Deepest Mystery

Are the only options linear time & timelessness?

It's as impossible for me to comprehend two or more axes of time as it is for me to comprehend timelessness...

One can always, theoretically, have both AFAIK. Relativity postulates (except in Neo-Lorentzian views with aether) that for a photon, the speed is such that from it's reference point time doesn't advance at all. Yet, from another point of view, photons clearly move and can spontaneously (in vacuum at least) form fermion-anti-fermion pairs, which then usually anniquilate to form light again.
 
Are the only options linear time & timelessness?

It's as impossible for me to comprehend two or more axes of time as it is for me to comprehend timelessness...

Well according to me (lol), time is right in front of you (externally), as your perception of matter (what we popularly describe as the past - whatever that means).

Observations (calculated information) which are consistent, are perceived as patterns (matter) in external space (energy) - simply because they are consistant.

You're also processing across what we perceive as time, which is where you get the meanings of the patterns from.

Combine them and you get your sense of the present. That is squished time and expanded space (externally), and squished space and expanded time (internally)... With you in between the two, a combination of matter and energy.

You use energy (space) to move bits of time around (matter). But time and space (space time), probably give rise to matter and energy as perceptions of time perceived from space, and space perceived from time. Space time seems to arise from the processing of information in my view.

And I'm decidedly unhappy with a notion of space as having 3 dimensions, and time as only 1. I think that is just going to have to go.
 
Are the only options linear time & timelessness?

It's as impossible for me to comprehend two or more axes of time as it is for me to comprehend timelessness...

Hi Sci, I think your Time thread shows there are other options. Even TSQM isn't quite linear time, but it's still a far cry from timelessness. String Theory seems to imply space and time are not fundamental entities.

I personally think we'll find our there is a smooth continuum between what we call linear time and the timelessness we see hinted at (but I don't think really fully experienced yet) in NDEs, with all sorts of weird stuff in the middle ;-) I suspect what we call cause and effect will have subtle variations along that continuum too.
 
I have come across quaternions, but only in passing. The interesting thing is that people were looking for analogs of complex numbers to represent triples of numbers (ordinary 3-D vectors) or other higher dimensional things. Quaternions aren't 'as good' as complex numbers because they don't commute, and octernions are even worse. Good old complex numbers really do have a unique place in maths (of course). Even so, I do feel basic physical laws should be formulated without their use.

One thing that interests me, is the way science and maths take over ordinary concepts and twist them - leading to all sorts of misconceptions. Lorentzian space is really a very peculiar concept - nothing like the common conception of a space (Euclidian space), this gives rise to the misconception that space-time is just like ordinary space, but with an extra dimension representing time.

Counterspace sounds interesting, but I fear I will drown in the algebra - I am not as stronger swimmer as you :)

David


Hi David,

Yes, Lorentzian spacetime is indeed a strange creature and much more subtle than a 4D Euclidean space.

If I remember correctly, the counterspace material was fairly accessible. Also involved some projective geometry, IIRC. Seems like they had a few nice web pages covering the basics. I'll see if I can't find it later and repost here.
 
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There seems to me to be a parallel between the science of the East, which I consider to be the systematic study of consciousness having started roughly 2500 years ago with the Vedas, and Western science, which is a a study of the apparent physical world.

The greatest Eastern sages, and now including contemporary "awakened" individuals from across the globe partake of an enormous body of knowledge that explains much about consciousness, identity and a path to end suffering here in this physical manifestation. But the greatest mystery remains--how something comes of nothing. Or for the sage how this relative reality manifests out of the singular absolute.

While in Western science, we also have an enormous body of knowledge about many different disciplines, but when we drill down to the very deepest level we basically come up with the same mystery. How did this reality appear from nothing with the big bang. And maybe even how do the apparent physical objects of reality actually manifest from the quantum soup.

Those schooled in Eastern thought accept these mysteries as unknowable from this physical existence and even adopt a devotional stance toward it.

It seems as if most involved in Western science feel that ultimately even the deepest mysteries will eventually be solved.

Are these two paths in some way convergent?
I always go back to this question . . . . about something/nothing. It hasn't seemed too popular here on skeptiko . . .

Since the mind can really only work with diachotomies, and since "nothing" in this rather ultimate sense is in any way comprehensible, I don't think our minds can grapple with this stuff . . .
 
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