On the Nature of Time - Or Why Does Nature Abhor Deadlocks? by Christine Cordula Dantas

I would like to report a missing reference in my essay:

Wolfram, S. "Undecidability and Intractability in Theoretical Physica", Phys. Rev. Lett. 54, 735 (1985).

Thank you.

Dear Dr. Dantas,

while i couldn't argue either pro or con re. the applicability of the notion of deadlock avoiding being an intrinsic property of the universe, i do admire the creativity in the approach you have taken here and the intuitive impression that there just may happen to be something about the dynamics of the universe that we've been missing. i couldn't agree more; suspecting the tools we have had to work with may have significantly and inappropriately limited results in spite of the extent of their effectiveness in what they have thus far been applied to. simply because we don't have a tool to describe a certain characteristic doesn't mean that characteristic doesn't exist (sort of like a map maker good at drawing roads with considerable precision which infallibly guides travelers to their destinations but he doesn't have a way of drawing mountains, so he leaves them out of the map as 'irrelevant' failing to recognize that this feature can add significant distance and energy requirements to a journey [i actually have an old road atlas that is like that - the mileage marked on the map through mountains is significantly short of what it is to physically travel]. he can't represent motion on a flat drawing, so he leaves the rivers out also. the only thing important to him is the 2D course of the road between point "A" and point "B" and limited notations about "scenic", "business" or "bypass").

the word choice of 'concurrency' to me didn't seem as fitting a choice as could have been for the dynamics described - with 'concurrency', i get the picture of two books sitting side by side on a shelf not going anywhere.

a friend of mine once described a notion of a dynamic interrelationship he had termed 'co-evolution' - something from a childhood experience of his, watching a small stream flow over a sandy bottom into the ocean. he noticed that the ripples in the stream changed the ripples in the sandy stream bed, changed the ripples in the stream, changed the ripples in the sand...

while i have no idea if the idea of concurrency has a viable place in physics, the concept of deadlock, what leads to it and what avoids that would seem to have some highly beneficial cross-discipline applications in sociology/social psychology, where the 'deadlock avoidance' mechanism does not seem to be an innate feature in the landscape.

an interesting read.

thank you,

:-)

matt kolasinski

First of all I would tell you that Dr C. Rovelli's essay is one of the most subjective in this forum. His answer that 'the arrow of Time is just an arrow of Time' is a very specific choice.

'Quanta physics', Einstein's theories, 'String theory' are therefore coming from Galileo, Newton, Huygens, Kepler, a.s.o., Scientists who all had specific ideas on the Nature of Time and were sometimes justifying their theories with metaphysics.

But your postulate that 'General Relativity' and 'Quantum mechanics' use two distinct formalisms is not true in my opinion (I am defending the opposite idea in my own proposal). In fact Special and General theories are both coming from the idea of 'Quantities of Time' too. In other words a 'parameter' is always 'external'.

Space is not Time's counterpart in 'General Relativity' but Time is Space's counterpart only. If not, one have to deduce that Space is as intimate as Time. What drives to the idea that travelling in Time is possible? (except Hollywood movies): Light. Because of two different METAPHYSICAL (not to say 'religious') ideas about Light (Newton versus Huygens or Descartes), from the beginning (XVIIth Century) mystic Light splitted the Space idea in two: either a material distance parameter (Newton) or an immaterial one (Huygens) (And the idea of quantifying either Temperature or Time are both 'included' in Light.) So the paralogism is in the subjective hypothesis, not in Nature. With the particle seen today as much as 'matter' than 'wave' the paradoxal hypothesis has been translated into 'Natural fact'.

Concerning H. Bergson's metaphysics now: there is no reason to distinguish simultaneity from succession. There is no special 'quality' in simultaneity which is just an angle made with to succession lines. Succession of events or simultaneities can be figured with the arithmetic sphere of Riemann for instance (it is not Geometry in my opinion). Or 'cells' of time/temperature scale. Here one can see again that Einstein and 'Quanta Physics' are governed by the same principles.

Your idea of 'duration' is another version of C.K. Miller 'Here and now' and even D. Bundy 'Mystic number four' on this forum (and G. Lisi last year). You are trying to inject structure/objectivity in a system that lost it because of the theoretical Time but using the same tool: Algebra, that is changing the time in an arrow or a full quiver of them. What you can say is that H. Bergson had the idea of computer before Bill Gates (but E. Kant before Bergson, a.s.o.) deducing it from a subjective idea of brain 'mechanism'.

Aristotle when he is studying the problem of adequacy between language and things is still designing the risk to make a confusion between quality and quantity. But he is still explaining too that duration is only a piece of extensity. Infinity postulate is necessary in 'extensity' idea (quantity not quality), but the infinity postulate is useless in the practical use of 'extensity'. 'Duration' is this arithmetic practical use and as much subjective as 'extensity'.

Matthew Kolasinski: thank you for your comment.

F. Le Rouge: thank you for your comment. However, you have misunderstood my essay.

'Duration': it is in the word that you try to strengthen the subtle Time. And that is what H. Bergson wanted to do himself against his 'opponent' R. Descartes, because Bergson was aware of the link between mechanics and empty space idea that does not satisfy his biological idea.

('Misunderstanding' is a classical argument against opponents that Plato was still suggesting.)

F. Le Rouge: I respect your interpretation. However, it does not reflect the contents of my essay. This is what I mean by 'misunderstanding'. On the other hand, it may reflect a poor writing of my part.

F. Le Rouge: I do not have, nor intend to have opponents.

An interesting and fun to read paper. I am reminded of another philosopher, Daniel Buridan, and the problem of "Buridan's Ass." It really does appear to us that where we want to imagine conditions under which events should cease, such conditions are incomprehensible. If we want comprehensibility, we turn to mathematics and if we want a constructive mathematical argument, we fundamentally invoke what Brouwer called "a move in time."

Thanks, Christine, for placing a well thought out humanistic frame around the big picture.

Tom

T H Ray: thank you for the kind words.

Turning to Mathematics or arithmetics to get comprehensibility is exactly the XVIIth century's Revolution in France and England Kingdoms, especially R. Descartes and Dutch C. Huygens in France.

No doubt that Bergson is fighting against this method and that the idea of 'opponent' is important in Bergson's Mind.

Why is this 'opposition' important to keep here? Because Bergson does not think he is speaking on a more metaphysical level. He does not think he is COMPLETING Descartes method but he wants to replace his Science by a better one (and he is in fact very sarcastic with Descartes).

Even if I do not agree with the idea of 'duration' (similar idea is Clinton Kyle Miller's idea of 'Here and now' on this forum), I do agree contrarily with Bergson that one must choose between Algebraic method of Descartes and Bergson's Science (under Anglo-saxon influence of Spencer) that cannot be added up.

Neutral idea of Science that Descartes' algebraic method does suggest is not only wrong in my opinion but dangerous. Nothing is more dangerous in fact to think that everybody has the same idea -on Time for example-, and to dicover at the end that everybody think different and that the general agreement was just an illusion.

Hello Christine!

Nice paper!

"Why does Nature abhor deadlocks?" Because change is woven into the fundamantal fabric of spacetime with dx4/dt=ic.

You write, "It is a most interesting fact that correlations of physical properties between two entangled particles, as so far tested experimentally, cannot be explained under local realism."

Entanglement arises because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, or dx4/dt=ic. Note that for two particles to be entangled, they must first of all have been interacting, sharing a locality. The fourth expanding dimnesion distibutes this locality, so that as they move apart in the three spatial dimensions, they can yet share a locality in the fourth expanding dimension, which also accounts for the timeless, ageless nature of the photon, which remains in one locality in the fourth dimension, no matter how far it travels. The expansion of the fourth dimension at the rate of c--the fundamental motion underlying all change and motion--also fathers entropy and time and all its arrows and assymmetries.

You write, "In general relativity, time is a coordinate, like its spatial counterparts."

Be careful here, as time is very different from the spatial coordinates.

You would enjoy my essay, "In his 1912 Manuscript on Relativity, Einstein never stated that time is the fourth dimension, but rather he wrote x4 = ict. The fourth dimension is not time, but ict. Despite this, prominent physicists have oft equated time and the fourth dimension, leading to un-resolvable paradoxes and confusion regarding time's physical nature, as physicists mistakenly projected properties of the three spatial dimensions onto a time dimension, resulting in curious concepts including frozen time and block universes in which the past and future are omni-present, thusly denying free will, while implying the possibility of time travel into the past, which visitors from the future have yet to verify. Beginning with the postulate that time is an emergent phenomenon resulting from a fourth dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, diverse phenomena from relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics are accounted for. Time dilation, the equivalence of mass and energy, nonlocality, wave-particle duality, and entropy are shown to arise from a common, deeper physical reality expressed with dx4/dt=ic. This postulate and equation, from which Einstein's relativity is derived, presents a fundamental model accounting for the emergence of time, the constant velocity of light, the fact that the maximum velocity is c, and the fact that c is independent of the velocity of the source, as photons are but matter surfing a fourth expanding dimension. In general relativity, Einstein showed that the dimensions themselves could bend, curve, and move. The present theory extends this principle, postulating that the fourth dimension is moving independently of the three spatial dimensions, distributing locality and fathering time. This physical model underlies and accounts for time in quantum mechanics, relativity, and statistical mechanics, as well as entropy, the universe's expansion, and time's arrows."

--http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238 : Time as an Emergent Phenomenon: Traveling Back to the Heroic Age of Physics by Elliot McGucken

If you look at Einstein's RELATIVITY,

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3409/eBook-PDF-Science-Albert-Einstein-Relativity-1

you will see

x1=x

x2=y

x3=z

x4=ict

Ergo x4 = ict, naturally implying MDT's postulate and equation reflecting a hitherto unsung universal invariant: dx4/dt = ic--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c.

How else would one weave change into the fundamental fabric of spacetime (where it has been longing to be, as without change there is no measurement, and thus no physics), unfreezing time and liberating us from the block universe and granting us free will, while also accounting for quantum nonlocality and entanglement, while providing a *physical* mechanism underlying relativity, entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, thusly unifying physical reality with a simple postulate and equation?

Thanks for the cool paper! Hope MDT helps you with your work!

You write, "Why does Nature abhor deadlocks? Evidently, we have no answer."

Well, now you do have an answer! Because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, manifesting itself as a spherically-symmetric wavefront with a wavelnegth of Planck's length.

You write, "In any case, this essay was written presuming that time exists in some fundamental sense, fully acknowledging, however, the possibility that it may not."

Trust your physical intution, logic, reason, and physical reality! Time exists!

Best,

Dr. E (The Real McCoy)

Dear Dr. Dantas,

I find very interesting the idea of Nature abhorring deadlocks, and the way you combine the three notions. Congratulations for your beautiful essay!

Best wishes,

Cristi Stoica