You were reminded in the morning paper that
the Battle of Britain began on this date. – Amorella
0951
hours. The explosion of words rising in my head needs to remain silent out of my
respect for the Dead.
What an odd thing to say, boy. – Amorella
0953
hours. I agree it is odd. I am not sure where it comes from but I do agree with
the statement.
Mid-afternoon.
You had a late Subway picnic over at the Rahe Park/Canoe Livery along the
Little Miami but now you are relaxing in the shade at Pine Hill Lakes Park.
Carol is on page 264 of Grisham’s The Racketeer. – Amorella
1445
hours. It has been another quiet but quite warm day. Being curious as to what I
have already written about Elderfelder, I need to work on Pouch 10.
You have something to work with but now
would be a good time to talk about StoneHouse, continuing along the lines from
Chapter Eight with more background and a bit of spookiness that there could be
greater spiritual connections between the Marsupial humanoids and the
Earthlings. – Amorella
1513
hours. I don’t know what that connection is but what comes to mind is Yermey
and the Dark Matter project from earlier, i.e. the travel paths from
ThreePlanets to Earth.
Dark Matter will be a conductor, of sorts,
between the unconsciousness of the Earthlings and the Marsupial humanoids, much
as the spine is as an antenna for the brain to pick up on intuitive matters. –
Amorella
1519
hours. Whoa. I think I may be mistranslating data from you Amorella. I need to
clear up this previous paragraph.
This is a natural process that is the point.
Nothing supernatural. Think of it as a region of a natural oracle – where the
past, present and future consciousnesses are seemingly in one place. This is a
species orientation not an individual one. Prophecy is not the future alone.
Check on the relating Greek or other ancient myth on prophecy. – Amorella
1526
hours. I am intrigued.
Who would have guessed? – Amorella
1528
hours. So, is this Merlyn’s adventure in the books – to walk a path of
pastanpresentanfuture through a cloverleaf of dreams?
What do you think, boy? – Amorella
1531
hours. Carol finished a chapter, time to go.
1614
hours. Carol is out watering her flowers and perhaps the lawn too. We had a
couple inches of rain Friday night. The hot summer still exists here. I have
been looking up material on Einstein’s theory of time as an illusion but this
Wikipedia article seems to fit more with what is necessary to bring time-space
into my head for this segment of the book chapter.
** **
Eternalism (philosophy of
time)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eternalism is a philosophical approach to the ontological nature of time, which
takes the view that all points in time are equally "real", as opposed
to the presentist idea that only the present is real and the growing block
universe theory of time in which the past and present are real while the future
is not. Modern advocates often take inspiration from the way time is modeled as
a dimension in the theory of relativity, giving time a similar ontology to that
of space (although the basic idea dates back at least to McTaggart’s B-Theory
of time, first published in The Unreality
of Time in 1908, only three years after the first paper on relativity).
This would mean that time is just another dimension, that future events are
"already there", and that there is no objective flow of time. It is
sometimes referred to as the "block time" or "block
universe" theory due to its description of space-time as an unchanging
four-dimensional "block", as opposed to the view of the world as a
three-dimensional space modulated by the passage of time.
Problems with the flow of
time
Conventionally,
time is divided into three distinct regions; the "past", the
"present", and the "future". Using that
representational model, the past is generally seen as being immutably fixed,
and the future as undefined and nebulous. As time passes, the moment that was
once the present becomes part of the past; and part of the future, in turn,
becomes the new present. In this way time is said to pass, with a distinct
present moment "moving" forward into the future and leaving the past
behind.
Within
this intuitive understanding of time is the philosophy of presentism, which
argues that only the present exists. It does not travel forward through an
environment of time, moving from a real point in the past and toward a real
point in the future. Instead, the present simply changes. The past and future
do not exist and are only concepts used to describe the real, isolated, and
changing present.
This
conventional model presents a number of difficult philosophical problems, and
seems difficult to reconcile with currently accepted scientific theories such
as the theory of relativity.
Simultaneity
Special
relativity suggests that the concept of simultaneity is not universal:
according to the relativity of simultaneity, observers in different frames of
reference can have different perceptions of whether a given pair of events
happened at the same time or at different times, with there being no physical
basis for preferring one frame's judgments over another's (though in a case
where one event A happens in the past light cone of another event B, all frames
will agree that A happened in the past of B). So, in special relativity there
can be no physical basis for picking out a unique set of events that are
all happening simultaneously in "the present".
Many
philosophers have argued that relativity implies eternalism. Although he
disagrees in a qualified sense, philosopher of science Dean Rickles notes that
"the consensus among philosophers seems to be that special and general
relativity are incompatible with presentism."[4] For example,
Christian Wüthrich writes:
Presentists
have responded in a variety of ways to the pressure exerted by the
Rietdijk-Putnam argument... [A] presentist could deny Naturalism. Such
denial could take different forms. One could, as does Jonathan Lowe, claim that
SR is not a theory about time but about something else instead.
Alternatively, one could retort by accepting that SR speaks to the geometry of
space-time but reject that this has any ontological import, as does Dean
Zimmerman (2008). Second, a presentist might reject SR-Realism, simply
asserting that SR is not approximately true of the world. This could occur
simply on a priori grounds... Also, considerations from quantum
mechanics can be invoked in an attempt to establish that SR is false or
incomplete insofar as it lacks an absolute, privileged frame of reference. This
response comes in different flavours: (a) (non-relativistic) collapse dynamics
require a preferred frame in which the collapse occurs; (b) Bohmian
interpretations are incompatible with SR; and (c) invoke Bell's theorem to
argue that some tenets of SR must be given up...
[A]
presentist might simply bite the bullet and consequently relativize
existence... since what is present is relative to an inertial frame, what
exists becomes fragmented in that it depends on the choice of frame...
[Another]
is to accept that SR offers a perfectly empirically adequate theory, but
to insist that absolute simultaneity still exists. It is just that we cannot
possibly detect the privileged frame of reference, which determines the
present. In other words, absolute simultaneity is not empirically accessible...
[The] metaphysics fully relies on postulated extra-structure that can't even in
principle be observed... It violates Ockham's razor so crassly that the move
cannot be justified by putting some post-verificationist philosophy of science
on one's flag.
—Christian
Wüthrich, "No Presentism in Quantum Gravity" in Space, Time, and
Spacetime: Physical and Philosophical Implications of Minkowski's Unification
of Space and Time
However,
there are some, such as Dean Zimmerman, who have argued that it is possible to
accept the physical predictions of relativity while adopting an alternative
interpretation of the theory (For instance, see Lorentz ether theory) in which there is a single privileged
frame whose judgments about length, time and simultaneity are the
"true" ones, even though there would be absolutely no empirical way
to distinguish this frame from other frames, and no real experience could
identify it.
[When]
appealing to findings from empirically well-grounded disciplines, philosophers
face a strong temptation to overstate their case — especially if their
philosophical opponents can be relied on to be relatively innocent of new
developments in the relevant science. I fear that some B-theorists have
succumbed to the temptation, judging by the relish with which they often
pronounce a verdict based on Relativity. They can practically hear the crunch
of the lowly metaphysician’s armor giving way, as they bring the full force of
incontrovertible physical fact down upon our A-theoretically-addled heads. But
what actually hits us, and how hard is the blow? SR is false; GR’s future is
highly uncertain; and the presentist’s conflict with either version of
Relativity is shallow, since the presentist’s manifold can satisfy the same
geometrical description as a B-theorist’s manifold, and afford explanations of
all the same phenomena in precisely the same style. In these circumstances, how
could appeal to SR or GR justify the frequent announcements that the A-theory–B-theory
dispute has been “settled by physics, not philosophy”?
—Dean
Zimmerman, "Presentism and the Space-Time Manifold" in The Oxford
Handbook of Time
Time as object or environment
While
the present is intuitively understood as the object that moves through the
environment of time, it is common to also describe time as an object that
moves, in the same way that a passenger on a train perceives the environment
passing by. This perception of the passage or flow of time can be confused with
the previous idea of the present moving through time, leading to the
misunderstanding that time is moving through time, i.e., that it is moving
through itself. This illogical premise can lead to circular questions asking
how fast time travels per unit of time:
The
concept of "time passing" can be considered to be internally
inconsistent, by asking "how much time goes by in an hour?" The
question "how fast does time pass" seems to have no satisfactory answer,
in which answers such as "a second per second" would be, as some
would argue, circular and thus false. In addition, even if we do accept the
above answer, then the statement "a second per second" can be
expressed as a fraction which is always equal to "one". But this
"one" has no meaning beyond being a number and is thus also the wrong
kind of answer. Therefore, the argument goes, the rate of the passage of time
is nonsensical.
There is
a major problem though in that the question of time is no different from space.
One can similarly ask, "how much space is contained in a meter?" —
and face a similar objection.
"Time
passing" may be seen as a metaphor for the continuous human experience of
some expected future events becoming directly experienced qualia, while
experienced qualia becoming just objects of memory.
McTaggart's argument
In The Unreality of Time, J. M. E.
McTaggart divided time into an A-series
and a B-series, with the A-series describing events in absolute tensed
terms (past, present, and future) and the B-series describing events in terms
of untensed temporal relations (before and after). He also added the notion of
a "C-series", a series that has an order but with no notion of time,
like a series of letters. He went on to argue that the A-series was needed for
anything deserving the name "time", since he argued that only the
A-series can allow for genuine change, and he considered change to be an
essential part of any reasonable definition of time. But, he argued, the
A-series was logically incoherent, so he concluded that time was unreal, and
since he also believed the B-series depended on the A-series, he also concluded
that only the C-series could remain as a meaningful ordering. However,
various philosophers (sometimes identified as "B theorists") have
held that the remaining B-series qualifies as a valid framework for a theory of
time, sometimes called the B-Theory of time.
The Eternalist alternative
Eternalism
addresses these various difficulties by considering all points in time to be
equally valid frames of reference—or equally "real", if one prefers.
It does not do away with the concept of past and future, but instead considers
them directions rather than states of being; whether some point in time is in
the future or past is entirely dependent on which frame of reference you are
using as a basis for observing it.
Since an
observer at any given point in time can only remember events that are in the
past relative to him, and not events that are in the future relative to him,
the subjective illusion of the passage of time is maintained. The asymmetry of
remembering past events but not future ones, as well as other irreversible
events that progress in only one temporal direction (such as the increase in
entropy) gives rise to the arrow of time. In the view suggested by Eternalism,
there is no passage of time; the ticking of a clock measures durations between
events much as the marks on a measuring tape measures distances between places.
Eternalism
has implications for the concept of free will, in that it proposes that future
events are as immutably fixed and impossible to change as past events (see
determinism).
Eternalism
makes two assumptions, which are separable. One is that time is a full-fledged
real dimension. The other is immutability. The latter is not a necessary
consequence of the first. A universe in which changes are possible may be
indistinguishable from the fully deterministic many-worlds interpretation of
quantum mechanics, in which there are multiple "growing block
universes".
Philosophical objections
Philosophers
such as John Lucas argue that "The Block universe gives a deeply
inadequate view of time. It fails to account for the passage of time, the
pre-eminence of the present, the directedness of time and the difference
between the future and the past"
The
comment summarizes the main objections. In more detail, they are:
Subjective sense of flow
Whilst
the idea that there is some objective sense in which time is flowing can be
denied, the fact that conscious beings feel as though it is in some sense flowing
cannot. However, if the flow of time didn't have an objective existence, then
it is argued conscious beings would simultaneously experience all moments in
their lives. A response is that since the brain presumably perceives time
through information processing of external stimuli, not by extrasensory
perception, and obeys the laws of causality, it is hard to see how the flow of
time, whether it exists or not, could make any subjective difference: all
conscious beings are built to perceive time as a chain of events, whether or
not it occurs as such.
Apparent differences between past, present and future
Many of
our common-sense attitudes treat the past, present and future preferentially.
1
We apparently fear death because
we believe that we will no longer exist after we die. However, if Eternalism is
correct, death is just one of our temporal borders, and the forms of the world
with you alive in it would continue to exist even as one consciously moves
forward through time toward dissolution.
2
You are about to go to the
dentist, or you have already been. Commonsense says you should prefer to have
been. But if Eternalism is correct, then a resemblance of you in the future is
already feeling better.
3
When some unpleasant experience
is behind us, we feel glad that it is over. But if the Eternalism is correct,
there is no such property as being over or no longer happening now—it continues
to exist timelessly, alongside eternal, unchanging moments of perfect
contentedness.
Status of conscious observers
Eternalists
often appeal to the idea that the flow of time is a subjective illusion.
However, Eternalism takes its inspiration from physics and needs to
give a physical account of observers. One could, for instance, portray
conscious observers as moving through the block universe, in some physically
inexplicable way, in order to account for the subjective sense of a flow of
time. But there is no need to do so to explain the subjective flow of time. Their
opponents claim that the time-flow itself, as an objective phenomenon, is
physically inexplicable, and that physics is simply misrepresenting time in
treating it as a dimension.
Determinism and indeterminism
Previously,
it was noted that people tend to have very different attitudes towards the past
and the future. This might be explained by an underlying attitude that the
future is not fixed, but can be changed, and is therefore worth worrying about.
If that is correct, the flow of time is perhaps less important to our
intuitions than an open, undetermined, future. In other words, a flow-of-time
theory with a strictly determined future (which nonetheless does not exist at
the present) would not satisfy common-sense intuitions about time. If
indeterminism can be removed from flow-of-time theories, can it be added to
Eternalist theories? Regarding John G. Cramer’s transactional interpretation,
Kastner (2010) "proposed that in order to preserve the elegance and
economy of the interpretation, it may be necessary to consider offer and confirmation waves as propagating in a “higher space” of
possibilities.
In his
discussion with Albert Einstein, Karl Popper argued against determinism:
The main
topic of our conversation was indeterminism. I tried to persuade him to give up
his determinism, which amounted to the view that the world was a
four-dimensional Parmenidean block universe in which change was a human
illusion, or very nearly so. (He agreed that this had been his view, and while
discussing it I called him "Parmenides".) I argued that if men, or
other organisms, could experience change and genuine succession in time, then
this was real. It could not be explained away by a theory of the successive
rising into our consciousness of time slices which in some sense coexist; for
this kind of "rising into consciousness" would have precisely the
same character as that succession of changes which the theory tries to explain
away. I also brought in the somewhat obvious biological arguments: that the
evolution of life, and the way organisms behave, especially higher animals,
cannot really be understood on the basis of any theory which interprets time as
if it were something like another (anisotropic) space coordinate. After all, we
do not experience space coordinates. And this is because they are simply
nonexistent: we must beware of hypostatizing them; they are constructions,
which are almost wholly arbitrary. Why should we then experience the time
coordinate—to be sure, the one appropriate to our inertial system—not only as
real but also as absolute, that is, as unalterable and independent of anything
we can do (except changing our state of motion)?
The reality
of time and change seemed to me the crux of realism. (I still so regard it,
and it has been so regarded by some idealistic opponents of realism, such as
Schrödinger and Gödel.)
When I
visited Einstein, Schilpp's Einstein volume in The Library of Living
Philosophers had just been published; this volume contained a now famous
contribution of Gödel's, which employed, against the reality of time and
change, arguments from Einstein's two relativity theories. Einstein had come
out in that volume strongly in favour of realism. And he clearly disagreed with
Gödel's idealism: he suggested in his reply that Gödel's solutions of the
cosmological equations might have "to be excluded on physical
grounds".
Now I
tried to present to Einstein-Parmenides as strongly as I could my conviction
that a clear stand must be made against any idealistic view of time. And I also
tried to show that, though the idealistic view was compatible with both
determinism and indeterminism, a clear stand should be made in favour of an
"open" universe—one in which the future was in no sense contained in
the past or the present, even though they do impose severe restrictions on it.
I argued that we should not be swayed by our theories to give up realism (for
which the strongest arguments were based on common sense), though I think that
he was ready to admit, as I was, that we might be forced one day to give it up
if very powerful arguments (of Gödel's type, say) were to be brought against
it. I therefore argued that with regard to time, and also to indeterminism
(that is, the incompleteness of physics), the situation was precisely similar
to the situation with regard to realism. Appealing to his own way of expressing
things in theological terms, I said: if God had wanted to put everything into
the world from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change,
without organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of
change. But He seems to have thought that a live universe with events
unexpected even by Himself would be more interesting than a dead one.
—Karl
Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography
Relation to physics
Eternalism
takes its inspiration from physics, especially the Rietdijk-Putnam argument, in
which the relativity of simultaneity is used to show that each point in the
universe can have a different set of events that are in its present moment.
According to Presentism this is impossible because there is only one present
moment that is instantaneous and encompasses the entire universe.
Some
philosophers also appeal to a specific theory, which is "timeless" in
a more radical sense than the rest of physics, the theory of quantum gravity.
This theory is used, for instance, in Julian Barbour’s theory of timelessness. On the other
hand, George Ellis argues that time is absent in cosmological theories because
of the details they leave out.
Relation to pre-McTaggart
positions
Augustine
of Hippo wrote that God is outside of time — that time exists only within the
created universe. Thomas Aquinas took the same view, and many theologians
agree. On this view, God would perceive something like a block universe, while
time might appear differently to the finite beings contained within it.
The
philosopher Katherin A. Rogers argued that Anselm of Canterbury took an
eternalist view of time, although the philosopher Brian Leftow argued against
this interpretation, suggesting that Anselm instead advocated for a type of
presentism. Rogers responded to this paper, defending her original
interpretation. Rogers also discusses this issue in her book "Anselm on
Freedom", using the term "four-dimensionalism" rather than
"eternalism" for the view that "the present moment is not
ontologically privileged", and commenting that "Boethius and
Augustine do sometimes sound rather four-dimensionalist, but Anselm is
apparently the first consistently and explicitly to embrace the position."
Taneli Kukkonen argues in the Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy
that "what Augustine's and Anselm's mix of eternalist and presentist,
tenseless and tensed language tells is that medieval philosophers saw no need
to choose sides" in the manner that modern philosophers do.
In
Buddhism, a special term Dharmadhatu is translated as 'total field of events
and meanings' or 'field of all events and meanings.' Here the 'Block Universe'
seems to be encompassing not only every possible event in the physical universe
but also having a psychological component.
Dirck
Vorenkamp, a professor of religious studies, argued in his paper "B-Series
Temporal Order in Dogen's Theory of Time" that the Zen Buddhist teacher
Dogen presented views on time that contained all the main elements of
McTaggart's B-series view of time (which denies any objective present),
although he noted that some of Dōgen reasoning also contained A-Series notions,
which Vorenkamp argued may indicate some inconsistency in Dōgen's thinking.
In fiction
Eternalism
is a major theme in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. The
Tralfamadorians, an alien species in the novel, have a four-dimensional sight
and can therefore see all points in time simultaneously. They explain that
since all moments exist simultaneously, everyone is always alive. The hero,
Billy Pilgrim, lives his life out of sequence, which, among other things, means
that his point of death occurs at a random point in his life rather than at the
end of it.
Eternalism
also appears in the comic book series Watchmen
by Alan Moore. In one chapter, Dr. Manhattan explains how he perceives
time. Since past, present, and future events all occur at the "same
time" for him, he speaks about them all in the present tense. For example,
he says "Forty years ago, cogs rain on Brooklyn" referring to an
event in his youth when his father throws old watch parts out a window. His
last line of the series is "Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."
In his science fantasy novel The Number of the Beast, Robert Heinlein has one of the novel's
protagonists, the mathematician and "geometer" Dr. Jacob Burroughs
invent a device which can navigate through time as one scalar dimension in a
six-dimensional universe. The novel carries its main characters through time as
well as countless alternate universes, some of which are fictional worlds,
accessible by quantum-wise progression through one of the six axes of the
universe Burroughs' invention can access. In this novel, there is not only
block time, but a block plenum of many alternate universes, each a quantum step
along an axis of space-time.
Selected and edited from Wikipedia
** **
1741
hours. Obviously I need more time to
absorb this.
You are already leaning towards the fiction
of Robert Heinlein (above). You sent the Wikipedia article to Doug and wonder
on what, if anything, he will have to say about it. Later, dude. Post. –
Amorella
1817 hours. The present is always locked in a past event and
subsequent series of events and in a subsequent series of events leading up to
it, i.e. President John Kennedy’s assassination or the coordinated events of
9/11. Our thoughts are on the construction or deconstruction of an event during
a human created quantified measurement of time – the clock. Biology is a part
of the natural rhythm of the material world from sub-atomics to the wholeness
of this universe and perhaps multiple universes. The future is a construction
of probabilities (based on knowledge) that may become the past at least that is
how I see it after reading the above article once again. Human consciousness
has to accept what has happened. Birth and death cannot be denied nor can the
beginning and/or the ending of things, for example, human relationships or any
relationship of an A to a B, to a C, etc. Any future can only be a potential
past from a human perspective. (1837)
You are over at the Lou Eves Pool waiting
for Carol to come more than half way around the lakes. You both had egg salad (half)
sandwiches for supper while watching NBC News on the DVR but stopped when Carol
remembered she hadn’t done her walk. – Amorella
1935
hours. We are a little late but it is still light so all is fine in this
instance. I am still partial to a time-space construction similar to Heinlein’s.
** **
Robert Heinlein has one of the novel's protagonists, the
mathematician and "geometer" Dr. Jacob Burroughs invent a device, which
can navigate through time as one scalar dimension in a six-dimensional universe
. . . through one of the six axes of the universe
** **
Orndorff we are talking about pastanfuture in
terms of a mental/spiritual aspect not a time machine. – Amorella
1942
hours. Right. Sorry. Not thinking this through. This is a dynamic construction
where lines of pastanfuture are not physical. This should make it easier with
the spine and Dark Matter somehow crossing wires, so to speak. Here’s Carol.
(1945)
You finished the news then watched last
night’s PBS’s “Vicious” - Amorella
** **
Vicious
tells the story of partners Freddie (Ian McKellen) and Stuart (Derek Jacobi),
who have lived together in a small central London flat for nearly 50 years.
Constantly picking each other apart and holding on to petty slights for
decades, Freddie and Stuart are always at each other’s throats, cracking snide
remarks aimed at the other’s age, appearance and flaws.
However,
underneath their vicious, co-dependent fighting, they have a deep love for one
another. Freddie and Stuart are often joined by feisty best friend Violet
(Frances de la Tour, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) and Ash (Iwan
Rheon, Game of Thrones), their young, upstairs neighbor.
Selected and
edited from PBS online
** **
2052
hours. These people are such excellent actors. The skits remind me of old Vaudeville
with a crackle of bad language to give it a more honest and ‘enlightened’ tone.
Old people, some of them, lose their social filters. We enjoy the show though
we have only seen two from this season (I thought they were reruns all along.
My error.)
Think heartanmind, spine and dark matter. We
will not connect with the soul. What would be the use – time and space are not
relative. Post. – Amorella
2118
hours. I would not have thought of the soul outright, that is, I would have
included the whole heartansoulanmind; heartansoulanmind is exactly what I was
thinking of.
That is the reason I spoke up. – Amorella
2120
hours. I need to define dark matter before bed.
** **
Overview – (from Wikipedia - Dark Matter)
Dark
matter's existence is inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter and
gravitational lensing of background radiation, and was originally hypothesized
to account for discrepancies between calculations of the mass of galaxies,
clusters of galaxies and the entire universe made through dynamical and general
relativistic means, and calculations based on the mass of the visible
"luminous" matter these objects contain: stars and the gas and dust
of the interstellar and intergalactic medium.
The most
widely accepted explanation for these phenomena is that dark matter exists and
that it is most probably composed of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs)
that interact only through gravity and the weak force. Alternative explanations
have been proposed, and there is not yet sufficient experimental evidence to
determine whether any of them are correct. Many experiments to detect proposed
dark matter particles through non-gravitational means are under way.
One other theory suggests the existence of a “Hidden
Valley”, a parallel world made of dark matter having very little in common with
matter we know, and that could only interact with our visible universe through
gravity.
Selected and
edited from Wikipedia – Dark Matter
** **
** **
From Daily Mail dot com
Is
your future already decided? New theory of time suggests that the past, present
AND future co-exist in the universe.
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor
of philosophy has presented a new theory of time.
Dr Bradford Skow says the idea that time flows like
a river is not correct.
Instead he claims space-time is a 'block universe'
where the past, present and future all exist together.
If we were to look down upon the universe, we would
see time spread out
But he adds the present is not a 'spotlight' in
time - but rather we are in a 'temporally scattered' condition
By
JONATHAN
O'CALLAGHAN FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 06:58 EST, 30 January 2015 | UPDATED: 10:56 EST, 30 January 2015
The
old adage that 'time is like a river', suggesting that we move through it like
a ship sailing on water, may be wrong.
A
new theory claims that time does not move forward, but rather, everything in
time is ever-present.
According
to the theory, if we were to ‘look down’ upon the universe, we would see time
spread out in all directions, just as we see space at the moment.
The
intriguing theory was
put forward by Dr Bradford Skow, an associated professor of philosophy at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In
his new book, Objective
Becoming, he examines some of the theories that have been
postulated to explain time.
‘When
you ask people, “Tell me about the passage of time,” they usually make a
metaphor,’ he said. ‘They say time flows like a river, or we move through time like a ship
sailing through the sea.’
Another
theory states that the present is a ‘spotlight’ that moves from the past to the
future, with us being located in the spotlight as it moves forward.
Dr
Skow, however, said he ‘wouldn’t want to believe in that unless I saw good
arguments for it.’
Rather,
he favours a theory known as the ‘block universe’, which states that the past,
present and future already exist.
Dr
Skow said that he does not think events sail past us and vanish forever -
instead, they exist in different parts of space-time.
‘The
block universe theory says you’re spread out in time, something like the way
you’re spread out in space,' Dr Skow said.
‘We’re
not located at a single time.’
Instead
he says we are in a 'temporarily scattered' condition.
He
asserts that our passage through space-time is not like a spotlight - and the
experiences you had yesterday, last week, or even years ago are all real.
But
he says time travel between the different times is not possible, as we are now
in a different part of space-time.
His
theory follows another postulated by scientists back in December.
They
proposed that at the moment of the Big Bang, a 'mirror universe' to our
own was created that moves in the opposite direction through time - and
intelligent beings in each one would perceive the other to be moving backwards
through time.
The
radical theory was proposed by Dr Julian Barbour of College Farm in the UK, Dr
Tim Koslowski of the University of New Brunswick in Canada and Dr Flavio
Mercati of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, also in Canada.
Their
research attempts to answer questions that remain about the ‘arrow of time’ -
which is the concept that time is ‘symmetric’ and everything moves forwards.
They
say that at the time of the Big Bang not one but two universes formed – both
moving equally in each direction through time, but opposite to each other.
This
universe would not be exactly the same as ours, though; it would have evolved
and changed in its own way, completely separate to our own.
However,
it would be subject to the same laws of physics, so it would likely have
planets, stars and galaxies just like in our version of the cosmos.
And
Dr Barbour told MailOnline the theory could open up a new way to think about
the Big Bang.
‘At
the moment when people talk about the Big Bang, they more or less throw their
hands up in despair and say they can’t say what happened,' he said.
‘Now
our work is beginning to suggest we can actually say more than people thought.’
Which
theory of time proves to be correct, though - Dr Skow's block universe, the
mirror universe or perhaps another - remains to be seen.
Selected
and edited from Daily Mail, Science and Tech, dot com
on 30 January 2015
** **
2209
hours. What about a sense of ‘no force’ in that the highest form of spirit does
not need to use gravity as a force it uses it as a condition, a carrier of
heartanmind.
Keep your considerations open, orndorff.
Post. - Amorella
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