Ground-breaking work in understanding of time

Eurekalert ^ | July 31, 2003 | Brooke Jones

[Doctor Stochastic]

I've only got up through April 2003. A quick perusal of earlier issues gives me the indication that the journal is for speculative publications. There are some far-out ideas and refutations thereof.

The linked article by Lind about Zeno's Paradoxes doesn't rise to the level of the journal articles though. I'll wait until the actual article is published before making my mind up.

[RightWhale]

With all that's happening in the world these days, I don't know that we need chaotic vegetables, too.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Coleslaw, succotash, eight bean salad....

[betty boop]

Never mind. Found the "Zeno's Paradoxes" here:

http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:AP2Udx6uxwkJ:philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001197/02/Zeno%27s_Paradoxes_-_A_Timely_Solution.pdf+%22Peter+Lynds%22&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8

[headsonpikes]

If the Physics Departments don't like his work, I'm sure the English-speaking Philosophy Departments will eat it up. ;^)

IMO, his analysis is brilliant, elegant, and concise.

[logos]

...Lynds is saying that there is no now.

Actually, that's what I'm saying, too. If we have now at all, it's gone as soon as we realize it. Still, it's all that we do have for certain, isn't it?

[logos]

I give no credence to Whitehead at all, so I can't answer your question. IOW, I've wasted almost no time at all on his work.

[Right Wing Professor]

I'll look at the full paper, but based on the article posted here, I have to say this looks like a content-free proposal. It describes the state of physics before an understanding of limits or the development of calculus. The referee who wrote

"I have only read the first two sections as it is clear that the author's arguments are based on profound ignorance or misunderstanding of basic analysis and calculus. I'm afraid I am unwilling to waste any time reading further, and recommend terminal rejection."

had it right, unless there is more to the proposal than described here.

[betty boop]

If we have now at all, it's gone as soon as we realize it. Still, it's all that we do have for certain, isn't it?

Hello logos! So good to see you!

WRT the above: Well, yes and no. The way I'm reading this is that the idea of segementing time into a unit, or a "freeze frame", and then correlating that unit 1:1 with the state of a physical process for the purpose of "measuring" amplitudes, velocities, etc., will always lead to imprecision, or indeterminacy in the measurement, precisely because all physical processes are always constantly in motion. That is, the idea of the "second" or time unit -- though it's quite natural for the mind to think in such terms -- does not correspond to what is going on in nature. You can try to "hold time still" by virtue of such an "artificial [mental] construct," in order to take measurements; but that which is being measured -- nature, or natural processes -- is constantly on the move. It "won't stand still" for the measurement-taking, to put it crudely.

Another way to put this might be to say that isolating time into a "static" unit will not be sufficient for the purpose of complete accuracy WRT examining something that is not itself static, and never can be static in principle. We and all of nature are all moving, all the time.

At least, that's my take on Mr. Lynd's fascinating speculation. I'd be interested in chatting with anyone who has reached a different conclusion.

[Verax]

Wow. They should've just asked me...I could have explained this years ago :)

I wonder what immediate practical improvements this might have on technologies like missle defense or space, etc.

[jennyp]

Time is an artifice? That's another thing. I hate it when things are all in my head but they don't go away when I close my eyes and think wonderful thoughts.

Oh yeah? Well, often I realize, in the middle of a dream, that I'm in fact dreaming. At this point I often try to change the circumstances of the dream - make other actors go away, make objects in my way disappear, make my lover more handsome, etc. - but they don't obey me! It all keeps going on just as before. Just like it happens when I'm not dreaming. So maybe I'm just not concentrating harder, and by the same token you aren't concentrating hard enough when you close your eyes when you're awake.

The obvious conclusion is: Either our dreams are actually just as real as the world we experience while awake, or else if we would just learn to concentrate better in our waking hours, the physical world around us would change in accordance with our thoughts. (IOW, we haven't found the right "secret knowledge". I'm sure somebody has it on a website somewhere...)

[Ken H]

Bookmark for later reading, when I have time.

[VadeRetro]

First an observation or two, then the Vade Theory of Dreams. Lots of my dreams seem to be about looking for lost objects or locations. In one case I left my car and went around the corner on an errand. When I came back, not only was the car not there but the street was different. It had a suburban rather than downtown look and the slope of the land had changed. Often, I leave a meeting (or party or whatever) for just a bit and can't find it again. Or I put down an object and it's gone. A unifying theme seems to be that once something strays out of my visual field, there's a less-than even chance of getting it back.

A one-shot anecdote: Just once in my life, I've had visual input from a dream persist after I was awake. Inside a dream a wasp hovered right in front of my face. I jerked so violently that I started awake. In the middle of my visual field, the wasp still hovered. Meanwhile, my peripheral vision showed my room in dawn light. The dream wasp stayed for maybe ten seconds before breaking up.

What I think it means: You can't steer dreams very well because at bottom there's something like a random shape generator projecting onto a screen inside your head. Then the rest of your brain goes nuts matching the noise with your grab bag of memories, fears, preoccupations, etc. It's something like seeing shapes and faces in clouds, only your brain is very good at imposing its match.

Not very Freudian, is it?

[Right Wing Professor]

It just occurred to be what this is.

A few years back, Alan Sokal spoofed the Lit. Crit. crowd by writing a nonsensical article on quantum gravity and getting it published in a respectable Lit. Crit. journal. This is their revenge. They write a lame rehash of Zeno's paradox, use some obscure New Zealander as a front, and get it published in a physics journal with a, let's be kind and say liberal, editorial policy. In a few days, they'll hold a news conference and announce that physics' air of superiority over the humanities is entirely unjustified, and that physicists can't recognize BS disguised as physics. Or that payback's a bitch.

[cornelis]

There is no past nor future, only now, and now is fleeting, indeed.

Sounds like a lift out of Augustine's Confessions bk 11. Neither past nor future exist, and if they do exist, they exist in the present. And the present is a function of mind.

What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone who does ask me, I do not know . . . it is not properly stated that there are three times, past, present, and future. But perhaps it might properly be said that there are three times, the present of things past, the present of things present, and the present of things future . . . I have heard from a certain learned man that the movements of the sun, moon, and stars constitute time, but I did not agree with him. Why should not rather the movement of all bodies be times? . . . Therefore I see that time is a kind of distention. . . time is nothing more than distention . . . we measure, in fact, the interval . . . it is in you, O my mind, that I measure my times. Do not interrupt yourself with the noisy mobs of your prejudices. It is in you, I say, that I measure tracts of time. The impression that passing things make upon you remains, even after those things have passed. That present state is what I measure, not the things which pass away so that it be made. That is what I measure when I measure tracts of time. Therefore, either this is time, or I do not measure time.

[cornelis]

"I guess one might infer that we've been a bit slow on the uptake, considering it's taken us so long to reach these conclusions. I don't think that's the case though. Rather that, in respect to an instant in time, I don't think it's surprising considering the obvious difficulty of seeing through something that you actually see and think with. Moreover, that with his deceivingly profound paradoxes, I think Zeno of Elea was a true visionary, and in a sense, 2500 years ahead of his time."

Why do I have the feeling he's still in philosophy 101?

[PatrickHenry]

Does this mean we have to stop saying: "At this point in time ..." and instead say something like: "During this phase of the flow ..."?

[cornelis]

That would be hugh.

At least it's something to hink about.

[shaggy eel]

...use some obscure New Zealander as a front, and get it published in a physics journal with a, let's be kind and say liberal...

,,, it sounds a bit like money laundering without the money.

[Phaedrus]

Another way to put this might be to say that isolating time into a "static" unit will not be sufficient for the purpose of complete accuracy WRT examining something that is not itself static, and never can be static in principle. We and all of nature are all moving, all the time.

If the segmenting or measurement of time is an externally imposed artifice, if that is what you are suggesting, does that suggest that the instantaneous "quantum leaping" of electrons from energy level to energy level, though obviously not static, has no meaning? Or is that not what you are suggesting?