Your Brain is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time

by Dean Buonomano

The linguist and ex-missionary Daniel Everett believes the Pirahãs are grounded in the present: “Pirahãs don’t store food, they don’t plan more than one day at a time, they don’t talk about the distant future or the distant past—they seem to focus primarily on the now.”12 Everett originally set out to learn their language, translate the Bible into Pirahã, and convert them to Christianity. He became fluent in their language, but failed epically in his missionary aspirations as the Pirahãs eventually led him to atheism. He thinks part of the failure was due to their lack of interest, and skepticism, toward events that they did not directly experience, or at least have secondhand knowledge of: they had little interest in stories of Jesus once they realized Everett had never actually met Jesus. Similarly, they seemed not to be preoccupied with the future, or what, if anything, happens after they die. Everett does not believe that the restricted temporal outlook of the Pirahãs reflects any sort of inherited neurological deficit, as they are intelligent and exquisitely skilled at surviving in the jungle: “They can walk into the jungle naked with no tools or weapons, and walk out three days later with baskets of fruit, nuts, and small game.”13 Rather, he thinks, the Pirahãs’ present-based existence is a signature of their culture. Such moment-by-moment existence is certainly enabled by their environment and the more or less continuous availability of food. Their indifference towa...