Time, Part 3

I did once compose a letter to Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe, with yet more ideas. But, I can't seem to find it. Anyway, I recently (within the last few months), finished the book: A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy Of Gödel And Einstein by Palle Yourgrau. So, this brings me to the final planned installment of my trilogy of time blogs (that was a mouthful... er, handful).

So, for many years now, I had been wondering, how can time be considered a dimension if, unlike the other dimensions, we cannot stop or go backwards in it (and therefore the t-axis is non-interchangeable with x- y- z- axes)?

I think one of the posters before had started to go in this direction, but I had the feeling that he was simply repeating something he'd been taught, rather than actually getting to the heart of the question.What the book on Gödel and time that I recently finished helped me to understand was this:

Intuitive time and mathematical time ARE different concepts which do not necessarily coincide. Intuitive time DOES "pass,"  and there is a difference between past, present and future, and what's gone is gone. In relativity, time, for two different observers, can be relative. They may be in different enough situations that they perceive the passage of time as going at different rates, and there is no way to say who has the "better" or correct point of view. This is why Einstein famously said “To us believing physicists the distinction between the past, the present and the future is an illusion, albeit a persistent one.” Keep in mind, Einstein and Gödel were very close friends.

Einstein's theory of relativity constitutes a system of equations, any solution of which is a "world." Each unique solution represents a unique geometrical world (or universe). People talk about the universe expanding, curving, having multiple dimensions (superstring theory posits at least 10), and other claims that amount to geometrical statements. What Gödel did was to find a unique solution to relativity theory - a universe - in which the axis of time ran in a circle.

The thing about this was, that you can theoretically go fast enough (in a very fast spaceship) and come around to the same point in the circle that you once were. What this means is that time, in the intuitive sense, doesn't exist. The inhabitants of this world would probably still experience time the way we do, but logically it would be false to say that it still exists because if you can return to any point in time, then it hasn't truly passed.

Of course, in a geometrical sense, Gödel's Universe was very unlike our own (I won't go into cosmological details here). However, this is where the philosophical magic happens. There are two terms common in philosophy (which I finally got down, thanks to this book): ontology and epistemology. Ontology concerns the world as it actually is, whereas epistemology concerns what we are able to know about it. Much of modern philosophy tends towards epistemology, that is, only what we can directly sense or know is deemed important.

I had first heard of ontology based on different proofs for God's existence. There are many varieties of proofs for God, a short list would include:

empirical (a survey of facts, such as The Case for a Christ, I Don't Have Enough Faith to be An Atheist, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, etc)
teleological (intelligent design, basically)
Pascal's Wager (more of a suggestion than a proof)
ontological (... !?)

OK. I first heard of the ontological argument when reading a book called God, Creation, and Contemporary Physics. It comes from old church fathers/saints, I think. Anyway, the idea is this: think of something perfect. If you can find something wrong with it, it's not perfect. But, once you figure out what's wrong with it, you know how to correct the idea. Something infinite is better than something finite. Something living is better than something non-living. Something loving is better than something non-loving, etc. So, eventually you come up with an idea that is SO perfect, that nothing else can be more perfect. (Here's the part I don't get) Now that you've thought of this, it must exist. I don't get this because, afterall, I can imagine aliens. But I don't believe in them. I can imagine that I'm a millionaire, but I'm not. I guess the difference is that these things are not THE most perfect thing of all. If you don't call it  "ontological proving," but instead call it simply "ontological reasoning," then I think it can be valid in certain instances. What Gödel did was to use ontological proving/reasoning to show that because there could be a universe without time, therefore all possible universes do not have time.

Whala! Intuitive time doesn't exist. If it weren't Gödel who said it, I don't think I could believe it.

I just need to study the idea of ontology ALOT more - afterall, Gödel's Universe isn't THE perfect thing either.

Time, Part IV