Mr. Johnstone,
I welcome the idea of keeping the lines of communication open. I don't know off hand whether FQXi offers a more private "back channel" for communicating email addresses or other personal information. If not, it might be a feature they should consider adding; other forums to which I've posted have offered this convenience.
In the meantime, this forum will serve well enough, so long as we stay more or less on topic. Like you, I am immersing myself in reading (actually mostly re-reading) several popular books which address our topic. I'm currently enjoying a re-visiting of Smolin's 'The Life of the Cosmos,' and will follow that with a re-read of his 'The Trouble With Physics.'
The latter book includes the following extremely enticing sentence: "More and more, I have the feeling that quantum theory and general relativity are both deeply wrong about the nature of time. It is not enough to combine them. There is a deeper problem, perhaps going back to the origin of physics." (p.256) This just happens to be precisely the point I have tried to make, very explicitly, in reference 4 to my current essay. And I proceed there to offer what I hope may be a first baby step toward correcting that early misdirection.
Another book which I would highly recommend, in case you've not already read it, is David Deutsch's 'The Fabric of Reality,' a key idea from which is, " . . . scientific discovery need not begin with observational evidence. But it does always begin with a problem. By a 'problem' I do not necessarily mean a practical emergency, or a source of anxiety. I just mean a set of ideas that seems inadequate and worth trying to improve." (p. 62) This, to my way of thinking, is an apt description of "the problem of time."
Elsewhere, Deutsch continues, "Given a shred of a theory, or rather, shreds of several rival theories, the evidence is available out there to enable us to distinguish between them. Anyone can search for it, find it, and improve upon it if they take the trouble. They do not need authorization, or initiation, or holy texts. They need only be looking in the right way - with fertile problems and promising theories in mind." (p. 94)
Now, from my own experience, I would add one caveat to Deutsch's comment: should a "better explanation" be discovered and proposed by someone from outside the mainstream of science, it is not always the easiest thing in the world for such a person to find a forum in which to present his or her ideas. That, in a nutshell, is the beauty of an open competition such as these made possible by FQXi. The competition offers a level playing field for ideas in much the same way as those offered in "open" competitions in sports such as tennis or golf.
Back on topic, when Copernicus and Kepler offered a profoundly new way of explaining our perception that the sun moves around the earth from east to west (an "obvious fact" which even a child can observe), their ideas gradually replaced the former geocentric picture because their ideas did a better job of explaining what we observe about the universe. The key is to observe well, and then find the best explanation for what we observe. At some point (probably not initially) there should be an "Aha!" moment in which the new way of seeing things suddenly becomes "obvious," and self-evident.
This is a long-winded route by which to return to Barbour's notion of a static universe. One of the principal features we observe about the universe is motion. So the question becomes whether Barbour's concept of blue mists shining at instants containing time capsules will ever achieve an "Aha! moment in which we suddenly recognize that this is a better way of thinking about the observed phenomenon of motion. In all honesty, it is difficult for me to envision such an outcome. In this case, I think that if theory contradicts observation we need to re-think theory, very carefully.
In my own scheme, we are allowed to retain the idea motion while still dispensing with time, at least as being something separate from configurations of the universe. Perhaps not surprisingly, I find this a much more palatable way to proceed. As a way of looking at things, however, it represents nothing other than a beginning, a baby step. Nevertheless, I am encouraged by the fact that it leads directly and logically to the falsifiable "prediction" of the equivalence of mass and energy, as explained in my reference 4.
With apologies for being so verbose, good luck with your reading. It sounds as though we both will be immersed in it for a while. I plan to follow 'The Life of the Cosmos' with 'The Trouble With Physics,' and then move on to re-readings of Brian Greene, David Deutsch, etc.
Let's do figure out a way to stay in communication.
Cheers!
