Were we facing the right way when walking
forward we would see an unfamiliar landscape and we’d have to invent names for
the things that we see coming towards us, some animate, some inanimate and
sometimes we’d confuse the two. But we’d have a new language that would describe
the form and behaviour of the new things that approached us – or as we approached
them, because it is we that are moving.
We would have to remember Einstein’s dictum
that everything is relative and what we think we see as we red-shift our way
towards things that in the distance would appear different from the way we see
them close-up, and then differently as they fall behind: we’d
have to realise that they have a changing nature as we apprehend them and lose them from sight.
Right now in walking backwards as we go
forwards we use the nomenclature of things we have become familiar with
from past experience, because of their similarities with the new things we
perceive – but of course there is a moment when our metaphors start to
fail in their description of what we are seeing – and the language is no longer
fit for purpose. But we cling to this language because it has served us until now. It
will be our older selves or even our children who will laugh at the
misconceptions we generate and wonder why we didn’t walk forwards, facing ahead, describing what we once saw, in new language rather than old.
