silverglass
10/30/12
Einstein decidedly blew a hole in Isaac Newton's model of absolute time and space when he formulated the Special Theory of Relativity (STR) and he created a geometrical line (with the addition of time as a fourth dimension) through space and time in which all matter, including us, were found to be in a clearly deterministic universe. He was quoted as saying;" God does not play dice with the universe". This defined his theism. He believed in a universe that was predictable to certain laws of physics. Neil’s Bhor, the great Danish physicist came along and challenged Einstein on this very point saying, “ How do you know what God thinks?”…. In an experiment suggested by Einstein himself it was found that pathways of sub-atomic particles were not observed in predetermined pathways. This to Einstein’s dismay. Because of this his findings were turned away from the model of a static universe. A timeless universe would be a static universe where no past, present and future states can be defined in any specific location or in any specific time. That is to say, past, present and future contingencies are all real simultaneously. To say that temporal becoming is separated from past and future states would be illusionary and nothing more that a figment of ones imagination. This is what Einstein was saying. We are all on some imaginary geometric line that includes past, present and future states as inseparable.
In distinction to Einstein’s theory of STR Newton believed in absolute time and space and this implies relationally between past, present and future states. But is this true? Because Einstein’s verification of STR is a proven fact it does not allow for a tensed universe. It does not allow for temporal becoming. It shows this to be an illusion.
But I do not think so. I think it rather means that the universe in which we reside is limited. It is limited to certain laws of physics but it does not necessarily follow that everything therefore is confined to such laws. I believe our everyday experience can show this. If we look at Bhor's experiment we can see in it a universe that allows for unpredictability and not the pure determinism.
This was an astounding revelation! This experiment turned the tables on the idea the there are no preferred inertial frames of reference. Einstein’s revolutionary paper on STR showed a tenseness universe but Bhor’s quantum mechanics shows a different finding. One in which predictability is questionable. Because of Bhor's findings we can provide an argument against that hollow truth that limits us to laws of physics and makes a mockery of temporal becoming. It allows at least another view in which the existence of a tensed universe is both logical and verifiable.
Now Einstein was an empirical verificationist and under his mentor Ernst Mach he approached physics by deciding to throw out anything that could not be verified through the physical senses. So he was successful in showing through STR the idea of a determined universe. His revolutionary paper on STR shows how measuring devices would not be able to show us similar frames of reference. Let me give you an example: Prior to Einstein’s relativity others had been working on relativity all the way back to Newton himself. But just prior to Einstein a man named Hendrick Lorentz formulated his Lorentzian relativity. He agreeing with Newton believe in absolute time and space, but realized at that time there being no way to discern these experimentally since motion through the aether affects one’s measuring devices. Before knowing this he knew that a wave of light is always constant. Knowing this he proceeded to set measuring devices on waves of light outside of the earth’s course around our star to thereby deduce its progression in time and space. However, when he looked at the results of the experiment he and others were perplexed. There did not seem to be any movement through the aether of the earth itself. They theorized the earth might be pulling the aether along with it so accounting for it not seemingly moving through space. This was dismissed from looking at other experiments. There had to be an answer for why they could not make the empirical experiments show evidential results. Sometimes intuition leads us to believe things that may not be true when it comes to traditional inquiry. But it was finally understood by Einstein that inertial frames of reference differ as to what is at rest in relation to what is in motion. This solved the problem. I will try to give you an example of what Einstein was working against when it came to making sense of intuition.
Imagine yourself in a body of water like the ocean. If you are in the water and remain still then any waves approaching you will take a certain amount of time to reach you. If you were to move toward a wave as it was approaching you then the wave would arrive at you sooner. Conversely, if you were to move away from an approaching wave it would arrive at your location later. Now lets imagine a wave of light (if you will, is similar to a wave in the ocean) is approaching you. if you remained still or moved toward it or if you moved away from it what do you think would happen in each of those situations? The beam of light as it approaches you in any of those circumstances would be the same. Whether you moved toward it or away from it or if you remained still the beam of light would not vary and would reach you at the same moment in time! Now knowing this Einstein went on to show that in spite of light being uniform in this way it could not however be used by two independent sources to verify uniform time. This is one of the examples he gave to show this as follows; Suppose a space craft was approaching the earth on a parallel path and as it arrived adjacent to earth it relayed a message to someone on earth to set his clock to the same time as it had its clock set to. Then someone on the earth at the same time as someone on the space ship would send out a beam of light to a distant planet ahead of him or her. Again, knowing that the beams of light travel at the same rate through the aether it would therefore be assumed that the light would be reflected back to the earth and the spaceship and arrive at the same time that was beforehand synchronized on each of the clocks. Lo and behold it was not! Why not? There is no absolute frame of reference for the spaceship and the earth to compare to. Each being in a separate inertial frame of reference cannot relate in the same time frame. Why? Because we don’t know what the preferred frame of reference is. Is it the spaceship? Is it the Earth? Is it the distant planet ahead of them? Is the earth moving away from the planet ahead of it? Or is the planet ahead of the spaceship moving toward the spaceship? Or is the spaceship moving towards the planet ahead of it? We cannot know what is at rest in relation to what is in motion! This was so counterintuitive that only a handful of people understood what Einstein was saying and even then it took some time for him to convince them of this.
Now because of these non-preferred frames of reference there is no absolute frame to compare yourself to when you are trying to relate to someone else in past, present or future states of reference throughout the universe in either time or space. Relating to one another in time frames would therefore be impossible because a tensed theory of the universe concerning absolute time was shown to be deficient. If we are in different relational frames of reference we could not know where we are in relation to someone else in the universe because of these non-relational time frames. It therefore follows that god himself would not be able to relate to anyone or anything at any specific frame of reference seeing we all are at different states of time and space not knowing if we are at rest to each other in movement in time or space. Simply put there is no preferred frame of reference for anyone. God himself would not know where we are! Furthermore if he wanted to know where each one of us were in different times in space he would not be able to do so in this universe not without having to divide up the many different frames of reference to accommodate the many myriad frames of references we are all in!
Einstein’s theory ultimately blends past, present and future contingencies onto a geometric tense less line of timeless events. All events have to be determined. Freewill is obliterated and becomes an illusion. By looking back at what happened with Einstein’s equation you see how science is evolutionary. It took quantum mechanics to question this theory. I dare say that no one would really agree to say that we are not in a tensed universe as everyday experience shows this to be so.
So Einstein was indeed a great physicist but after all just a man whose findings on STR only shows that we live in a limited universe. But such findings do not prove or show this limited idea as real to our understanding. All of us would agree that as relational beings we need to use past present and future frames of reference to relate to one another and/or God.
In Einstein’s view we cannot assume this to be true and so our separation of time into past, present and future is nothing more than an illusion of our subconscious, which makes it an impractical truth. It is true that STR opened up our understanding of how time is affected by gravitational fields and how when moving at the speed of light it affects ones measuring devices. However, it’s not true in explaining how we relate to one another in different frames of reference as our everyday experience obviously shows. Free will requires that we must have time to decided between opposing choices and that by deciding to do one thing over another our decisions over time would manifest our characters. Who we really are is in deeds, and is understood over time from past to present and future becoming. In this way what we decide to choose determines both the kind of person we are by the kind of choices we make. I believe that this is the only real way that we can look at reality. We may live our lives in a limited universe but the way we live our lives is in what we freely choose to do from moment to moment determining our own futures.

I am highly impressed by this man.

Yes it is a thoughtful and well constructed argument and the sentiment expressed in the conclusion is clearly a good way to live life if not the only way we should do so.
'Times' argument for existance may be considered only an illusion because of our own inability to think beyond it's philosophical chains on our psyche. It is possible to look at the world in a different way without time and it allows some interesting conclusions about physics and it's theories which do not substantially change them but does make times arguments appear as only an interesting way of interpreting the world around us.

Hi When I consider our inability to think beyond our philosophical chains as you say I am having trouble understanding why anyone would abandon logic to understand the meaning of the evidence in front of us. Most people seem to lock themselves into this type of "I give up attitude " and say what we cannot understand something, which is beyond our logic, and so we should relegate it to being a "Mystery".
As I see it philosophically speaking if it is not logically deduced then advancing an argument in favor of inability to use our brain is not answering anything. Look. A and B theories of time are used by philosophers all the time in speculating about time and anyone who wants logically understand the universe we are living in must pick one. Pick one. Then work out the details of what is implied by the evidence given to the senses like Einstein did. Otherwise you have not included yourself in the argument other than to say it is just to mysterious and cannot be worked out logically. This is not reasoning. It is giving into mystery and assuming platonic ideas on fate and determinism. As I see it time frames exist and so I believe we live in a tensed universe and this is an easy thing to prove to yourself. Can you be in two places at one time? STR shows this to be true! This is nonsense and what we must do is look as the obvious and not be overwhelmed by fantastic formulas that make us look away from what is in front of us.
So tell me how should I look at the world in a different way, without time? Do you mean in a timeless, tenseness, static way. If so then you are agreeing with determinism. You then agree with Einstein and see all things as fated. Let me know what you think?

I would not say that I believe in a deterministic universe and certainly do not believe in all things as fated. Even the simplest action will change the outcome of events.
The understanding of what time is is where I am coming from. I am saying that the understanding is there already. Simply (or maybe not) put, some 2 years ago I realised what time was and then spent 13 months of study trying to refute the theory. It is interesting to note that again and again I stumbled on the partial steps within 'Relativity' 'String Theory' 'A brief history of time' and other related texts which point clearly to the conclusion I had come to. Right or wrong remains to be seen.

Firsly, a recent conclusion is that, you need to separate time into a historical perspective which becomes simply a way of interpreting the world around us. Fairly basically a philosophy which allows us to regulate our environment and catalog it. This then becomes an output which allows us to fix events within our linear view of the world.
Einstein created an equation which calculated the time differential sea level into space and beyond. One of the questions I asked was what his meant and the answer was that what we call time was no more than the binding of matter, essentially slowing the decay half life of matter ie energy.
Given this and other observations made in the 'related texts' you will understand that to choose 'A' or 'B' becomes fairly nonsensical as do a significant number of other time concepts.
This is not something that I came to easily and would welcome the logic to move forward or otherwise.
Some perspective on this may be needed. There were 2 issues of Scientific American in years past (recent) devoted to time. Now although my interest is and remains otherwise time does impact on what I am trying to achieve, so I read these with interest. There was a lot of very good work within but at no point was there an explanation of what time is, at best they measured and quantified it or discussed it's philosophy.

Hi, I read a couple of recent articles related to time from scientific American but not knowing which articles you were referring to left me wondering what you specifically are dealing with. I guess when looking at time and how to define it leaves us with the same options. Past, Present, and Future contingencies.
To know anything about time we must stay within these parameters. Otherwise we are beyond our capabilities. So for us as temporal beings we move in this kind of framework. But to reiterate my point on time. If we look at ourselves in time frames we are moving along with time. Time itself cannot hold us in its framework and so in reality we are both temporal and timeless. We move from moment to moment and without being held in place we experience only what becomes instantly new and old. This means that the future is not set in stone or concrete in any determined way. I can determine my own future and I can determine weather or not I will eat corn flakes tomorrow for breakfast or choose not to eat corn flakes tomorrow without having to worry about the future as already in place. I know that some philosophers believe the future already exists and physicists smile believing this to be true. But this cannot leave room for free will. If the future already exists then I cannot choose to change my mind from eating cornflakes tomorrow and so this becomes problematic. Do you have free will or not? That question needs to be understood by you in order for you to work out the details of time. Logically speaking you need to deal with thinking about the future as not being real until it moves from the abstract (will I eat cornflakes or eggs tomorrow) to the concrete action. No one can be held accountable for a crime until a crime is committed. I can decide to jump out of a plane after having made all the plans up to parachuting but until I actually jump it remains only an abstract idea. The future remains open. Time then is a useful tool in which we work out the details of our temporal lives. What I am implying is that the future does not actually exit. To say it does and is on some kind of geometric time line where everything is blended together from past to present to future contingencies brings us back to the same problem. Everything is determined!
Let me know how you view this problem.
Thanks, Mike

Hmm sorry part of the problem here is that I have just being trying to get a handle on on how you are currently looking at time to enable a clearer answer.
The Scientific American issues were special issues devoted to time.
I will try to clarify; Quantum Physics talks about probabilities and the indeterminant nature of determining at any given moment where a particle will be. Then there is quantum entanglement almost the other side of the coin. All these have one thing in common a dependance on time. You need to understand I no longer look at the world through times eyes so much so that when you ask is everything determined I need to transform the question into a purely physical one.
What results is a mix of the above as for the quantum view everything becomes indeterminant (probabilities) yet entanglement tells me that everything is related and deterministic, I do not see these as being incompatible only that the ultimate result of this is that probability governs the results (of entanglement) Much as by placing dominos in a line and then pushing on the first one forces a particular result. where your finger is the probability which changes the resulting action.

Any question you ask which implies times involvment requires the pre condition of time A or B or alternativley past, present and future. This forces you to the philisophical arguments which abound around this concept, most of these are to me only an intellectual exercis, I see only energy moving. As an example if you understood how to apply the energy correctly you would be able to force the matter backwards in time. For someone bounded by times concepts, the assumption would be the particle would disappear backwards in time and you would see it double in the past. From my understanding the energy sum of the particle would display a condition indicating that it decay rate had slowed. As you can see this makes the two brothers conundrum no longer a problem.
Hope this helps

Trevor

Mediums of energy makes universal t=me difference.

Small e = t this is as I now know and accept a given. The equation above should read e=me where small e is a derivation of einsteins equation for time. This is done by creating a algorithm to replace the supposed constant of time. I am unsure of how to explain this so please forgive me if this becomes muddled and I will try again.
By substituting the algorithm, what is implied is that there is no past or future, at all times our view should be of a simple energy equation with all the associated normal processes that apply. If you change a value on one side of the equation you will of course have to adjust the value on the other side, This does not though imply that in any meaningful way you can reverse time of speed it up. At best you may be able to slow down the decay process or accellerate it.
Given this the whole concept of a pre determined future is essentially not a logical argument.
I am having problems with entropy as a concept also because the arguments for this are based on a fairly narrow interpretation of events, although logical, such as the shattering of a glass, they are based around an expectation that the reverse event should reconstitute the glass etc to it's original state, which is an expectation of time reversal not energy.
This is even a more pronounced problem when looking at the interpretation of the the big bang theory.
The current posulates around this include the stange idea that the universe expanded from a point source over a very short time frame. Given that the point source contained all the known matter and more, then from Einstein theory time must of neccessity not exist, until matter had expanded to a point where the normal processes of decay could begin. I would have to assume this would be a fairly large volume of space before this became possible.
sorry I only log in here occasionally you can though find me in facebook under "trevor white" and it should be obvious which one I am.