On the Nature of Time — essay competition
I have submitted an essay to the FQXi competition. If you are interested in reading it, click here.
Title: On the Nature of Time – Or Why Does Nature Abhor Deadlocks?
Essay Abstract
This essay aims at introducing a novel point of view on the nature of time, inspired by a synthesis of three seemingly unrelated concepts: Bergson’s notion of duration, Dijkstra’s notion of concurrency, and Mach’s notion of inertia.
Edit (June 9th 2009): Apparently, the essays on the nature of time are no longer available at the FQXi site. I have made a very few small corrections and modifications in my essay and a new version is available here (pdf file).
December 16, 2008 at 6:18 pm
I thank the anonymous colleague for his/her restricted vote.
January 15, 2009 at 8:48 am
Hi Christine,
An interesting essay on the nature of time which I enjoyed, yet one I admit I will have to go over several times in order to grasp all its meaning and implications. It touches on many things that I myself have thought about over the years and some others that I’m not familiar with for they relate to computer science which I’m nearly totally ignorant of such as this concurrency thing as it relates to deadlocks. This will require me to review this more closely with discovering being intersted as to what this “dining philosophers” scenario is all about.
Just one note of correction of which it’s probably too late to help in terms of in time for its submission is that on page six at the beginning of section four you refer to “Newton’s buck experiment”, which I believe should read instead “Newton’s bucket experiment”. Once again I did enjoy the essay and perhaps if I bring myself to understand it well enough at some point you could entertain discussing it with me here.
Best,
Phil
January 15, 2009 at 9:35 am
Hi Phil,
Thanks for taking your time to read my essay on the nature of time!
(And thanks for your correction. There are probably other corrections to be made, considering the fact that English is not my mother language… There are also other passages that probably require some re-writing in order to make them more understandable).
As it may be clear from the reading, the ideas presented in my essay have not been worked out in any detail, although I do have some lines of research that I have been following by myself in complete darkness for a few years now. So, at the present point, these are just what the name says: ideas. I believe they are intriguing ideas, but it is difficult to discuss them any further without establishing a more concrete or formal framework to start with. So, basically, this is the problem I have now in order to reasonably discuss these ideas without falling too much into metaphysical territory… Perhaps I will not be able to advance them further. But anyway, I am happy to learn that some people enjoyed my essay, at least at the level of abstraction that it proposes.
Best,
Christine
January 15, 2009 at 10:18 am
Hi Christine,
I have always found it a little embarrassing and a somewhat humbling experience when people such as yourself or Sabine apologize for English being a second language and perhaps forms to be some kind of a handicap. I must say that most people who are native speakers of the language have no where near the level of comprehension or fluency that you and she have displayed. What I pointed out was merely a typo and has nothing to do with fluency as far as I can tell.
You mention lacking a framework for your ideas and without getting ahead of myself, since I don’t as of yet comprehend your proposal fully this embedding of countable infinites seems to me to be related and consistent with Cantor’s set theory concepts, with the countables such as where the “natural numbers” are embedded and yet could be said to be not part of the “reals” (the uncountables), yet more so serve as connecting links between which it could be further argued are portions (subsets) of the reals, which in themselves form uncountable infinities. You might say these subsets could be the domain of the fuzziness between the two that you speak of. I’m not sure that if this would even apply for as I said I don’t have my head totally around your idea. One thing though that’s true is that the reals are homogeneous as they can never be separated definitely, while the naturals are separate by their own nature of occurrence and definitive spacing. Anyway just a thought and by the way you are now to blame for me now trying to imagine how philosophers may be consistently and reliably feed:-)
Best,
Phil
January 15, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Hi Phil,
In very straightforward terms, the idea is not to rely on numbers in order to describe time (as a sequence of events), but to regard it as a result of a more fundamental substrate in which processes of pure concurrent nature, although possibly countable infinite in number, internally prescribe how the dynamics of all fields of the universe evolve — that is, through a single deadlock avoidance constraint, time emerges as a local partial order of events, but internally time is of an heterogeneous substrate, much in the spirit o Bergson’s duration, here realized in terms of pure concurrency. So we are not interested in numbers (as elements of a Cantor set), but a set in which the elements are processes themselves, and I believe the mathematical apparatus can be searched for in category theory. But I am not certain whether this is the apporach that I am going to take.
best,
Christine
January 16, 2009 at 9:41 am
Hi Christine,
Thanks for the further clarification and as a said earlier I will need to ponder it all a bit more. With you referring now to mathematics of which I’m not the least bit familiar that may indeed prove to be even more of a tall order. The one thing I’ve become convinced of lately is that until the nature of time is sorted out our confidence in having a clear understanding our world will remain incomplete and therefore it’s heartening that at least a few physicists have thoughts on the matter.
Best,
Phil
P.S. Also if that book of yours ever is printed in English I would like to know.
January 17, 2009 at 8:58 am
Hi Phil,
Yes, I believe that the nature of time is a fundamental question, although some people regard it as trivial.
Concerning my book, after a lot of research, I am about to contact a US literary agent in order to evaluate the worthiness and feasibility of publishing it in English.
Best,
Christine
January 17, 2009 at 9:32 am
Hi Christine,
“Yes, I believe that the nature of time is a fundamental question, although some people regard it as trivial.”
Well I know that you have at least two allies in being Smolin and Davies. Perhaps those that say they consider it as trivial have simply not found the time rather then truly believe it as such:-)
“I am about to contact a US literary agent in order to evaluate the worthiness and feasibility of publishing it in English.”
Well I hope the assessment turns out to be positive and if so I might be able give you a lead on a freelance editor if you think one be required. There are so few science fiction books written by physicists, which I myself have found somewhat mysterious, for one would think that at least a few would have the imaginations required for it.
Best,
Phil
January 17, 2009 at 9:51 am
Hi Phil,
Well, I tend to believe that we all should be allies even if our opinions diverge. Such divergences are important. For instance, Rovelli states that time should not be considered as fundamental. His arguments are well constructed and he put a lot of thought on them. So you see, although he says that time does not exist, his arguments on this matter are not trivial, are interesting and worthy of consideration. Even if one does not agree with him, he/she will learn a lot from studying his arguments.
In my essay, I hope one may be able to understand my point of view that, eg., Rovelli might be perfectly right on the matter — as far as time is considered in present theories as sequences of events, modelled under any conceivable local partial order. However, I believe this is just a facet of time. There is a lot to be learned even in classical gravitational statistical mechanics. And much more, if we are really able to advance into quantum gravity. I believe there is an unexplored land, in which only perhaps a glimpse of it started with Bergson. And others. I think time is fundamental. That is the purpose of my essay. To bring those questions for discussion.
best,
Christine
January 17, 2009 at 10:59 am
Hi Christine,
If you are saying that time in effect has two faces born as being resultant of one being a obvious nature and the other more obscure I would say that this presents as being consistent with my own current thoughts on it all. That of course is largely since as I tend to favour the Bohmian approach to physicists which forces one to consider that the nature may be founded on a dual ontology, rather then a singular one; where the latter being the more usual way it’s consider. So if I ever do get my head totally around what you’re proposing I might have a more pertinent question or two to present.
Best,
Phil
January 17, 2009 at 11:55 am
Hi Phil,
Not exactly that one is obvious and the other more obscure, but that time can be inserted into our current physical theories into various disguises that serve for practical calculations, which in turn are the result of certain physical laws that do match to observations up to certain degrees or regimes. Under such circumstances time is often a local partial order object, and possibly not fundamental. However, such disguises are *not* time, but a poor description of it: it can be reducible to a local partial order, but it is not a local partial order. I see it as emerging from a more fundamental object(s), that is, from my point of view, it is not a (series of) number(s), but an heterogeneous substrate, as in Bergson. So it cannot be entirely an “obvious” object (yes, you can turn it into practical object, that is why we can do almost anything with a clock, but is the advance of a clock an entire measure of time?). In this sense, there is something that our physical laws are missing, if we really want to go deeper into what nature is at higher and higher energies, and such a suspicion can become evident, for instance, when thinking about how introduce time in a quantum gravity theory. So yes, there is somewhat a “more obscure” component, and it is my present problem of how to explore such a component in physical terms. For that one must advance the notion of physical law, and have to think of new mathematical tools, including the role of information in our universe. This is all quite abstract and metaphysical at the present point, so it is quite understandable that my ideas are not easly grasped. I have a whole mountain of doubts in order to get a mental hold of a substrate of pure concurrency and the deadlock constraint being the only “law” that governs the universe. I’m not certain whether such line of thought will serve for the advancement of our notions of time, for the moment they are just ramblings of my own that I just happend to share.
Best,
Christine
January 18, 2009 at 12:54 am
Hi Christine,
Thanks once again for spending the time to further express as to clarify your idea and it has helped somewhat in that regard. To be honest though I think I’ll have to read Bergson for myself to have it come together a bit more. That shouldn’t prove much of a bother since I seem to fare better with philosophy then science at times. In fact I often bemoan that they are taken as to being separate subjects and feel so because the why question is trivialized for the most part in science, while overplayed too often in philosophy, to the point of neglecting that they both have in common they must reflect the world which they are intended to describe. For instance what would one consider Ernst Mach, a scientist or a philosopher? Regardless what we call him, if it were not for his questions about the nature of reality our vision would be less clear, if only by what should be considered. At least his ideas I am more familiar.
As for Dijkstra although I’m also not familiar, his thoughts and insights are not that far from Bohm’s as they were both concerned with what Dijkstra called “a finite but very large, discrete universe that is intricately intertwined.”. Bohm was more concerned as how this could be consistent and still account for the holism found in the world or the non local aspect of it if you prefer. I don’t know if you have read anything by him but if you haven’t and ever feel so inclined I would recommend as a beginning his book “Wholeness and the Implicate Order” in which he struggles to come to grips with many of the same questions to define them as implications and aspects of Implicate and Explicate order .
The last official word on time was as space was something measured by rods and so time is something that is measured by clocks. As clear as that statement appears it’s unraveled when we are further told that in GR that each of them are not just interchangeable yet also indistinguishable in a certain sense. One ends up being trapped between a dynamic and kinetic description which is what I am lead to understand you are grappling with. So I hope that with further grappling you might be able to shed some light on it all.
Best,
Phil
February 1, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Interesting essay. You mentioned deadlock situations in your text: if we have a situation where the present depends on the past, and the past on the present (for example if we have regions with negative time or time running backwards), then we would indeed have a deadlock situation. Maybe there is some truth in your claim that time emerges because the universe avoids deadlock conditions. I would be interesting if we construct a Celullar Automata, where the next (time-)step as usual relies on the previous one, but where also the previous one relies on the next one, where both past and present co-evolve together somehow. I personally believe the nature of time is coupled to the self-replication rate of space.
March 9, 2009 at 3:31 pm
[...] My essay was not awarded. [...]
April 28, 2009 at 1:39 pm
[...] A FQXi Community promoveu um concurso de ensaios sobre a natureza do tempo. Foram escolhidos e classificados 24 ensaios. Além dos ensaios premiados, destaco o da nossa colega do blog Theorema Egregium [...]
May 12, 2009 at 9:56 am
Excellent essay
I believe time is presence of motion and forces and it is caused by expansion of space. I really requires a paradigm shift to understand this new concept. However time does slow down where expansion of space is slow as around large masses. If the amount of motion and forces imparted by the expanding space to a given mass is a constant then as we increase its velocity the inner motion of the atoms will slow down and this is the perceived slowing of time. For details visit my website:www.timephysics.com. You comments will be appreciated.
June 3, 2009 at 10:05 am
[...] there is a facet of it which can be made artificially emergent. See my essay on concurrent time here [...]
June 8, 2009 at 10:21 am
The reader “Fredrik” over at Physics Forums (link to original comment here; original thread link here) took his time to read my essay and posted a comment there with several considerations. I suggest to follow discussions now from this point. I took the liberty to copy and paste his comments here. I hope to opportunely address some of his points, after I think more about the interesting questionings and reasonings that he raised.
.
.
.
——————————
Hello Christine, at least I went through your fqxi paper yesterday, I haven’t yet followed up any of the references.
From the first reading I probably didn’t understand your starting point and choice of reasoning but to try to associates to your main point (regardless of how you got there) is that you consider nature to be a system concurrent processes that avoids deadlocks, and WHY…
Somehow I can recongnize something there from my preferred view. Somehow deadlocks are typical of some “machines”, and indeed it seems like if nature ever gets temporarily stuck, the situation is always resolved.
I think the closest correspondence to your “avoidance of deadlocks” to how I have been thinking is that I think an important trait of a survivor is to have the ability to “resolve an inconsistency”, or to revise your own information when it’s thrown in your face that it’s wrong. I’ve labeled this “the logic of correction”. And of course that’s just another way to phrasing “avoiding a deadlock”. When a potential deadlock appears, the deadlock itself is not constructive, and should spontaneously decay and eventually resolve the situation.
I do not have a ready solution to this either but I sense a connection to your reasoning although I haven’t used your words. I also agree that the connection to inertia here is strong. As I pictures it, ALL information, including “law” has a confidence rating, which in effect is a kind of inertia. And if an inconsistency is produced, there is a stress from the environment that will slowly by competition resolve this “deadlock=inconsistency”.
Exactly how this shoul be implemented is open, but I am starting with a notion of distinguishability. And each observer has it’s own complexity, which is closely related to it’s inertia, and when information, and compressed regularities (law) are encoded in this microstructure, each piece of information can be assigned a kind of inertia, which I think of simply as a resistance to change given been exposed to conflicting information.
The typical case is given that A and B in it’s pure form are simply in contradiction, and A is exposed to fragments of B. That does happen in nature, and nature always finds a way to negotiate and avoid a hard inconsisntency.
My idea is in fact that all physical interactions can be seen as negotiations, and that the emerget result of the negotiations, could be the “the share resources” you mention. Which then I would not interpreted in a materialist or realist sense, but rather just as a conincidental and emergent “agreement”, all further interactions can than relate via the prior agreement. But this agreement is always subject to re-negiatiation.
To me this goes hand in hand with the evolutionary subjective view of physical law, rather than the structural realist view.
In order to find a starting point, I think the complexity scaling will be a key, since as the complexity is low, the constraints are so large that there can’t be alot of choices.
I think this evolving view of the “share resources” and “law” might help understand the origin of inertia as well, since if we see the concurrent processes as “competing” it can be that one system can “gain control” over other systems, and if you think what this means in terms of information and predictive power that effectively is the same as increasing your inertia.
A little bit analogous how you can make money grow in the stock market, a system can conquer control and inertia from it’s environment. But it can also loose inertia.
But there is alot of work to from this idea, characterize the interactions, and predict PART of the common resources we call spacetime, and understand exactly how spacetime is a steady state agreement, constantly under renegotiation.
So rather than starting with assumptions of a common resource, I try to start with the simplest possible inside view. That is a minimal observer, try to figure out what is distinguishable, and how that scales are the observer increases it’s complexity.
My philosophical wordings are different, but I suspected a connection here.
Christine, may I ask what you think (loosely) about the evolving idea of law that smolin is suggested. I don’t mean this specific idea CNS, but rather the general idea of a new logic, with emphasis on new (strongly non realist) vay of seeing what is physical law?
/Fredrik
——————————————————————–
June 8, 2009 at 10:28 am
jfromm and MKhan:
Thanks for your considerations. Forgive my very long delay in replying. I have been out of blogging due to several reasons, now I am slowly getting back to it. There are several inputs and feedbacks now, so I have to think about them. Thanks for posting some of your ideas (or links to them); I hope to think about them (or read them) opportunely. For the moment, I’m just trying to catch up with several things.
Best,
Christine
June 10, 2009 at 6:21 pm
I added more comments, regarding your reference to these blogs on the original forum. For the case of the discussion here I’ll copy it here…
——
I’ll look at those later[comment: referring to your blog entires]. I sensed a possibility that your view could be compliant with a new view of law, even though you may put it differently. I suspect you may come from a different direction because I didn’t quite understand the chioce of reasoning part of your text, but I think the conclusion makes sense.
I am not at all fond of multiverses either, that’s exactly why I think a single, but evolving universe makes alot more sense as a scientific abstraction.
About fundamental vs emergent time I am not clear what smolin has in mind. For sure I do not share rovellis idea of observables, smolin has alot of good to say there, but I am not sure exactly what his ultimate idea is.
His criticts on timeless law I share, but evolving law doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a fundamental time in the observer independent sence. This is the point where I might not see what smolin has in mind.
Smolins idea is some evolving law, by means of for example CNS where the “parameters of physical law” vary between bounces somehow. I do not quite like CNS, but the motivation for the attempt is good. Instead I think one can have this implemented by means of evolving observers, and that this evolution is continously going on and not necessarily constrained to black holes spawning new universes.
Instead of picturing a superposition of universes, one can consider only one uinverse, but where some observers simply has a corrupt or inconsisntent view of physical law, but these observers will be subject to interactions and will be forced to “correct themsleves” – face destruction ; connecting to your conclusion that a viable trait of a system in nature is deadlock avoidance. In my way of putting it, this would mean that deadlocks are not banned per se, however systems that fail to recover from an inconsisntecy, simply doesn’t survive, and are thus deselected in the evolutionary process that produces the system population of the universe. I interpreted your paper inthis direction, and if so I agree fully.
This is the process I’m seeking. I personally don’t think smolins CNS as I understand it is the full solution.
/Fredrik