{"id":2004,"date":"2012-11-24T03:02:56","date_gmt":"2012-11-24T11:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/?page_id=2004"},"modified":"2012-11-24T15:59:20","modified_gmt":"2012-11-24T23:59:20","slug":"through-the-wormhole-is-time-real","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/through-the-wormhole-is-time-real\/","title":{"rendered":"Through the Wormhole: Is time real?"},"content":{"rendered":"

After watching a video on \u2018Is Time Real\u2019, part of a \u2018Through the Wormhole\u2019 series narrated by Morgan Freeman, … i can\u2019t believe how far most physicists are \u2018off the trail\u2019 and have lost the scent.\u00a0 But then, one shouldn\u2019t be too surprised since Mach, who didn\u2019t believe time was real \u2018quit the Church of Physics\u2019 back in 1913, and when we look at physics now, we\u2019re pretty much looking at the \u2018post-Machean Church of Physics\u2019, apart from rare Machean\u2019s like Julian Barbour.<\/p>\n

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No wonder we are so screwed up!\u00a0 i.e. by taking advice from science. \u00a0Sure science is good for technological stuff but science is all about \u2018what things-in-themselves do\u2019 and it never helped us become more aware of the \u2018transformation of space\u2019 we are included in, and that we are inadvertently contributing to, usual in negative ways; i.e. making things happen in the sense of \u2018what things-in-themselves do\u2019 is \u2018blind\u2019 to how our relations with one another and the living space are transformed in the process. \u00a0\u00a0John Lennon might as well have said; \u2018life is something that happens to us, while we are taking advice from scientists\u2019 [what he actually said was; \u2018while we are busy making other plans\u2019].<\/p>\n

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This is not \u2018rocket science\u2019 and Mach is not saying that \u2018time\u2019 is going to disappear if we acknowledge that it is \u2018illusion\u2019. \u00a0The illusion is spoken of in Ralph Waldo Emerson\u2019s essay, \u2018The Method of Nature\u2019; i.e. the smooth and persisting shapes we see derive from the underlying dynamics. \u00a0\u00a0Emerson says;<\/p>\n

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“[The smoothness we admire in the order of the world] is the smoothness of the pitch of the cataract. Its permanence is a perpetual inchoation. Every natural fact is an emanation, and that from which it emanates is an emanation also, and from every emanation is a new emanation. If anything could stand still, it would be crushed and dissipated by the torrent it resisted” – Emerson, ‘The Method of Nature<\/span>‘<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Can you imagine a human being as a form that takes shape from stuff flowing through it?<\/p>\n

How about within a complex ecosystem where are all kinds of cycles of things eating other things (men eating plants and plants eating nutrients in the water and sunbeams and stuff) and then one starts to wonder if the dynamics of the web of relations does not take precedence over the forms that develop within the relational web.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>

The relational configuration predominates over the participating forms<\/p><\/div>\n

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Everything seems to depend on everything else! \u00a0That is Mach\u2019s point.\u00a0 Space is relational. \u00a0The relations between things predominate over the things; i.e. the energy relations give rise to the forms in the web of relations. \u00a0\u00a0As Julian Barbour says;<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt would be much more natural to specify our distances to all objects. They define our position. This conclusion is very natural once we become aware that nothing is fixed. Everything moves relative to everything else.\u00a0 Taking this further, thinking about the position and motion of one object is artificial. We are part of Mach’s All, and any motion we call our own is just part of a change in the complete universe. What is the reality of the universe? It is that in any instant the objects in it have some relative arrangement. \u00a0\u00a0… It [the universe] does not move in absolute space, it moves from one configuration to another.\u201d\u00a0 — Julian Barbour<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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So, \u2018time\u2019 does not \u2018disappear\u2019. \u00a0\u2018Time\u2019 relates to the changing of the shapes that gather in the relational web. \u00a0Meanwhile, the physical reality, as Mach points out, is the transforming relational space, the transforming configuration within which the dynamic figures form. \u00a0As Emerson says, in the same paragraph as the above quote;<\/p>\n

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\u201c[The smoothness we admire in the order of the world] is the smoothness of the pitch of the cataract. Its permanence is a perpetual inchoation. Every natural fact is an emanation, and that from which it emanates is an emanation also, and from every emanation is a new emanation. \u00a0… In all animal and vegetable forms, the physiologist concedes that no chemistry, no mechanics, can account for the facts, but a mysterious principle of life must be assumed, which not only inhabits the organ, but makes the organ.\u201d – Emerson, ‘The Method of Nature’<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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So, if the world is a continuously reconfiguring relational flow-space, \u2018things-in-themselves\u2019 are no longer \u2018foundational\u2019 to \u2018change\u2019. \u00a0And it was from \u2018things changing\u2019 that we got the notion of \u2018time\u2019. \u00a0We don\u2019t need \u2018time\u2019 if \u2018change\u2019 is instead, the continual reconfiguring of the relational world. \u00a0Sure, we still have those \u2018dynamic figures\u2019 or \u2018Dinge an sich selbst betrachtet\u2019 (\u2018things considered in themselves\u2019) but because we acknowledge that the continuous reconfiguring of relational space as \u2018primary\u2019 [\u2018physical reality\u2019], we also acknowledge that the \u2018dynamic forms\u2019 and their \u2018time-based changed\u2019 are \u2018appearances\u2019 (\u2018schaumkommen\u2019), \u2018illusion\u2019 that we, for our own convience [‘economy of thought’] reduce to ‘Dinge an sich’ (‘things in themselves’).\u00a0 \u2018Time\u2019 is illusion because dynamic forms-that-change-and-move are illusion.<\/p>\n

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We are immersed in a continually transforming relational space. \u00a0That that is physical reality is Mach\u2019s point.\u00a0 Yes, we see persisting forms within the transforming relational space, such as ourselves, but that is not the physical reality. \u00a0We are forms that continually gather and are regathered within the transforming relational space. \u00a0\u00a0The persisting visual appearance of these forms doesn\u2019t stop us from assuming they are forms within the greater physical reality of a transforming relational space.\u00a0 In the food web picture, the nematodes can be secondary to the evolving relational web [ecosystem]. \u00a0As with the relationship of hurricanes to the flow of the atmosphere, we are not obliged to assume that \u2018the hurricanes are what is stirring up the flow of the atmosphere\u2019. \u00a0The hurricanes are gathering in the flow of the atmosphere, and thus it can also be for the nematodes in the earth\u2019s ecosphere.<\/p>\n

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What Mach and Barbour and Schroedinger are saying is that our physical experience is of the reconfiguring of the world, and we use language and intellectual devices to reduce the dynamic forms that gather and are regathered to \u2018thing in themselves\u2019 and then re-render the dynamics [the continually transforming relational space dynamics] to the more easy-to-mentally-manage \u2018what things-in-themselves are doing over time\u2019. \u00a0There are two architectures here, the non-dualist architecture which we manage using the logic of the included middle, and the dualist architecture which we manage using the logic of the excluded middle.<\/p>\n

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\u2018Time\u2019 didn\u2019t entirely \u2018go away\u2019. \u00a0What we did was to restore our awareness of, the orienting of our understanding to,\u00a0 a greater physical reality than the artificial \u2018what things-in-themselves are doing over time\u2019 reality. \u00a0So it is both the \u2018things-in-themselves\u2019 and \u2018time\u2019 that get ‘demoted’ from ‘reality’ to \u2018illusion\u2019 in the process.\u00a0 According to ‘pragmatist idealists’, it is of course very \u2018useful illusion\u2019, but \u2018illusion\u2019 all the same.\u00a0 But according to ‘realists’ who are the stewards of institutionalized ‘realism’ that is now globally dominant, ‘time’ remains ‘real’ because; (a) it delivers a convenient ‘economy of thought’, and (b) it is foundational to our institution-regulated global society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After watching a video on \u2018Is Time Real\u2019, part of a \u2018Through the Wormhole\u2019 series narrated by Morgan Freeman, … i can\u2019t believe how far most physicists are \u2018off the trail\u2019 and have lost the scent.\u00a0 But then, one shouldn\u2019t be too surprised since Mach, who didn\u2019t believe time was real \u2018quit the Church of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2004","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","count-0","even alt","author-emile","last"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2004"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2008,"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2004\/revisions\/2008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodshare.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}