise about it?" he asks. "It allows us to put events into a sequence."
Understanding time is of particular professional importance to Holland who specialised in palaeontology and the study of fossils in a geological context.
"Every geologist has to talk about time, but especially palaeontologists. The whole history of geology involves correlating time aspects of what you find in one place with what you find in another."
The geology of the Grand Canyon in the US provides one of the clearest examples of how to consider time. Millions of years of sedimentary deposits are laid bare on the deep walls of the canyon, allowing one to track the march of time. "I think this is still one of the best demonstrations of time," he says.
The simplistic explanations for time begin to fray somewhat as soon as physicists and cosmologists get their hands on the issue, Holland says.
"I don't think the concept is difficult until you move out into space and the universe and then you are really in trouble," he suggests. "My preoccupation really is that although physicists and cosmologists are willing to talk about time and space there is still the Big Bang and the expanding universe. The whole thing is very depressing.
"There has to be something before the Big Bang and there has to be something after space. In spite of what the physicists say, I find it very depressing. It convinces me that you can't start off from nothing or from zero."
As Holland writes in his book: "But what came before? The theoreticians accept that we cannot know; but that is not good enough. That there was originally no time, if it means anything, means to us I suppose, no events. That situation of nothing happening, if it is to be accepted, must surely mean nothing happening somewhere. So how did that somewhere arise?"
Holland doesn't attempt to provide answers to these weighty philosophical questions. "I cannot answer them and suspect they can't be answered. This really boils down to the question, why are we here."
These questions have however pointed Holland towards his next book project, this time trying to come to grips with the nature of beauty. He thinks understanding beauty might give us insights into time.
"I wonder if there might be a clue in beauty. The nature of beauty makes you think there is something beyond the material. Is it sufficient to say our Darwinian evolution allows us to appreciate beauty as we do? Is there something more to it?"
And yet these questions will not be disturbing those counting down the clock in two day's time, a glass of sparkling white or even champagne in their hands. Says Holland, "I don't think time troubles people. It never bothers them at all."
The Idea of Time, Charles Hepworth Holland, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN0-471-98545-7