It seems the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was ahead of Kurt Gödel by a few centuries with his hunch:
There is no law governing all things.
Statue of Giordano Bruno, Campo de’ Fiori, Rome
He also made an interesting statement regarding time:
Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
Which brings me to a notion that I share with the Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov:
I confess, I do not believe in time.
Geir Isene - uncut 
Bravo, Giordano, Vladimir, Kurt and Geir! Geir for connecting the dots. Kurt for proving Giordano right. And Giordano for writing such profound thoughts. And to Vladimir for practicing “Fuck It – The Ultimate Spiritual Way”. What a pleasure to read!
Where is the SUPER LIKE button?
Time is nothing more than a byproduct of motion.
Time exists only because of motion.
No motion, no time.
Dio
take another look. a bit closer . time is a concept only , and that concept is intangible. energy moves. but on idea can not.
I like your new gravatar.
Geir please put my name on that list even if only in ”your mind” I have known that since my first intensive’s way back at the Mission in Vancouver! Than that cog has blown immense amount of charge and the universe looked different from than on..
This is one of my points also, that many men and women have worked this out — Many. Put Elizabeth on the list, put me on the list, put Shakespeare on the list. Almost all of them are lost to history but what does that matter? It is finally left to each of us to work it out the best that we can. This seems to be our lot in this dimension. Even Understanding is a metaphor for something deeper in this dimension.
Yes… those who believe in time those believe having age, years … being born and than the death… believing that they have a life and they living that life therefore have great value and fear in connection with that value…thinking -believing that they are nothing having nothing if they don’t have those belief.
without time that belief one know and understand the INFINITE….
Life is lived as a metaphor. In this regard, it not meant to be looked at too closely. When we do, we destroy the abstraction which was there. Underlying that abstraction is a process at work which we abstract yet again. And so forth.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
— from “As You Like It” by William Shakespeare, 1600 A.D.
After a lifetime of study, I find Shakespeare’s research and commentary on the Human Condition to be as accurate and more eloquent than that of any other that I’ve read. IF he had wanted to start his own religion, he easily could have and would have had many adherents.
I have to agree with you there.
Alanzo
🙂
In this existence, We are the metaphors. This is what I have learned from Godel, Shakespeare, Feynman, Sagan, Geir, Elizabeth, Anette, Valkov, Vinaire, Marildi, Rafael and Rafael SN and all the rest. And like some cosmic ground hog day, I continually learn it and learn it.
Chris, and a metaphor comes to my mind, ” Chris Thompson is a king kong size person ” 😀
🙂 Takes one to know one!
Time is unlimited. Unfortunately, I have to live only couple of dozens of years…So, let’s enjoy it 🙂
Agreed. We waste so many moments thinking about other moments.
do you really believe it was wasted? what would you be doing different-better which would be more valuable?
However much anybody wants to deny the idea of Time, nobody can deny that this universe is fundamentally based on motion and motion requires time. You can get as arm-chair philosophical as you like about it, but while you are alive enough to read pixels on a screen you are also breathing and that undeniably involves what can be defined as time.
Now, when we look at theta distinct from a body we can see a construct that does not need time. You can largely put thought into that construct and so you could say thought is timeless. However thought that is derived from the action of theta plus brain has a time component as the brain is a chemical, physical machine.
If you call time an apparency of this universe, then you might be getting close. If you see the universe like a bunch of 2-dimensional pictures that are being flipped through to simulate motion, you are probably very, very close to – if not exactly – understanding time in this universe.
How can the universe be like 2-dimensional pictures? Very easily if the universe is based on a cycle of action, something like the shutter of a camera. If the basic mechanism of the physical universe is a cycle of action like:
– probabilistic state (the camera shutter is closed; potentially anything could happen)
– condensed state (; the camera shutter is open; waves and particles appear, giving us the momentary apparency of solidity)
– condensed state ends, next probabilistic state begins (the shutter is closed; an image of the last creation – the last condensed state – is impressed on the probabilistic state. This image forms the basis of the next condensed state: it is most likely that the next state will be similar to the last state.)
This cycle of action would happen over and over at a very fast rate. Faster than is easy for the mind to imagine. Way, way faster than the fastest computer could add two numbers. So fast that even the speed of light looks slow.
Another way of looking at this cycle of action is a trampoline:
– a person gets on the trampoline (probabilistic state, like consciousness)
– the person decides how he’ll jump (consideration, still in the probabilistic state: that consideration could change at any point)
– the jump occurs ( a condensed state)
– the jump ends and an impression is made on the trampoline surface (return to probabilistic state: next jump could be anything; anything is possible)
– probabilistic state ends with the trampoline propelling the person into a new jump
In the probabilistic state, consciousness (the person) can consider a new outcome – a new direction – for the next condensed state.
If the thing bouncing is a simple ball then its next condensed (airborne) state will be most likely very similar to the previous one.
By looking at the physical universe from this point of view one can see that consciousness can be active at all times and can direct changes of motion both during the condensed state and the probabilistic state.
A ball bouncing on the trampoline can be acted on by outside forces that cause its motion to change, but unless there is an outside cause, it is most likely not going to be changed by hitting the elastic trampoline surface. (Assuming it hits the trampoline square-on and the trampoline is frictionless so that spin isn’t a factor, etc.)
What this model indicates is that:
1) there is both time (for particles, like balls) and consideration of time, or no time, for consciousness.
2) the trampoline surface / probabilistic state can make a recording of the last condensed state
3) the recordings, successively, could be seen produce a memory
4) this memory could be literally infinite
5) retrieval of a past memory is a subject of the retrieval mechanism, not the storage mechanism.
2x: You can get as arm-chair philosophical as you like about it, . . .
Chris: It’s not arm chair philosophy to study and to question whether the universe at its quantum is digital in Nature rather than analog. Probably in a better understanding, it will not be so simple a choice as between one or the other but a new understanding altogether will emerge. Not to question and to cling to fixed ideas is arm-chair philosophy.
Chris: It’s not arm chair philosophy to study and to question whether the universe at its quantum is digital in Nature rather than analog. Probably in a better understanding, it will not be so simple a choice as between one or the other but a new understanding altogether will emerge. Not to question and to cling to fixed ideas is arm-chair philosophy.
2x: When I look for answers I look at what I observe and first compare that to the best information available to explain the observation and along the route of least inconsistency. When the available information is not complete enough to answer the question, then I speculate along the line of reasoning that I see as most consistent with available knowledge.
As the quantum model has been well validated by science and has also been acknowledged by science as being so close to linking consciousness, or the soul, or the self, or however you want to define the essence of this subject, evaluating observations against this model is a valid starting point and is hardly evaluating with a fixed idea. An inability to assimilate science into the argument of consciousness is much more of a fixed idea.
And when you start from the idea that there is something that cannot possibly be known, and thus must remain unknowable, and you can trash all other arguments by saying that there is the great unknowable that answers all questions because it is unknowable, then you are clinging to the worst of fixed ideas; your blinders are fully on and you can only passivate yourself with metaphor and abstraction. That is hardly “looking”.
That’s not me. You are referring to Vinaire’s unknowable and even he is taking a rest from that at this time.
2X: Now, when we look at theta distinct from a body we can see a construct that does not need time.
Chris: This is double talk. Constructs need time. This is a good example of the ambiguous problem with Scientology. No one could get away with saying, “Ron that’s crapola.”
Chris: This is double talk. Constructs need time. This is a good example of the ambiguous problem with Scientology. No one could get away with saying, “Ron that’s crapola.”
2x: Yes, it is close to a double talk, but it is the double talk we see in nature when we look at the consequences of the double slit experiment. The Wheeler Delayed Eraser experiment clearly shows an inconsistency between an expected outcome and an observed outcome. As I have written before, the observation that the future-collapsing particle influences a prior collapse of an entangled particle can only be explained if there is, in essence, both a time dimension and a no-time dimension: we watch a future unfold in the time dimension while in the no-time dimension it has already happened, is already happening, is already “will be happening”. What could be harder to understand than this no-time / time paradox? Yet it is there and happens to be just about exactly the “crapola” Ron wrote about.
If you’re able to look at the observations and the physics and able to keep the “crapola” idee fixe from influencing all your conclusions, you might just be able to begin to see a new possibility, or two.
2ndx ”However much anybody wants to deny the idea of Time, nobody can deny that this universe is fundamentally based on ””motion and motion requires time.”” To Those moving particles .. when they are compered, their speed is not measured by time since time is not a existing thing, but the movements are measured by a MACHINE which is doing the measuring comparing the movements of those floating energy masses and that Machine is called a Time Piece.= clock.
As you know that it was a invention equal in importance of the wheel and whit out the invention of the wheel the time measurer = movement comparer would never be invented.. Do you eve been in places where clocks watches were not in use? I have. Lived in a small village as a small girl, when the war started my father taken us back to the very small village where he was born to be away from harm[ big mistake, destruction has come]
People did not have clocks we did not have either.. people lived by knowing the look of the day… the brightness, how the stars were above, what season were there. dark of the day or how light it was. people did not know how old they were, all they knew what their were told : you were born when the snow were falling, we had a huge storm that night, the poppies were at bloom, the plums were ripening. etc… time as you know did not existed. but seasons and change was noted and lived. If you asked how many seasons they lived how many snow storm has passed they looked at you confused and smiled… you see most could not count…and it was not important.. the years. it had no meaning…
Ah, my little ripening plum, how sweet the memory!
2X, obviously, the use of words to describe something that includes what is beyond words is tricky and will get criticism from those who can’t get quite transcend the words. But IMO your analogies hold together smoothly. I haven’t read about any quantum physics model that fits the known data better (e.g. double-slit experiment).
Btw, from what I’ve heard of the book *The Tao of Physics* (haven’t read it yet but it’s on my reading list) I’m thinking maybe you should title your future thesis “The Theta of Physics”. Or maybe *The Physics of Theta*. 😉
I like the title “The Physics of Theta” but that’s a title that will get the book burners all fired up. Maybe “The Physics of Cogitavi” will be sufficiently arcane to maintain our philosophers’ sang froid.
Perfect! I didn’t want to invalidate your using the word “theta” but I too thought you should use another term – and for the same exact reason: It would push too many people’s buttons and run into their idées fixes. But you worded it with so much more more class!
That title is as memorable as Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum”. 🙂
“cogito ergo sum”
Say that to an electron and the response would be something between “Keh?” and “Meh”.
Electrons have a hard time getting into the spirit of things. 😛
LOL!
2nsx.. As you know doing-ness has nothing to do with time, how much ”time” one has.
Since any person can only push around so much solid items and but wanting to do more than they can create, those person say ” i just don’t have enough time to do all the things I want to do” now if one relaxes like on the vacation one has long days because one lays in the hammock all day long since no fast moving energy masses need to be confronted.
I had once a little friend , he was just 3 years old and when he had nothing to do and was bored he said ” I have a long time”.. I did adore him 🙂
Don’t mind me writing here, I just happen to have a long time in a moment….:)
“There is no law governing all things”. That’s a law in itself. Kind of when advertising gurus say: “There is no formula for creativity”. That, again, is a formula for creativity in itself.
I’m not criticizing Bruno, though. I guess there are things you can’t express but through a paradox.