Spring
The great negotiation between the snow and the mud. Relationships grow back crooked, neighbours speak again: “we really should grab a coffee” — which means, perhaps, mending a small piece of the world.
Symposium report
Histoires de Temps — Noirmoutier, June 6, 2026
On June 6, 2026, the island of Noirmoutier took the time to listen to time. At the Domaine des 4 Vents in L'Épine, the Histoires de Temps symposium — a satellite event of the Rencontres de Noirmoutier, organized by the Vent des Savoirs association — gathered physics, astrophysics, neuroscience, medicine, psychology and sinology around a single question: what is time, and how many of them are there?
From ten in the morning to the last note of the evening, the day wove together lectures, a round table, book signings and a suspended moment offered by the vocal ensemble Mikrokosmos. A day open to all — the island's public and the symposium's scientists alike, French and English speakers together.
VenueDomaine des 4 Vents, L'Épine, Noirmoutier Island
DateSaturday, June 6, 2026, 10 am – 10 pm
Organized byVent des Savoirs · Les Rencontres de Noirmoutier
The thread of the day
Seven voices for a single day
From Rovelli's opening to the evening's musical moment, each voice turned the pearl another quarter-turn.
Morning · 10 am · Opening
The plurality of times
Carlo Rovelli, physicist — Centre de Physique Théorique, Marseille (by videoconference)
Time is not a single concept, but a superposition of layers — until, at the deepest level, it disappears and leaves only relations. See the report ↓
Morning · 10 am – 12:30 pm
Time, light and darkness in the Universe
Hervé Dole, astrophysicist — Université Paris-Saclay
Time seen from the depths of the cosmos: every light that reaches us is a letter from the past. See the report ↓
Morning
Making sense of time in the brain
Virginie Van Wassenhove, neuroscientist — CEA Saclay, NeuroSpin
How the brain builds duration, rhythm and the lived present — time as a neuronal construction. See the report ↓
Afternoon · 2 pm – 4:30 pm
Urgency: a way of life?
Aurore Armand, emergency physician — CHU Angers
The counted time of the emergency room, where every second weighs a life — and the question of what urgency makes of us. See the report ↓
Afternoon
What if Time were Love that we Pair?
Jean-François Vézina, psychologist — Université de Sherbrooke
JFV's “circonférence” in four movements, echoing the four winds of Noirmoutier: Chronos, Kairos, Aion and the travelling Consciousness — where time reveals itself as relational matter, love that we attune and pair. See the report ↓
Afternoon
Writing the flow of time in ideograms
Cyrille Javary, sinologist
Time as Chinese writing thinks it: not a line, but a flow, a season, a mutation. See the report ↓
5 – 6:30 pm · Round table
The lived experience of time
With Lauren Marks, author of A Stitch of Time — and all the day's speakers · moderated by Gilles Gerbier
All the voices gathered around a single fabric. See the round table report ↓
8:30 pm · Evening
The suspended moment
Performance by the vocal ensemble Mikrokosmos
And to close, no more lectures: voices. Time ceased to be an object of study and became again what it has perhaps been all along — a music we listen to together.
First movement · 10 am
Carlo Rovelli — The Plurality of Times
“Time is not a single concept” — by videoconference, between China and France
It was the physicist Carlo Rovelli (Centre de Physique Théorique, Marseille) who opened the day — through the airwaves, as befits a pearl that travels between frequencies. His lecture deconstructed, level by level, our perception of a linear, universal time. What we call “time” is not a single entity: it is a superposition of several layers, from human affective experience down to fundamental physical reality.
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Time is a superposition of levels
From lived emotion to fundamental equation, temporality unfolds in layers that cannot be reduced to one another. Each level holds its own truth.
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There is no global present
Modern physics invalidates the idea of a “now” shared by the whole universe. The present is not a thread stretched across the cosmos.
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Time is a local notion
It varies with speed and gravity: it does not flow at the same pace on a mountaintop as by the sea — nor in Noirmoutier as in China.
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The arrow of time arises from entropy
The direction from past to future does not follow from an immutable law of nature, but from the increase of disorder. It is disorder that gives time its one-way flow.
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At the deepest level, time disappears
In the most advanced theories, time ceases to be an independent variable: it gives way to a description of the direct relations between phenomena. At the most fundamental level, there is no more time — there is only connection.
“La pluralité des temps” (The Plurality of Times), a Radio Alys report by Alexandrine on Carlo Rovelli's lecture at the Histoires de Temps symposium, Noirmoutier, June 6, 2026 — The Academia on Substack. In French.
Second movement · The Universe in one year
Hervé Dole — Time, light and darkness in the Universe
Cosmic chronology and mysteries: what if the entire history of the Universe fit into a single year?
After Rovelli, the astrophysicist Hervé Dole (Université Paris-Saclay) tipped the pearl from the infinitely fundamental toward the infinitely large. His lecture travels through the scales of time and space of the Universe and shows how scientists become archaeologists of the cosmos: with telescopes such as Euclid and the JWST, they observe galaxies formed shortly after the Big Bang — each light received being a letter from the past.
To make these vertigos accessible, Dole turns to culinary analogies and unfolds a timeline that compresses the Universe's 13.8 billion years into a single earthly year. The lesson of this timeline is striking: humanity appears only in the very last seconds of December 31.
The history of the cosmos compressed into one year
- January 1The Big Bang — the Universe lights up.
- SpringBirth of the first galaxies, captured today by Euclid and the JWST.
- Late AugustFormation of the Sun and the Earth.
- DecemberThe explosion of life on our planet.
- Dec 31, 11:59 pmHumanity appears — in the last seconds of the cosmic year.
Dark matter
Invisible, it nonetheless shapes the structure of galaxies. We sense it without seeing it.
Dark energy
It makes up most of the Universe and accelerates its expansion — and remains one of its greatest enigmas.
Making modern physics accessible, Dole also underlines its limits: most of the Universe remains invisible to us. To study time, here, is to learn to inhabit our tiny place in the immensity — and to marvel at it.
Read & listen to the report →“L'Univers en un An” (The Universe in One Year — Cosmic Chronology and Mysteries), a Radio Alys report by Alexandrine on Hervé Dole's lecture at the Histoires de Temps symposium, Noirmoutier, June 6, 2026 — The Academia on Substack. In French.
Third movement · Time in the brain
Virginie Van Wassenhove — Making sense of time in the brain
The neuroscience of time perception: between subjectivity and biology.
After the time of the cosmos, the neuroscientist Virginie Van Wassenhove (CEA Saclay, NeuroSpin) brought the pearl closest to us: inside the skull. Her starting point is disconcerting — the brain has no sensory receptor dedicated to time. There is no organ for time as there is an eye or an ear. The brain builds its own representation of time, shaped by attention, emotion and memory.
This is why time stretches and contracts according to what we live. Through experiments such as the “N-back” task, she shows how cognitive load can make us under- or over-estimate durations — and how the brain's rhythmic activity, notably alpha waves, could be a marker of this conscious experience of time.
No organ for time
The brain has no dedicated sensor: it makes time out of attention, emotion and memory.
Elastic duration
The “N-back” task reveals how mental load dilates or compresses our sense of duration.
Alpha waves
Brain rhythm as a possible signature of the conscious experience of passing time.
The story of the self
Certain brain structures weave our moments into a continuous story — a life that tells itself.
The clinical case of Clive Wearing, a musician deprived of short-term memory, illustrates this truth in reverse: without the structures that link moments together, there is no more continuous life story — only a perpetual present, begun anew every second.
The lesson of this chamber is confirmed: for human beings, time is a complex biological and psychological construction, far more than a simple linear measure. Rovelli's plurality of times finds its echo here too — all the way into our neurons.
Read & listen to the report →“Neurosciences de la perception temporelle” (The Neuroscience of Time Perception: Between Subjectivity and Biology), a Radio Alys report by Alexandrine on Virginie Van Wassenhove's lecture at the Histoires de Temps symposium, Noirmoutier, June 6, 2026 — The Academia on Substack. In French.
Fourth movement · The time of urgency
Aurore Armand — Urgency beyond the instant
An emergency physician's reflections on time: between the second that saves and the acceleration that exhausts.
After the brain, the pearl entered the emergency room. Aurore Armand — emergency physician at the Angers University Hospital and a doctor of philosophy — brought a double gaze to time, clinical and philosophical. Her thesis is sharp: we must distinguish real urgency from the acceleration of modern life. By calling everything “urgent,” in our daily lives as in the media, we risk discrediting the critical situations where a life is truly at stake.
Real urgency
The counted time where every second weighs a survival. Rare, grave, irreversible — it demands an immediate response.
Acceleration
The social pressure for immediacy, which reshapes our relation to time and trivializes the word “urgency.”
From this confusion arise genuine ethical dilemmas within the healthcare system, and effects far beyond the hospital.
- Social inequalities — the culture of speed does not weigh equally on everyone; it widens the gaps.
- Climate action — always reacting in the moment means giving up on anticipating the long term.
- Leaving the reactive mode — anticipation is the key: to foresee rather than to endure.
Her conclusion calls for a revaluation of long time — and for a more rigorous use of language. To keep the word “urgency” for what truly is urgent is to preserve the very effectiveness of rescue.
To the Blue Pearl's scales, Armand adds a moral demand: to consciously choose which time we want to inhabit. Between the frantic Chronos of the instant and the Aion of long time, it is once again Consciousness that decides.
Read & listen to the report →“L'Urgence au-delà de l'Instantané” (Urgency Beyond the Instant: An Emergency Physician's Reflections on Time), a Radio Alys report by Alexandrine on Aurore Armand's lecture at the Histoires de Temps symposium, Noirmoutier, June 6, 2026 — The Academia on Substack. In French.
Fifth movement · A circonférence on the four frequencies of time
Jean-François Vézina — What if Time were Love that we Pair?
Time as a music box: four frequencies, and Consciousness to tune them.
At the heart of the day, the psychologist Jean-François Vézina offered a circonférence on the four frequencies of changing time — a reflection at once philosophical and psychological in which time becomes a music box. Like a Jack-in-the-box, he makes four distinct frequencies spring out, which are also the four quarters of the Wheel of Time.
Chronos
Measurable time.
Kairos
The opportune instant.
Aion
Recurring cycles.
Consciousness
The force that interprets and tunes.
Through synchronicity and language, our mechanical experience of time turns into a form of love and presence. Drawing on cinema, Jung's psychoanalysis and playful exercises, the lecture invites a temporal sovereignty: to become the musician of one's own existence. The meaning we give to unforeseen events is what lets us inhabit the world in a truly living way.
“Time is love that we pair together.”
Read & listen to the report → Spin the Wheel of Time →
“Et si l'Amour était du temps qu'on paire ensemble ?” (What if Love were Time we Pair Together?), a Radio Alys synthesis by Alexandrine of Jean-François Vézina's circonférence at the Histoires de Temps symposium, Noirmoutier, June 6, 2026 — The Academia on Substack. In French.
Sixth movement · Time in ideograms
Cyrille Javary — Time and the spirit of the Chinese ideogram
When writing thinks time differently: not a line, but a flow.
To close the lectures, the sinologist Cyrille Javary carried the pearl all the way to China. A specialist of Chinese thought, he explores the conception of time through the etymology of ideograms. His thesis overturns our habit: unlike the linear Western view, the Chinese mind perceives time as a succession of intervals and a circular dynamic bound to the cycles of nature.
The Western line
An arrow-time, stretched from past to future, haunted by the fear of finitude.
The Chinese flow
A succession of intervals and rhythms, a circular pulse attuned to the seasons.
By breaking down the graphic composition of the characters, Javary reveals unsuspected links between the sun, poetry and the temple. Comparing Latin and Eastern roots, he shows that time there is inseparable from the vital flux and the pulse of the earth.
The sun
The course of the day as the first clock — time that rises and sets.
Poetry
The temple of speech: to say time is already to give it rhythm and to inhabit it.
Time
The interval and the wait, rhythm rather than measured duration.
The analysis underlines the importance of waiting and rhythm: a philosophy where the eternity of life prevails over the fear of finitude. Language, in the end, shapes our very relationship to urgency and existence.
The chamber comes full circle: after Aurore Armand's frantic Chronos, Javary reminds us that another language can loosen urgency — and that to change words is already to change time. Rovelli's plurality holds true all the way into writing.
Read & listen to the report →“Le Temps et l'Esprit de l'Idéogramme Chinois” (Time and the Spirit of the Chinese Ideogram), a Radio Alys report by Alexandrine on Cyrille Javary's lecture at the Histoires de Temps symposium, Noirmoutier, June 6, 2026 — The Academia on Substack. In French.
Final movement · 5 – 6:30 pm
The round table — The lived experience of time
When the day's theories gathered around a single fabric: that of life unstitching and mending itself.
After the lectures, all the day's voices gathered around a single table, moderated by Gilles Gerbier. At the centre of the circle: Lauren Marks, author of A Stitch of Time. After a stroke, Lauren Marks lived a radically different experience of reality and time. Her words stitched the day back together: time is not only a theory, it is a fabric that life can unstitch and mend.
Astrophysics, neuroscience, emergency medicine, psychology and sinology then answered one another — no longer each within its own discipline, but at the level of lived experience. Rovelli's plurality of times, heard that morning, found there its most human face: a time we cross, lose, and find again.
Lauren Marks · guest
Hervé Dole
Virginie Van Wassenhove
Jean-François Vézina
Cyrille Javary
Aurore Armand
Gilles Gerbier · moderator
Read & listen to the report →
“L'expérience vécue du temps” (The Lived Experience of Time), a Radio Alys report by Alexandrine on the round table of the Histoires de Temps symposium, Noirmoutier, June 6, 2026 — The Academia on Substack. In French.
Bonus · Time seen from Kébèk
The intergalactic terraces
The leaves that know too much
The ministry of imagination
The Seasons of Kébèk, Bizzart version
What if the four scales of time wore the faces of our four seasons? A poetic, musical slideshow where each season of Kébèk (Québec) becomes a pearl — and where time stops being measured and starts being lived.
The season of prophetic puddles
Summer
Kébèk throws off its coat all at once and unfurls its open-air terraces. We take up space — kingdoms in a backyard, Hilbert hotels in every garden shed.
Autumn
Autumn does not fall, it composes. Chronos goes back to school, Kairos jumps in the leaves, Aion watches the mountains change their skin, and Consciousness walks in the park.
Winter
The great winter in white armour. Houses become lighthouses. Under the snow, dreams work in secret; under our coats, our hearts go cross-country skiing in the invisible.
And there is a fifth season, off the calendar — the season of encounters. It sometimes arrives on December 32nd, August 32nd, or an ordinary Tuesday: the season when a person, a song, a bee or a bus breakdown changes the direction of a life. It depends not on the weather, but on our capacity to recognize the pearls when they roll beneath our feet.
Watch the seasons slideshow →“Les Saisons du Kébèk” — a slideshow by Michel Boulianne le Vraitographe, original music by Jeff le Bizzart, presented by Radio Alys. May 32nd edition. In French.
Great synthesis
The threads that intersect
Far from contradicting one another, the day's seven disciplines each turned the same pearl a quarter-turn. This synthesis does not summarize the lectures one by one: it draws out the transversal lines of force that connect them.
The five threads of the day
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Time is not one, but plural
Rovelli's opening thesis: time is a superposition of irreducible layers. Van Wassenhove confirms it in the brain (no “organ for time”), Javary in language. Plurality is physical, biological, linguistic and cultural.
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Time is not given, it is built
The brain makes duration out of attention, emotion and memory (Van Wassenhove); even the arrow of time emerges from entropy (Rovelli). Oriented time is an effect, not a starting point.
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Language shapes our relation to time
Deprived of inner voice, Lauren Marks lived a pure present; Javary shows the ideogram that thinks time as a flow; Vézina places Consciousness, which “gives meaning through language,” at the heart of the Wheel. To change words is already to change time.
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Urgency, acceleration and the plea for long time
Armand distinguishes real urgency from generalized acceleration. Her diagnosis speaks to Javary (the culture of waiting) and Vézina (leaving frantic Chronos to inhabit Aion).
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From measure to connection: time as relation
At the fundamental level, time disappears and leaves only relations (Rovelli); Vézina extends it: “time is love that we pair.” To study time is to study connection — the Blue Pearl's contact with the Green Pearl.
Table of intersections
Transversal thread
Who carries it
Shared pivot idea
A Plurality of times
Rovelli · Van Wassenhove · Javary
No single time: physical, neuronal, cultural layers.
B Constructed time
Van Wassenhove · Rovelli
Duration and the arrow emerge (attention, memory, entropy).
C Language and time
Marks · Javary · Vézina
Without language, no future or narrative; words give time its rhythm.
D Urgency / long time
Armand · Javary · Vézina
Distinguish true urgency from acceleration; rehabilitate waiting.
E Time as connection
Rovelli · Vézina · Marks
At bottom, relations: time as love that we pair.
The Wheel of Time as an integrating grid
Chronos — the crank
Quantitative, measurable, social time.
Armand's acceleration; calendars; the symposium programme itself.
Kairos — the surge
The opportune instant that transforms a life: synchronicity.
The encounter, the coincidence, the round table where voices land just right.
Aion — the song that returns
Deep, cyclical, mythical time.
Javary's circular flow; the tides; Dole's cosmic year.
Consciousness — the listener
The dimension that connects, senses change and gives it meaning.
Van Wassenhove's predictive brain; Marks's pure present.
Open questions
- If the arrow of time arises from entropy and the brain builds duration, what is “real” in our experience of time passing?
- Was Lauren Marks's pure present a loss or an access — the same one sought by certain meditative traditions?
- Can a society truly “decelerate,” or is acceleration structural?
- Can we build a rigorous bridge between physical relation and human relation, without abusive metaphorical slippage?
- How do other languages cut up time, and what do we lose by imposing the Western arrow-time everywhere?
- On Dole's great cosmic calendar, when exactly did Consciousness appear?
- What, at bottom, is the sense of time — to perceive it, to measure it, or to give it a direction?
- Where does the meaning that surges in coincidences come from, and why do some “land just right”?
Paths for a future symposium
Path 1
Inhabiting time
From diagnosis to practice: meditation and the pure present, the design of urban rhythms, care and temporality.
Path 2
The times of the living
Beyond the human: chronobiology, plant and geological time, ecosystems and the island's tides.
Path 3
Time, memory and machines
Artificial memory vs human narrative, algorithmic prediction, archives, forgetting and the right to erasure.
Path 4
Sovereignty of our time
To whom does our time belong? Reclaiming our hours from the screens, markets and urgencies that confiscate them.
Noirmoutier will have shown that time is not a simple arrow carrying us away, but a plural matter: a local illusion for physics, a neuronal construction for the brain, a flow of intervals for language, a space of urgencies and opportunities for life, and finally connection — love that we pair together. What follows will be less about defining time than about learning, collectively, to inhabit it better.
Great synthesis of the Blue Pearl · The Golden Flower Academia — after the Radio Alys reports on the Histoires de Temps symposium, Noirmoutier, June 6, 2026.
What the Blue Pearl keeps
From the plurality of times to the four scales
What Rovelli's physics deconstructs, the Blue Pearl recomposes in its own way: if time is not a single concept, then it can be studied by scales. That is precisely the subject of this chamber — and the weave of the four movements heard at Noirmoutier.
Chronos
Linear, measurable time — that of clocks, symposium programmes and trains to catch.
Kairos
The opportune moment — when a word, an encounter or a coincidence lands just right.
Aion
Infinite, cyclical time — that of myths, archetypes and the tides of Noirmoutier.
Consciousness
The observer who travels between the scales, weaving past, present and future together — like Alexandrine between China and France.
And if Rovelli is right — if, at the most fundamental level, time disappears and leaves only relations between phenomena — then the Blue Pearl touches the Green Pearl: to study time may already be to study connection. Time would be love that we pair.