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Time, space, and the kitchen sink
The Time We Thought We Knew
By BRIAN GREENE
This New York Times op ed piece deals nicely - and with great clarity - with how most of us have failed to internalize what science reveals to us about space and time. It has me scurrying for the author’s book - and looking forward to his next one due out soon. But it also brings to the surface long-standing issues that have been foundational in my thinking for a long time.
The whole subject is one that in my quasi-scientific way I have struggled to comprehend all my life. For years I was torn between a spiritual interpretation of ultimate reality and a scientific one. I would go for months - years even - held completely by the scientific arguments, though my understanding of physics is limited by what I can learn from popular books on the subject. I have always been frustrated by not understanding the mathematics and physics directly. So I always depend on the translations provided by many very capable authors, such as Greene.
But I was saying that for long periods of time the scientific view of reality would hold command of me and I would dismiss all religious/spiritual perceptions as superstitions built largely on the fear of death. Then I would shift gears and read the works of theologians, such as Paul Tillich, and for another period of time the spiritual view would dominate. (I say “spiritual” to separate what I am thinking from religious. To me all religions tend to corrupt the very spiritual truths they ostensibly serve. )
However, in he past decade I have come to see that there is no conflict between reality as revealed by science and reality as revealed by spiritual experience. The scientific reality has the advantage of being confirmed by well-documented experiment. The spiritual reality also rests in experience, but experience that is not well controlled, or documented and is difficult - though not impossible - to duplicate.
In this article, Brian Greene barely hints at the implication for the spiritual view of life, but he is clear that there is a tremendous gap between scientific perceptions of space and time and our intuitive perceptions of space and time. He points out that science is moving in a direction to abandon them entirely.
What he doesn’t deal with in this article are two other fundamental areas where science and common experience/perception clash. The first is the concept of “now.” For me, “now” is an imaginary point - imaginary in the mathematical sense of the word. That is, it is impossible to grasp. It is a dividing line between past and future and we can keep hacking it into smaller and smaller pieces until we get to the point where it doesn’t exist at all. It is merely a useful reference. It bears no relationship to reality.
The second area he does not address here that to me is fundamental is our perception of “stuff.” That is, it has long seemed clear to me that the universe does not consists of energy and matter - but energy alone. Matter is an illusion generated by energy.
This should have been obvious with some of the earliest descriptions of the atom. We are talking about a “thing” that has a very small nucleus and yet occupies a very large space - nearly all of which is empty. And then we started taking even the nucleus apart and began defining “elementary” particles. But by around 1970 we had so damned many of them, they were embarrassment. The name implied they were the building blocks and there should be very few of them - certainly not hundreds.
Finally,we have to recognize that we are trying to understand all this from the inside and as such may have inescapable limits to our understanding. That is, we are part of the problem trying to understand the whole. But we can’t step outside the whole to understand it - we must see it with the tools we have. So we are roughly akin to a part of the engine trying to understand the entire automobile - not only what it is, but why it is. And we can’t.
But even within our limits what we are seeing is that the reality as defined by common experience is not the reality that is defined by science. For me, the reality defined by science is much closer to the reality defined by uncommon experience - experience derived from such practices as meditation. I hasten to add, however, that my own most uncommon experiences - momentary flashes of indescribable insight - usually take me completely by surprise and do not come from any practice that I am able to define and repeat. And that, sadly, is what separates them from science. Yet there is a certain comfort in sensing that these two greta halves of my existence - the scientific and the spiritual - seem to be traveling down separate paths that lead to the same point - though I can not define that point, nor clearly perceive it. And I am trying my best to avoid the word “god” because it is far too superficial and restraining for what I believe is there.
You say the most outrageous things, Greg!
"Now" bears now no relationship to reality? Really? From my point of view, "now" is the only reality there is. As the sanskrit proverb says:
Look to this day,
For it is life,
The very life of life.
In its brief course lies all
The realities and verities of existence,
The bliss of growth,
The splendor of action,
The glory of power --
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision.
But today, well lived,
Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
My take on "now" is that it's all we've got. To me, to focus and live in the past or future is not to be present in the here and now. And I think it's why Jesus once said something no one understood (then or now): "The kingdom of Heaven is at hand." He wasn't kidding. It's here and now, not in some imaginary afterlife. To me, to focus and live in the past or future is not to be present in the here and now. But it's mostly up to us to make it heaven, and we're not very good at it. We're really good at creating hell on earth though. Which leads me to...
And why do you think "...religions tend to corrupt the very spiritual truths they ostensibly serve"? Is it because power corrupts? Those in charge of religious denominations -- ministers, priests, bishops, rabbis, imams, etc. -- certainly sometimes abuse their positions of authority (as do those who take a religious cloak upon themselves -- I'm thinking of the current resident in the White House). This is why I'm not a big fan of highly structured organized religion (like the Catholic Church, and to a lesser extent my own Episcopal Church). It's also why I won't work for a corporation, preferring the less secure "self-employed" status I have (the only one who can abuse power is I!). It's also why I'm wary of politicians and am a strong advocate of democracy and our version of it with the system of checks and balances.
One of the reasons power corrupts, to bring this full circle, is that people in those positions want to stay there. They're thinking about the future, not the now. They're thinking, in the end, about immortality, much as the Pharoahs did. And Caesar Augustus et al. They try to make themselves divine, so they can hang around and influence the future. And that leads to real corruption, mass killings, and even crucifixions of messiahs.
And we who are left to wallow in the present "now" have to put up with their shenanigans, and then we end up living in the past or future because the now is so awful.
So if everyone could just be fully present, and concentrate on the "now", we'd all be a lot happier.
It's just a thought...
Peter
Peter argues :"From my point of view, "now" is the only reality there is."
I'm in complete agreement. But it depends on the "point of view." From "my point of view" I will not step in front of a speeding car. I know it will hurt. But from the point of view of reality as described by science, I also know that both the car and I are mostly empty space. Why should the mixing of these vast empty spaces be so hurtful? (The nucleus of an atom can be compared to a pinhead with the electrons being dust motes 100 meters away. Everything between these two - the pinhead and the dust motes - is empty space.) And that's reality. But it is certainly not the way we experience it. Ah, but it is the forces that hold the dust motes to the pinhead that are in collision. Those dust motes can't be separated from the pinhead because they are held to one another by very powerful forces.
Oh my - so what's a "force?" Seems to me it's something we define by saying what it does - not what it is. So it's a mystery. Call it a god or a scientific superstition. But I'm getting off track. I only want to say that there is a tremendous gap between what we experience and what modern science tells us about reality as detected by various instruments and elegant experiments.
So it is with "now." I experience it as Peter does. But in truth, what I experience as "now" is a collection of impressions from my senses that only appear to occur simultaneously. A simple example of this would be a lightning bolt. We experience the lightning and the thunder - simultaneous events - at different times because light travels much more quickly than sound. Can't the same principle be extended to everything. For example, if you and I are talking, I see your lips move before I hear the sound. The difference is incredibly small, but there is an appreciable time lag simply because of the speed of sound and light. Of course, I would say the conversation is happening "now" in terms of the way I experience it. But it isn't.
And even when we eliminate these external elements of light and sound, we still have appreciable processing times in terms of signal traveling from our receptors (eyes and ears) to our brain.
So I believe that the "now" that we experience is really a sequence of events which all occur at varying distances in our past.
But surely something really does happen "now?" I mean there is an instant when I perceive something, isn't there? Yes, but how small do you slice that instant?
Does now last for a second? A millisecond? A microsecond? Asking that question is what brings me to the point where I'm not at all sure "now" exists. What I experience as "now" are a collection of memories of various intensity that because of my inability to detect small differences in time appear to be happening in something I call "the present." In short, my "now" is really just a way of talking about the very recent past.
But surely, no matter how thin you slice it, there must be a time called "now?" Maybe. I think the jury is still out on it, though.
So yes, I am a big fan of living in the "now." I try to do it every day. But when I try to define "now" I find that the trail merely leads me deeper into one of the central mysteries of reality as we perceive it - the mystery of time.
And all that said, again I am in complete agreement with Peter. Live in the "now." But I also find it challenging to contemplate in the "now" what the heck " now" really is ;-)
Posted by: Greg Stone at January 7, 2004 04:02 AM