The picture of ourselves dividing into parallel Nows may be unsettling, but the phenomenon itself is familiar. We are used to being in different Nows and being slightly different in all of them – that is simply the effect of time as it is usually conceived. The account of Lucy’s leaps emphasized that the differences in ourselves between Nows are far greater than we realize within consciousness. Huge numbers of microscopically different Nows could give identical conscious experience. As we shall see, quantum mechanics forces us to consider Nows everywhere, not just those on one path. It unsettles by division, seeming to threaten dissolution and personal integrity. But it simultaneously binds us into the far mightier whole of everything that can be, doing so much more decisively than any Newtonian scheme can do. For the Nows that are likely to be experienced are the ones that are most sensitive to the whole of Platonia.
I think this is sufficient introduction. I could go on to talk about free will, the future, our place in the universe, religion, and so on. If the theory is correct, it must change the way we think about these things. However, without some real understanding of the arguments for a timeless universe, I feel further discussion would lack a solid basis. I therefore postpone these issues to later in the book, especially the epilogue. My aim so far has been to outline the scheme and to show that it is truly timeless and at least logically possible.
First Outline (p. 36) The philosopher best known for questioning the existence of time and its flow was John McTaggart, who is often quoted for his espousal of the ‘unreality’ of time and the denial of transience. The following argument of his is very characteristic of professional philosophers:
Past, present, and future are incompatible determinations. Every event must be one or the other, but no event can be more than one. If I say that any event is past, that implies that it is neither present nor future, and so with the others. And this exclusiveness is essential to change, and therefore to time. For the only change we can get is from future to present, and from present to past.
The characteristics, therefore, are incompatible. But every event has them all. if [an event] is past, it has been present and future. If it is future, it will be present and past. If it is present, it has been future and will be past. Thus all the three characteristics belong to each event. How is this consistent with their being incompatible? (McTaggart 1927, Vol. 2, p. 20)
Some thoughts here certainly match my own thinking, especially that ‘exclusiveness is essential to change’, but McTaggart’s arguments are purely logical and make no appeal to physics. Abner Shimony (1997)—to whom I am indebted for several discussions—compares McTaggart’s position with mine, but I think he has not quite understood my notion of time capsules, so I do not feel that his arguments force me to accept transience.
A typical example of theological thought about time is this extract from Conversations with God—An Uncommon Dialogue by Neale Donald Walsch (kindly sent me by Ann Gill):
Think of [time] as a spindle, representing the Eternal Moment of Now.
Now picture leafs [sic] of paper on the spindle, one atop the other. These are the elements of time. Each element separate and distinct, yet each existing simultaneously with the other. All the paper on the spindle at once! As much as there will ever be—as much as there ever was . . .
There is only One Moment—this moment—the Eternal Moment of Now (p-29).
Again, there is some overlap with my position. Walsch’s ‘leafs’, his elements of time, are my Nows. But the spindle of time, the Eternal Moment, is not at all part of my picture. My Nows are all constructed according to the same rule. There is no Eternal Moment, only the common rule of construction. I think Walsch is trying to grasp eternal substance where there is none, though I think he is right to say that the ‘leafs’ are all there at once and that this is a consoling thought. But we should not ask for more than we can get. Also, the image of time as a spindle is beautiful but misleading. In my view, the ‘leafs’ of time most definitely cannot be arranged along a single line, as the striking spindle image implies.
The Ultimate Arena (1) (p. 39) In this section I say that all structures that represent possible instants of time are three-dimensional. This is because the space we actually observe has three dimensions. However, in some modern theories (super-string theories) it is assumed that space actually has ten or even more dimensions. All but three of the dimensions are ‘rolled up’ so tightly that we cannot see them. In principle, my instants of time could fit into this picture. They would then have ten (or more) dimensions.
(2) This note is for experts. Platonia is a special type of configuration space known as a stratified manifold. The sheets, ribs and singular point that form the frontiers of Triangle Land are called strata. I believe that the stratified structure of Platonia is highly significant. Mathematicians and physicists really interested in this can consult DeWitt (1970) and Fischer (1970). The strata are generally regarded as something of a nuisance, since at them normal well-behaved mathematics breaks down. They are like grit in the works. But in the world’s oyster they may be the grit from which grows ‘a peal richer than all his tribe’: not Desdemona, but time (Chapter 22). (After Othello had strangled Desdemona and then realized his dreadful mistake, he said before stabbing himself that he was ‘one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw away a pearl richer than all his tribe’.)
PART 2
The Invisible Framework and the Ultimate Arena
Newton introduced two ‘great invisibles’ as the arena of physics: absolute space and time. In Part 2 we shall see why they have appeared for so long to be better suited to acting as the frame of the world than Platonia. It is all to do with an issue that physicists and philosophers have been arguing about for centuries: is motion absolute or relative? Newton’s position has seemed to be so strong that many people still believe it cannot be overthrown. But it can. The demonstration of the relatively simple solution in Newtonian physics will prepare us for the almost miraculous way in which things work out in Einstein’s theory (Part 3). They give the strongest suggestion that quantum cosmology – and hence our universe – is timeless. That we come to in Parts 4 and 5. Chapter 4 is a brief historical introduction, and sets the scene for the remainder of Part 2 – and for much of the rest of the book.
CHAPTER 4
Alternative Frameworks
Both Copernicus and Kepler believed that the universe, with the solar system at its centre, was bounded by a huge and distant rigid shell on which the luminous stars were fixed. They did not speculate what lay beyond – perhaps it was simply nothing. They defined all motions relative to the shell, which thus constituted an unambiguous framework. Many factors, above all Galileo’s telescopic observations in 1609 and the revival of interest in the Greeks’ idea of atoms that move in the void, destroyed the old cosmology. New ideas crystallized in a book that Descartes wrote in 1632. He was the first person to put forward clearly an idea which, half a century later, Newton would make into the most basic law of nature: if nothing exerts a force on them, all bodies travel through space for ever in a straight line at a uniform speed. This is the law of inertia. Descartes never published his book because in 1633 the Inquisition condemned Galileo for teaching that the Earth moves. The Copernican system was central to Descartes’s ideas, and to avoid Galileo’s fate he suppressed his book.