There was a young lady of Bright,
Who traveled much faster than light,
She went out one day,
In a Relative way,
And returned home the previous night.
Nobody does metaphysics these days, but at the risk of losing all personal credibility, that's exactly what I'm about to do. Not only that, but I have to begin with a word of warning - right smack dab in the middle of the piece, when I quote a little scripture, the wary reader might suspect he or she's been mousetrapped into a little religious come on. Not at all so, as I'll explain when we get there. So bear with me at that point. The ultimate purpose is to demonstrate how much in common the metaphysical implictions of modern physics have with all the ancient stuff.
The hero of this story is an ordinary photon, an element of a light-wave originating somewhere near Alpha Centauri, the star nearest to the solar system, four light years away. The lightwave and the photon make their way to earth and to someone's retina. As we measure time,the journey took approximately 4.3 years - for Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light-years away, and our photon travels at the speed of light.
But it is here that our tale really begins - because, though the photon has experienced an event, a change in location, it has not experienced any change in time. It has traveled at the speed of light, which - as established by the theory of relativity - is the speed of time. Although mortal fools may count up to four plus years, the photon has moved from Alpha Centauri to earth instantaneously.
But 'instantaneous' is not the right word. It is a time-burdened word, which means it cannot by definition apply. What is striking here is how inapplicable all time-burdened language is this photon's experience (which is why I'd like those theoretical physicists among my small readership group who'd like to discuss the science here, to lay off for a second, for my point is a more general one about language.) There is indisputably an event - the photon 'was' there and 'now' it is here - but sequential words do not apply when there has been in fact no sequence. Wanna say that the photon was simultaneously at Alpha Centauri and on earth? Be my guest, but 'simultaneous' has no more validity than 'now' and 'then'. It means an indentity of time frames, wnen in fact no time frame exists. The notion of 'the same' is no more relevant than 'before' or 'after' - the photon does not experience time, period, close quote. Yet it is almost impossible to describe the photon's journey in flesh and blood language without time concepts. Wasn't the photon at Alpha Centauri before it came to earth? Is this sequence of events not indisputable? Not only is it not indisputable, the sequence doesn't exist at ll. Curious, and somewhat frustrating.
But we are only getting warmed up. Let's extend the thought experiment. Let us consider a universe that consists of nothing but photons and other similar energies - where every being moves at the speed of light. Time does not exist in such a cosmos. Events do. Photons journey to and fro, here and there, from this point to that. But all of this takes place in an infinite stillness. No clocks tick, no sequence exists. (It is of more than passing interest that there is a similarity to Christian notions of eternity here, for that realm too is time-less, i..e, not simply an endless expanse of time, but beyond time altogether, infinite in a wholly different way. Dante's saints spin in endless gyres in light and music in his Paradiso, but - though they move - time does not. A curious analogy.)
It is only when matter becomes an element of this alabaster universe that time begins. Only when the photon takes on mass does it fall off from timeless eternity, into time. Only then do decay, change, mortality, death, become elements of reality. This is not mysticism, but in accord with the theory of relativity. In some algebraic variants, Relativity seems to indicate that the world as we experience it recedes into time at the speed of light. If the only entities that existed were light and energy, time would not exist. Only when the purity of energy 'decays' into matter does the time that we experience as mortal beings comes into existence. What a falling off is there!
It is time now for our digression into scripture. Your patience is requested. Here is John 1:1-5, and then the first verses of the Gospel According to John, followed by John 1:14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not . . .
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
After pausing for just a moment to savor the breathtaking beauty of this King James prose, let us move to the point - translating the above into basic photon-ese:
In the beginning [in eternity, before time began] there was the Word [Logos, the disembodied Idea, was the only thing that existed] and the Word was with God [the Idea was in the realm of eternity] and the Word was God [God is the ultimate Idea]. All things were made by him [the Ideal is the source of all creation] and without him was not anything made that was made [the material universe is not the source of creation, but shaped by the Ideal, which is the sole creative source]. In him was life and the life was the light of man.[Life - energy - derives from the eternal Ideal. Note the association with light.] And the light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not.[The first statement with which our photon might take issue. It is also the first expression of Christian dogma.This is, after all, a Gospel.]
And the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us . . . [The photon would identify completely with thiis sentiment. That's exactly how it came to experience time, by being associated with material. Similarly in the Scripture - the eternal Ideal can only experience time, and mortality, by taking on the trappings of mortality, by becoming flesh. This is of course a statement of core Christian theology as well].
I don't intend to push this analogy to the breaking point. The genius writer of these passages was not a physicist, but a neo-Platonist. The eternal realm he conceived was populated by concepts, Platonic forms and ideals, not the raw energy of relativistic physics. Twenty centuries of mathematical quantification and relentless philosophical reductionism have passed between that day and this. The photon's view of the universe is infinitely more detailed and sophisticated.
But the central metaphor is the same. If one were to describe the implications of modern physics with this philosopher, the notion of light itself as the stuff of eternity, time only beginning with the decay into materiality, he might not agree with you. (He might even regard you as a heretic, so be careful.) But he would nod his head with understanding. The notion that time originates by the descent of the eternal into materiality would be completely consistent with his own concept. That deeply based intuition is one thing that has not changed in twenty centuries.
So where does all this lead? To the corny notions that the ancients anticipated modern physics? Surely not, as much as you sentimentalists may have been hoping so. But, as much as their intuition about time may have identical roots, those guys were words men, searching for ultimate truth in language and ideas. The methods and logic of physicists are a universe away.
No, my conclusions and target are a little different. There have been a number of conscientious attempts by modern physicists to extend physics theory to metaphysics. I am thinking of works like Weinberg's The First Three Minutes: A Modern View Of The Origin Of The Universe and various books by Roger Penrose. These are metaphysical systems grounded on a mathematical and quantitative theory that is way, way beyond my pay grade. Yet it is my sense that they suffer from the same basic flaw that bedevils all rational approaches to systematic metaphysics, the paradoxes that lie at the base of human perceptions of time and space. We perceive them both as finite and infinite at one and the same - er, time - as Kant demonstrated unarguably at about the time of the French Revolution. Even brilliant theoretical physicists will find it a tad difficult to construct a solid system of thought on the base of an unresolvable contradiction.
What would scare me if I were Weinberg, Penrose, or others of that ilk, is how quick and easy the translation of scripture into photon-ese actually is. It would cause my skin to crawl with the uneasy thought that the metaphysical speculation I'm doing is only a hyper-sophisticated mathematical dance around the same ol, same ol' core mysteries. (I am not talking of the application of the math to empirical data, but its use as metaphysical tools). The reductionist attacks of skeptical philosophers on the traditional Aristotelian/Thomistic -Christian metaphysics in the last three centuries have been so successful, so overwhelming, that it is easy to forget how much intellectual work, how much hard thought, went into their creation. But ultimately they were revealed to rely systematic conceptual confusion, camouflaging some core tautologies at base. I think that the same reduction (albeit with infinitely more difficulty) could be accomplished with respect to quantitative physics as applied to metaphysical problems - that ultimately the same core tautologies, mathematically expressed, lies beneath all the subtlety. At the base, it turns out 1 = 1, world without end, amen - to the same raucous laughter the Thomists have had to endure.
So has it always been. There is a sense in which all metaphysical speculation, all religious yearning, begins at the same point, with musings about the irreducible mystery of time. But the mystery is irreducible, as most people sense, and Kant demonstrated conclusively. The central riddle of human existence is why - how - flesh and blood creatures, confined in space and with numbered days, can conceive of an endless line of numbers, wonder about eternal time, dream dreams of an imperishable self (soul) - how creatures hopelessly mired in finitude can contemplate infinity.
But with this description of the source of religious awe, we come to the end of rational exploration. The beginning and the end are one and the same. None of metaphysical systems, be they the mighty cathedrals of Thomas or the ice palaces of theoretical physicians, rest on any rational foundation. The language of infinity, of what lies beyond what can be seen and touched, is the language of faith, not reason.
I do not mean to belittle religiosity with this observation - quite the contrary. The gaze into the infinite abyss is the wellspring of religious awe, and that is no small matter. In fact, it is ultimately important. The majority of Westerners these days are atheists, in my opinion, either professing or practicing (meaning they might as well be professing). That's likely a good thing, considering how outworn most of the major faiths are and how disputed their contribution to the progress of civilization - at least at this time and place. But it is one thing to discard the empty shells of these beliefs, quite another to forget the impulse that sparked them into existence, the sense of infinity in the midst of finitude. Lose that, and we have lost perhaps the quintessential definition of humanity. Not good.
Meanwhile, the tale of the photon's journey is over, and so is this piece. It's possible to describe the photon's experience of time (or eternity) conceptually, but not perceptually. How odd, really, that is - that we begin counting one, two, three, and measuring the drop of an apple, and end with a theory of the world which jeers at the perceptual base with which it began.
But that's photons for you. Smug, enigmatic little thingies, ain't they?
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