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FQXi FORUM
CATEGORY: Essay Contest
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TOPIC: Time and Causality by William R. Wharton
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The voting deadline has been extended to January 1, 2009.
Please vote for your favorite essays soon!
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Essay Abstract
The difference between past, present, and future which we all experience is due to causal chains moving forward in time. Time is a coordinate but is distinct from the spatial coordinates primarily because of a special relationship with causal chains. This paper examines systems which are static because of a lack of causal chains. Without causal chains there are no localized events in space-time. Such systems are time-independent because causal chains are the source of all processes of becoming. Causation introduces a time asymmetry in nature. On a microscopic scale where an accurate description requires quantum mechanics, time symmetry can be restored by including causal chains progressing backward in time.
Author Bio
William R. Wharton is a Professor of Physics at Wheaton College to which he came in 1984 after eighteen years of research in nuclear physics. William has a deep interest in cosmology and teaches astronomy at the Wheaton College Science Station in South Dakota. His son, Ken Wharton, is a physics professor at San Jose State. Ken has a different view of the nature of time, which leads to lively discussions.
Download Essay PDF File
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Hello William,
I liked your essay about causal chains.
I agree with you that, properly interpreted, Quantum Mechanics involves a kind of “backward causation” that makes quantum non-locality compatible with Special Relativity.
Regards,
Cristi Stoica
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Professor Wharton,
There is a natural feature to time I based my entry on, but doesn't seem to draw attention in these many other essays on the topic. It is that while the present goes from past events to future ones, these particular events go from being in the future to being in the past. It seems to me that much of the problem with understanding time is caused by this assumption that all aspects of time travel from the past into the future and the only way around is to propose some form of "block time," or other mechanism where the essential dynamic is negated. Since your essay seems to be an effort to peel away this particular encrustation to examine the underlaying dynamics, I thought I'd pose the point to you for consideration.
Consider that any motion, or cycling, or process is going through a progression of events. Your chain of causality. What is time? Is it some underlaying dimension along which physical reality travels, from past events to future ones? Or is it these series of events which start as future potential, then manifested by the energies determining which events prevail out of the potentials, then replaced by the next event and fade into past circumstance?
For much of human history and before, we thought of the sun as traveling from east to west, but than realized it was the earth rotating west to east. Could it be the problem with our understanding of time is a similar juxtaposition, where it is actually time going by the present of physical reality, from future to past, rather than this reality traveling along some meta-dimension from past to future?
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Hi Dad,
You mention in your Bio that we have a different view of the nature of time, but you should also mention that there's some substantial overlap as well...
(For anyone else reading this, when I was a kid my father would often play our home movies in reverse and tell me that everything I saw was still obeying all the regular laws of physics. I've been trying to puzzle that one out ever since... :-)
Ken
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Hello Prof. Wharton,
re:
"The
water flowing down the river is analogous to the causal chains moving forward in time. A
place where the water is stagnating is analogous to a lack of causal chains, and therefore a
lack of events."
time does seem to be largely a perceptual problem. another way of looking at it:
we can toss a hula hoop out on a lake, put a little drop of oil in the center of the ring, monitor it's dispersion, note that it eventually fills the ring fairly evenly, watch the rainbows, have great fun 'till someone from the EPA shows up.
our calculations all include the expression "on the water".
we can set a couple of marker buoys on the lake and race a couple of boats around them, calculating their relative position to one another and the marker buoys all the while, and noting that, on the boats, they are always moving forward, regardless of which way they may turn.
our calculations all include the expression "on the water".
somewhere around the middle of the shoreline, wherever the middle of of a shoreline might be, we hop in an inner tube and go dog-paddling across the lake. it's a big lake. we paddle and paddle... count the number of strokes, intending in this way to measure how big the lake is... lose site of the shoreline... never find an end to the water... maybe somewhere in the wee hours of the morning we slip exhausted from the inner tube and disappear.
again, our calculations include the expression, "on the water".
our local situation may be compared to a bunch of people on a raft being towed around the lake by the sun, much as a water-skier might be towed.
some have gotten to looking at the calculations and wonder just what that "on the water" means in them; some ask if the calculations prove that water exists, others whether or no one can dispense with the idea of "on the water" in the equations and some get to questioning if there even is any water.
i've come to suspect that time needs to be somewhat axiomatically (because of the lack of availability of contrast - we can't actually step outside time to have a look-see - necessary for the relativistic nature of a theorem) defined very simply, something along the lines of: 'time is a potential for data to exist' and to further define this relationship as non-commutative such that an absence of detectable data does not negate a potential for its existence.
big lake, with lots of stuff floating around on and in it doing all kinds of strange things. [looking at the strange things going on on the lake, such as 'causal chains' and what electrons in a hydrogen atom are doing, doesn't tend to actually yield much info regarding the lake.]
re:
"One of the most puzzling features of quantum mechanics is the appearance of non-locality
defined as causation traveling faster than the speed of light."
physicists seem fascinated with 'entanglement'. it's not a terribly big deal; not when it conveys no data (can't be used for communication) and there are well documented instances of acquisition of actual data from distant past, future and elsewhere in the present moment through some even more strange physics of consciousness. 'entanglement' cannot account for this and is a bit of a yawn by comparison. the data strongly suggests a spatial quality to 'time' and seems to support the notion of a block universe, but one which is significantly more dynamical than generally appears to be envisioned. in that at any given instance, there can only be one set of events at one space (i don't appear to be able to both sit here typing and take a walk around the block 'simultaneously'), appears deterministic, but a high degree of potential variability can arise from vectors of influence at any given instance. yet, that there is only one set of events at any one moment appears to afford a definitive set capable of being accessed predictively. the number of influence vectors involved in the orbit of the earth around the sun are minimal. the number of influence vectors involved in, say, one's crossing a busy street, get a little more complicated. where one atom may wind up at in a dispersion is even more complex. yet, at any given moment at any given location, there is only one event set. very curious dynamics. the 'chain of causation' appears to be largely an anthropocentric conventionality and oversimplification of the dynamics involved. cause and effect cannot be identified as a chain since relativity killed absolute time and can only be thought of as vector intersects of equal significance but of potentially varying magnitude (anthropocentrically, we tend to ascribe greater significance, that is - 'causal', to vectors of greater amplitude). as in an expression from Zen, 'cause and effect are one'.
see: http://www.remoteviewed.com/rob_abbott_videos.html vid #1 (while this is not perhaps the best example, i've selected it for its dramatic impact)
also: www.espresearch.com/espgeneral/doc-SpeedOfThought.pdf
see also my comments at Curiel's "Time Paradoxes", http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/309
re:
"However the two causally connected events can not be at different spatial locations at the same time, because the maximum speed at which the causal chain traverses space time is the speed of light, c. Human experience is restricted to the macro-world where causation only flows forward in time giving us the distinction between past and future. This is what gives us the impression that time flows."
while it serves a pragmatic function, this perception does not appear to be entirely accurate.
i'd have to agree with Hawking.
glad to meet you. happy for the opportunity for dialogue.
warm regards,
:-)
matt kolasinski
"Just because Schrödinger hasn't seen his cat lately doesn't mean it's dead."
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Professor Wharton,
A key element of your essay is "causal chain". Are there really causal chains? I prefer causal forks like for instance family trees. Maybe you feel in position to refute my conclusions from flaws I am claiming to have found in interpretations of basic mathematics for quantum mechanics.
A fork is like an arrow while Minkowski's cones could be flipped. Could you imagine having exactly one son and one daughter but possibly several mothers and no father at all?
I consider my reasoning very serious and suspect Baez, Wheeler and many others might possibly be fundamentally wrong.
Eckard Blumschein
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/369
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response to comments: I mention that time is a coordinate of our space-time universe. What makes this important is that all events (localized reality) must be defined by specific values for all of the coordinates, including time. The concept of past, present, and future is related to the process of physical reality (defined by events) coming into existence by causal chains. In the microworld described by quantum mechanics these causal chains can go equally in both time directions. There is time symmetry and past, present, and future can’t be defined in terms of time progression. Only in the macroworld where causal chains are restricted to moving forward in time can we associate past, present, and future with a time direction.
The problem with a block universe model is that it is inappropriately taking our understanding of time from relativity theory to argue that there is no process of becoming. My model has a much looser connection between ‘becoming’ and time, which is an inanimate coordinate. The logic behind a block universe model is scientifically flawed. Its defense must come solely from philosophy. Of course my model is mostly metaphysical as well, but this only reaffirms the philosophical nature of a block universe model.
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