The Order of Time

by Carlo Rovelli

To a large extent, the brain is a mechanism for collecting memories of the past in order to use them continually to predict the future. This happens across a wide spectrum of time scales, from the very short to the very long. If someone throws something at us to catch, our hand moves skillfully to the place where the object will be in a few instants: the brain, using past impressions, has very rapidly calculated the future position of the object that is flying toward us. Further along the scale, we plant seed so that corn will grow. Or invest in scientific research so that tomorrow it might result in knowledge and new technology. The possibility of predicting something in the future obviously improves our chances of survival and, consequently, evolution has selected the neural structures that allow it. We are the result of this selection.