The Moving Soul

What Is History? and Other Late Unpublished Writings | 1990 | Eric Voegelin

[betty boop]

The Moving Soul

Eric Voegelin
What Is History? and Other Late Unpublished Writings: The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 28.
Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1990.
Chapter 4, "The Moving Soul" was completed in 1969.
 

I. Margeneau's Fancy

The theories of Einstein and Minkowski have brought new precision to the concept of simultaniety. In Henry Margeneau's Nature and Physical Reality (1950), we find on this point the following reflections:

It is seen that the concept of simultaneity has lost its universal character; events simultaneous to one observer may not be simultaneous to another....

Hard-boiled classicists sometimes insist that the change in our attitude toward simultaneity has been brought about only by the recognition that light, the fastest of all signals, travels with a finite velocity and that, if a signal capable of infinite velocity were found, universal simultaneity could be restored. All this we must grant. But if our critic goes on to a conclusion which makes the restricted version of simultaneity into a mere stopgap forced upon us by our inability to find the proper signal of infinite velocity--which after all is available to thought -- then we must object. For he is now talking like the little girl who wondered whether her wings, if she had any, would be white or blue. Universal simultaneity is a perfectly respectable construct, but apparently not a valid one

According to relativity theory the idea of simultaneity has not lost its meaning but has become somewhat more complex.... Indeed it provides amusing opportunities for fanciful reflections based on science. One which seems not to have been exploited as evidence for immortality is the fact that a soul, if it moved away from the body at the time of death with the speed of light, would observe the last dying moment as an eternity of bliss or of agony.
 

II. The Thought Experiment

Margeneau's remark about "amusing opportunities for fanciful reflections based on science" was made facetiously, to be sure. Nevertheless, the challenge should be taken up, not as a matter of amusement, but in the form of a thought experimence that will explore the relations between the cognition of physical reality, the spatiotemporal structure of the universe, and the velocities of light and the observer.

A
To this purpose we assume a man in an earth position O with the space-time coordinates (s, t), who is able to split off from his soul S a double Sm. With regard to the disembodied double Sm we make the following assumptions:

1. Sm is able to move away from the man at the spatiotemporal position O (s, t) at will, at any velocity it desires.

2. Sm is equipped with the faculty of experiencing physical reality, in Margeneau's sense, which ranges from the spontaneity of immediate sense perception to the reflective production of constructs, and includes memory.

3. Sm is equipped only with the faculty of experiencing physical reality in Margeneau's sense, but not with the faculty of experiencing existential tension and of developing constructs peculiar to this area of experience.

4. The self of Sm is constituted by the awareness of experiencing in the sense defined. If the stream of experience should cease, the self of Sm would black out.

B
We assume Sm to be moving at various finite velocities. Since the velocity of light, c, is finite, the following relations between the experience of Sm and the events at the position of S at O (s, t) can be imagined:

1. If Sm remains stationary, hovering near the man from whose S it has split off, the physical events will roll off for it in the same manner as for S.

2. If Sm moves away from S in a straight line, with a velocity of v<c, it will observe the future events experienced by S in slow motion. The motion will become slower as v increases, and will approach zero as the velocity of Sm approaches c.

3. If Sm moves with the velocity v=c (Margeneau's fancy), it will observe in permanence (Margeneau's eternity) the events experienced by S at the time Sm left the position O (s, t).

4. If Sm moves with a finite velocity v>c, it will catch up with light rays that have emanated from the position O (s, t) prior to its departure from the point of origin at which it has split off from S. Sm, thus, will observe events from the point of origin O (s, t) rolling backward in time. The movement of the events rolling backward in time will become faster as the velocity of Sm increases beyond c.

C
We assume Sm to move with infinite velocity in a Newtonian universe -- space is isotropic and homogeneous; space and time are independent of one another, so that motion does not affect the time scale. Time "of itself, and from its own nature, flows equally without regard to anything external" (Newton). The space and time dimensions are assumed to extend from the point of origin O (s, t) in uniform infinity.

Under these assumptions, Sm will outrace all light rays that have emanated from the position O (s, t) prior to the departure of Sm. With regard to space, Sm will be simultaneously present at all points of the space line along which it races. With regard to time, Sm will experience the events at the point of origin as rolling backward into the past with infinite velocity.

The simultaneous presence of Sm at all points of its course must neither be translated into an instantaneous view of a spatially infinite universe, nor into an instantaneous view, sub specie eternitatis, of all events rolling off in infinite time. Such translations would hypostatize the universe and transform the experiencing Sm into a subject of cognition outside this entity. They would be incompatible with our assumption of Sm as moving and experiencing within the universe of physical reality.

Under the assumption that the experience of physical reality is a process within the process of the universe, there will result certain aporiae if the observer Sm of physical reality moves with infinite velocity. These aporiae can be made explicit by imagining variations of the time and space dimensions of the universe in which Sm moves:

1. If the time dimension is imagined to be finite (if, in mythological language, the world had a "beginning"), Sm will run out of experiences when it reaches the limit of time. It will suffer a blackout of experience.

2. The same reflection applies if the universe is imagined to be spatially finite.

3. As far as the experience of physical reality is concerned, finiteness of time abolishes infinity of space and, inverselly, finiteness of space abolishes infinity of time. An Sm that moves with infinite velocity can continue to experience physical reality only if the universe is infinite with regard to both space and time.

4. If Sm moves with infinite velocity along its course, it will be simultaneously present at all of its points. Hence, if either the time or the space of the universe are imagined to be finite, Sm would suffer the blackout of experience simultaneously with its start from the point O, (s, t). Its self would cease to be aware of itself as experiencing. As we have assumed the awareness of experiencing physical reality to be the sole constituent of Sm's self, the physical reality of a finite universe cannot be experienced by an observer moving with infinite velocity.

5. If both space and time are infinite, Sm will have experienced physical reality up to the point O, (s, t) in the same manner as S. At the moment at which it splits off from S, it will experience a universe that up to O, (s, t) moves in the time direction experienced by S and at the point O (s, t) will reverse itself and roll backward in the opposite time direction.

D
We assume Sm to move with infinite velocity in uniform, infinite time but in a universe whose space curves back onto itself, so that Sm will perform an infinite number of circuits on a universe line through the space point from which it has started. Under these assumptions, the following set of aporiae will result:

1. The light rays emanating from the point O with the spatial coordinates s move with the finite velocity c and will complete their circuit on the space curve in the finite time span T. The space curve running back to O can accommodate, in linear succession, no more than the light waves that have emanated from O during a sector of its past of the length T. Since we have assumed the time dimension to be uniformly infinite, the space curve will be filled with an infinite number of such sectors, T. At every point of the space curve there is to be found a bundle of events that at the point O were distant from one another by the time span T. Sm moving with infinite velocity from O (s, t) will experience as contemporaneous, at every point of the space curve, an infinity of events that at the point O occurred with time coordinates differing by the magnitude T. The experience of physical reality will have become an infinite muddle.

2. The light rays emanting from O will reach the same spatial point at the time t+T. The series of coordinates t+T covers in infinity the time coordinate t of O. Under our assumption, Sm moving with infinite velocity will be simultaneously present at the infinite series of local times of the point O. We run into the aporiae of simultaneous presence at different points in time.

3. In order to avoid these aporiae, one could imagine the following variations of our initial assumptions:
a) In a curved universe, the velocity of liught emanating from a point O diminishes, with increasing distance from O, in such a manner that a light ray emanting from O can never reach the point O again. In this case, velocity c would not be a constant.
b) A curved universe expands with such speed that light at the constant velocity c can never reach its starting point again.
c) In both cases, an Sm moving with infinite velocity would outrace all light rays that have emanated from O and suffer the blackout of experience.
The variations a and b are closely related to Poincare's conception of a limited universe in which the space-time distances contract, unconcious to the observer, in such a manner that the limit can never be reached.

4. As an alternative to the variations under Point 3 one could imagine the following construction: The points of the type O, (s, t) are intra-universal. In addition to the intra-universal three space coordinates represented by s and the fourth corrdinate t, one could imagine a fifth coordinate u on which the unniverse as a whole moves; this movement Mu could not be experienced intra-universally. Mu could be imagined as a translation of the intra-universal structure along the corrdinate u of such a nature that a movement starting from any point in the universe of our experience Ue would, on the completion of the space curve, arrive intra-universally at O, but at another point of the corrdinate u, on a universe Un beyond experience from any point in Ue. This construction, however, just like the variations under Point 3 or Poincare's conception, carries us beyond the experience of physical reality.
 

III. Conclusions

(1) The Aporiae of the Physical Universe
(1.1) The aporetic propositions advanced under II. C and D are the analytical equivalent, for the case of modern physics, to Kant's Antinomies of Reason under the assumptions of Newtonian physics.

(1.2) Aporetic propositions will arise if we speculate on the "universe" and try to construct its structure in terms of finite or infinite space and time dimensions.The variety of recent constructs is surveyed by Margeneau in his Chapter 7.12, "Are Time and Space Infinite?" He arrives at the net result: "On this, perhaps the most interesting question of all, present science is unfortunately noncommittal." All the constructs surveyed by Margeneau seem to be variants of the construct I have suggested under II, D (4): they try to resolve the problem of the infinite by introducing an additional coordinate of the universe beyond the range of experience. This resolution must remain an intellectual game because it cannot be empirically validated.

(1.3) Constructs concerning the structure of the physical universe as a whole cannot be empirically validated. Why, then, do physicists engage again and again in their construction? The only possible answer to this question seems to be that physicists are men who as human beings feel obliged to develop an image of the universe. They feel obliged to engage in the creation of a mytho-speculative symbol that will satisfy our desire to know the structure of the universe in which we live.

(1.4) In constructing the observer Sm, I have taken care to equip Sm with the faculty of experiencing physical reality but to withhold from it the experience of existential tention as well as the faculty of developing symbols that express existential tension. Hence, Sm will suffer a blackout of experience or land in a spatiotemporal muddle, but it will not construct a universe. The physicist who constructs the structure of the universe is not satisfied with his role as an observer of physical reality but exerts his prerogative as man to create symbols expressive of existential tension.

(1.5) Physics, if understood as an empirical science of physical reality, does not furnish the means for the meaningful construction of mytho-speculative symbols. By going through the aporetic propositions, I hope to have shown that from physics follows nothing but physics.

(1.6) Still the term universe can be meaningfully used with regard to the experience of physical reality if it denotes the context of the experience, and the term context is properly defined in the following manner:

(a) An experience of physical reality refers to a reality in a spatiotemporal context of indefinite finiteness.

(b) An experience of physical reality is an event in a universal process with the structure of indefinite finiteness.
 

(2) Sense Perception and the Speed of Light
(2.1) The older aporiae of the infinite attach to the assumption of the universe as a spatiotemporal entity; the twentieth-century aporiae attach to the assumption of an observer of physical reality, as well as to the manner in which the observer's experience is affected by the relation between the speed of light and the velocity of the observer's movement.

(2.2) This relation between our experience of physical reality and the speed of light deserves more attention than it usually receives.

Let us assume light to move not at the velocity c but at the more leisurely pace of 1 mile per hour. In this case, a person approaching us at a walking speed of 3 miles per hour would be upon us before we can visually observe his approach. We would have a haptic experience of his presence, followed by the spectacle of his approach in reverse, with his position at the moment when he entered our visual horizon seen last. Under this assumption, our experience of physical reality, based on what is lightly called sense perception, would be vastly different from the one that we have now that light moves with the velocity c.

(2.3) In order to have the kind of "sense perception" with which we are familiar, light must move with a velocity sufficiently large to give it practical simultaneity at all points of man's pragmatic range. Only with light moving at high velocity can we have the instantaneous experience of reality that we have.

(3) The Instantaneous Presence of the Cosmos
(3.1) In Metaphysics I.1, Aristotle proclaims the desire to know to be the nature of man and then goes on to praise sight as the noblest of senses, because it makes knowledge possible. This passage should not be read as an eighteenth-century declaration of "sense perception" as the basis of our experience of reality but as an intuition of the spontaneous and instantaneous presence of the cosmos through sight and light. Not from "sense perception" but from the visual presence of the cosmos does Aristotle's desire to know ascend to the understanding of the Nous.

(3.2) That the reality surrounding us is the intelligible whole of a cosmos cannot be derived from the experience of physical reality. Rather, the conception of the intelligible whole articulates the impact of the cosmos on the eye, as in the Xenophantic exclamation, reported by Aristotle, "Looking up at the expanse of the Heaven 'The One, he said, is the God.'" And because the One of spontaneous presence is the God, the cosmic One must partake of divine eternity.

(3.3) The idea of a universe with an infinite time dimension is a demythologized version of the divine as distinguished from the human mode of existence. This statement for the specific instance is meant to stand for the general rule that the symbolisms of the cosmos as an intelligible whole, as divine Being from eternity, or as a divine creation with a beginning and an end, arise as articulations of experiences of participation in the divine ground of all being, not as constructs based on, and to be validated empirically by, sense perception.

(4) Space and Time -- the Historical Cosmos
(4.1) The space line travelled by Sm is a time line on which the past of O (s, t) rolls backward.

(4.2) A point P, distant 1000 light-years from O (s, t) will be the point of events which, in local time of O (s, t) have occurred 1000 years ago, but are experienced at P (s, t) as present.

(4.3) In order to experience the events which, in local time, are contemporaneous with O (s, t), Sm would have to wait at P for 1000 years.

(4.4) O is many years ahead in time of P, as P is light-years distant from O.

(4.5) In order to make the events at P contemporary with the events at O, either the spatial distance between P and O would have to collapse or the velocity of light would have to become infinite.

(4.6) An event at P, experienced at O as present, is a historical event that has happened in the past of O.

(4.7) A contemporaneous universe is not a possible object of experience.

(4.8) What is experienced as simultaneous with the presence of the observer at O (s, t) is not contemporaneous with him.

(4.9) What is present in the instantaneous "look at the Heaven" is the cosmos in historical existence.

(4.10) The cosmos as a spatial structure of contemporary mass entities and events is a construct based on the model of space and time experience within the human pragmatic range.

(5) Time Direction -- Localized Memory -- The Primary Experience of the Cosmos
(5.1) We assume Sm to have traveled with infinite velocity from O to P, 1000 light-years distance. We call the event P (s, t) at the arrival of Sm simultaneous with O (s, t). Having arrived at the position P, Sm will have to wait 1000 years in order to experience as present in the local time of P the events at O (s, t) from which it has started. Since we have equipped Sm with memory, the events at O (s, t) will have rolled backward while Sm traveled to P, and now they will roll forward in the time direction again, now that Sm has come to rest at P.

(5.2) Conclusion: under the assumption of an observer Sm, moving with infinite velocity from one position in the universe to another, the universe has no time direction.

(5.3) Time direction in the universe is incompatible with simultaneity of observation.

(5.4) If we deprive Sm of its memory upon its arrival at P, the events at O (s, t) will roll off with time direction, as observed from P.

(5.5) Conclusion: the universe has time direction only for a spatially localized memory.

(5.6) The spontaneous and instantaneous presence of the cosmos in the "look at the Heaven" is possible only for an observer in a position from which one can "look at the Heaven."

(5.7) The "experience of physical reality" (perception, constructs, memory) is bound to the primary experience of the cosmos in the "look at the Heaven."

(5.8) There is no "physical universe" independent of the perspectival primary experience of the cosmos.

[FINIS]

[betty boop]

A challenging meditation, guided by a seminal thinker...posted for educational and discussion purposes only.

[betty boop]

FYI Bump!

[betty boop]

A challenging meditation, guided by a seminal thinker

That seminal thinker being, in the present case, Eric Voegelin himself, of course. (Just wanted to make sure credit is given where credit is due.)

[Physicist]

Hard-boiled classicists sometimes insist that the change in our attitude toward simultaneity has been brought about only by the recognition that light, the fastest of all signals, travels with a finite velocity and that, if a signal capable of infinite velocity were found, universal simultaneity could be restored. All this we must grant.

No, that is exactly what we must not grant. An instantaneous signal cannot restore simultaneity. There will still be a difference, between different inertial frames, in the rate at which time advances. A faster-than-light signal would thus lead to irreducibly non-relative effects such as replies to a message that are received before the original message was sent.

Galilean relativity plus finite-speed signals does not equal Special Relativity.

[Kevin Curry]

Do you know everything there is to know? And to what extent do you know it? Perfectly?

[Physicist]

Do you know everything there is to know? And to what extent do you know it? Perfectly?

I don't know what you're talking about but you talk like the French U.N. ambassador.

[js1138]

No, that is exactly what we must not grant.

But you have to admit that philosophers use bigger words and longer sentences than the rest of us. That must mean they're smarter.

[balrog666]

Do you know everything there is to know? And to what extent do you know it? Perfectly?

Do you know anything? Do you always look to antagonize people based on your own ignorance? Are you a perfect fool?

[balrog666]

That must mean they're smarter.

No, it just means they're skilled in the art of verbal circumflexion.

[KC Burke]

Betty, you are an naughty girl...LOL.

[cornelis]

Lovely blue.

[cornelis]

Constructs concerning the structure of the physical universe as a whole cannot be empirically validated. Why, then, do physicists engage again and again in their construction? The only possible answer to this question seems to be that physicists are men who as human beings feel obliged to develop an image of the universe. They feel obliged to engage in the creation of a mytho-speculative symbol that will satisfy our desire to know the structure of the universe in which we live.

Voegelin doesn't take well to Morgenthau either.

[cornelis]

Sorry, Margeneau.

[betty boop]

Thank you. :^)

[unspun]

Today marks the 5th Anniversary of the dawning of betty boop... in FreeRepublic.com.  

A moment of gravitas, if you please.

[Pietro]

bump for later, Thanks bb.

[js1138]

The only possible answer to this question seems to be that physicists are men who as human beings feel obliged to develop an image of the universe.

That and really keen digital watches.

Physicists, of course, are above commerce, but without practical applications, their grants would dry up pretty quick.

[Phaedrus]

Bumping for a later read . . .

[Dumb_Ox]

Under the assumption that the experience of physical reality is a process within the process of the universe, there will result certain aporiae if the observer Sm of physical reality moves with infinite velocity.

This sentence gives me pause. Why hypothesize about an impossibility?

[Dumb_Ox]

Under the assumption that the experience of physical reality is a process within the process of the universe, there will result certain aporiae if the observer Sm of physical reality moves with infinite velocity.

This sentence gives me pause. Why hypothesize about an impossibility?