I took some time off to visit my mother for a few days recently, one minor consequence of which was the necessity of making an eight hour drive twice in a relatively short period of time. My answer to this dilemma was to download the audio version of physicist Lee Smolin’s book Time Reborn. It has been a while since I’ve had the chance to dig into this type of book, and as one very much interested in the ideas of physics, I thoroughly enjoy Smolin’s writing. This was the third book of his that I have read. It is a pretty rare physicist who takes the time to provide carefully constructed glimpses into the field for non-specialists, and I very much appreciate the efforts of those who do so.
The central premise of the book is that the treatment of time as an illusory phenomenon has produced a variety of physical theories of cosmology that cannot be evaluated meaningfully through the scientific method, and whose outcomes often describe universes quite different from the one we see. Regarding the former, efforts to further these theories have led to vast families of solutions to the basic laws of nature– the laws we have now, anyway– without providing any insight into how the specific solution that represents our universe might have been “pulled from the hat”. This is akin to a situation in which we have a theory that predicts the way a thrown ball will travel through space. We can find an infinite number of trajectories that satisfy the requirements of the theory, but only one of them will represent the specific path of the Randy Johnson pay-off pitch that whistles past the batter on the inside corner and ends the inning. Our world is just such a pitch. Something marvelous relative to all possible thrown-ball scenarios we could imagine.
Some physicists have resorted to the anthropic principle to explain how a universe like ours was selected from all the possible universes that could have arisen in perfect satisfaction of the known laws, which basically means: we’re here aren’t we–??? And given as we’re here, certain things could only be as they have been. For Smolin, this is not physics, because the anthropic principle is not an idea that can be tested or that leads to any new and meaningful insights into the nature of the universe– (as of yet, perhaps).
The other problem with the treatment of time as an illusory or emergent phenomenon is that it results in the conception of universes unlikely to produce novelty and complexity, given the laws of nature as we know them today. Smolin argues that complexity and novelty are the products of histories, and that universes in which time is not a truly active ingredient simply don’t possess the characteristics necessary to spawn the creative complexity and non-uniformity that we see in our own. In fact, by all known rights contained in the laws of thermodynamics and probability, universes with complexity and novelty ought to be the exception and not the rule. Attempts to offer cosmological theories without the inclusion of time often rely upon some mechanism or argument for suggesting that in a field of possibility grand enough to include just about anything, then a world such as ours will be in the mix somewhere. Physicists, you see, are very clear on what the term infinite means. Such an astoundingly vast domain could surely include at least one lone point within it representing this…
One cosmological theory developed by Julian Barbour suggests that all possible “moments” that ever could exist, do so simultaneously, in a multi-dimensional landscape of static snapshots. There is no time in the sense that all such moments exist simultaneously, but there is some mechanism by which a path of “moments” is selected from the field of possibilities. A world is a line traced through the possibility landscape– called by Barbour Platonia— that connects one moment to the next. Our memories as beings, the buried fossils we discover in the ground, and the historical artifacts contained in a particular snapshot are all explained simply as being the contents of a particular snapshot. They are not there because of a causal relationship to a past, per se, but because in a vast enough ensemble of possibilities there quite simply will exist moments that contain objects that we would describe as dinosaur fossils. Barbour also wrote a book accessible to non-specialists, and I found his imaginative thinking also to be insightful and intriguing. While the simplified version of his story I have given here may seem absurd, it is not. I simply don’t have the time or space here to do it justice.
I enjoy thinking about all of these things, and whether a theory is ultimately right or not is hardly the point. None have been yet. The ideas and insights that are gleaned from asking questions and following them to their logical conclusions are well worth the effort. They open the mind and periodically lead to insights into the natural world that, like a good poem, pulse through my entire being like the single, aha! drumbeat of the ineffable. Such insights are not all of the world, but they provide hints of its character that resonate with me, and bring me to a state of wonder and appreciation. For me, this is the beauty of science– the moment when insight reminds us we are part of something beautiful, profound, and perhaps beyond ultimate definition. Also, perhaps paradoxically, the power of science is that it isn’t just fantastic imagining. Not every idea holds up to the test of scrutiny and examination. The false must be rooted out and discarded.
In his epilogue Smolin wrote of his dedication to the ethic of science, by which I believe he meant the formulation and testing of assertions, the need to validate them through evidence, and the need to be honest about what isn’t working. This is a great ethic, and one I believe we would all do well to adopt, for it requires that we accept neither our experience nor our motivations at face value, and that if things aren’t working, that we revisit our most basic assumptions. This is profoundly difficult for us to do, yet in doing so my experience is that we discover there is something deeper at work that rewards the effort, patience, and imagination required to reveal it. I am going to propose that I, too, adhere to such an ethic, the difference in our two approaches being the scope of what we consider to be real, and suitable for study.
I believe, for instance, that such an ethic applied to the definition of what we call “God” would radically shift our religious and spiritual thinking, which is too often stifled by the past, and by unquestionable definitions and assertions. Such a courageous and creative approach would, I think, ultimately allow for a greater consilience between all fields of human inquiry. Smolin’s universe remains, at its most fundamental, an unconscious unfolding of energy in accordance with inescapable laws– a self-contained and finite, physical process influenced only by its own energetic contents, that gives rise to novelty and complexity. But what about meaning? One great challenge I see with isolating science as a route to knowledge is that meaning, too, must be considered an unnecessary and late-arriving phenomenon, being an artifact of an emergent consciousness. Just as a universe without time seemed, at least in Smolin’s view, to lead to unfertile areas of scientific inquiry, I wonder if the models of universes without meaning won’t one day be viewed as arbitrarily limiting in their predictive and explanatory powers.
Perhaps this is a question outside of the field of science, but I don’t think it is outside of the scope of what it is to be human.
Embracing Forever 
Good read. I like your review… have to check it out.
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Thanks, Meredith! If you do, I hope you enjoy it… He does a good job of tracing the history of ideas I think…
Michael
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Hi Michael,
I’ve been reading, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” by Viktor E. Frankl. So far Frankl hasn’t commented on physics, but the experience of time is really important for human meaning and suffering. There are plenty of abstract human experiences that have no scalability, as far as I know. I wonder how any cosmological model could really “touch” suffering, by eye or instrument. Your post is thought provoking.
Warm regards, Ka
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Hi Ka,
One interesting component of the discussion of time in physics is that the experience of time is not really in dispute. For a study that discredits so much “everyday experience” in favor of what can be experimentally verified and described by mathematical statements, the role of “experience” is only poorly grasped, and of course the notions of meaning and suffering are not part of the conversation, except inasmuch as the story of the universe informs ideas of what it means to be human. I don’t turn to physics when I look for understanding in this department… 🙂
I agree that the experience of time and memory are requisite for the creation of meaning and suffering. A challenge the physicists admit, usually in the epilogue, is that theories that do not admit the reality of history or memory are deeply dissatisfying on the human scale. It would be easier if the objective was simply to describe energetic events, but ultimately, there are these self-aware beings that emerge from the darkness of time that must be explained…
My closing was sort of an open question about what we might discover as a species if we were asking different types of questions. That may not, in fact, exactly be physics as I dream about it, but I do suspect that physics as we know it could change as our understanding of the big picture evolves…
Michael
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Hi Michael,
I didn’t immediately see your reply. I did however discover that you understood my response, especially in terms of what is in the scope of physics and what is not. I like, even more perhaps, your open ended question as to what can be in the scope of physics of the future? Is that your question? It always amazes me how well physics is backed by math, and how far it does reach with this structural capacity. It’s nice to be introduced to authors, researchers, and enthusiasts; sometimes it’s more challenging to follow up with them! On a more personal note, I’m glad that you had something interesting to listen to on your drive to visit your mom. Also it’s good to know that you aim to keep a finger on the pulse of what’s happening in physics, and blog about it here. Thanks for being a part of our collective understanding.
Aloha Ka
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Hi Ka,
Yes that is essentially my question. I wonder if the progression of knowledge will not dissolve some of these barriers between what is science and what is not… It may spell the end of science and religion both, but wouldn’t that make sense once “what is” is finally understood as the all and everything of our being and experience? Why would we feel the need to study externally the reality that is imminently accessible in the core of our being? I don’t know… These just kind of heartfelt thoughts…
Thank you for sharing in the curiosity and enthusiasm for exploring the mystery of being human, Ka!
Michael
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i love thinking about time… about God being outside time and space… about all of us one day escaping the confines of time and space… mind bending, terrifying, and wondrous all at the same “time.”
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Thank you, Colleen! Yes, me, too… In A Course of Love, a key tenet is the idea that our fundamental task as humans involves marrying the timeless to the timebound… (and the word was made flesh… type of thing) Increasingly I am becoming comfortable with the idea that the timeless and the timebound somehow work together in the Creation…
Blessings
Michael
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What I love about your longer essays is that I discipline myself to get really present and focused to read them. I take the ‘time’! And every time I do that – rest in presence – love arises automatically as I read, as if there’s a connection between the love that arises in you through your many years of ‘study’ of the Course in Miracles, and the Course in Love, and my own determined path of many years to unravel the tangled knots of pain and my identification with all the beliefs that created it to slowly emerge into a place where love can naturally arise. Which there is of course. Whatever the content of your essay it’s the love that I feel reading them that’s important for me.
Regarding this essay – I’m with Julian Barbour. Have been ever since I read Seth over 30 years ago. Really has there ever been any other time but now? It’s always now.
With love
Alison
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Hi Alison,
I think what is happening is that in your taking the time to be present, the Love within you naturally emerges. I’m delighted my writing invites this type of conscious attention. And I have to agree with you that in your writing and mine, as we each meet in each, it is the connection of love to love that truly arises. The words are sort of just the vessel that carry it…
I’m going to refrain from saying I agree with one more than the other, because one observation I’ve had over the years of reading science is that generally speaking all sides of “arguments” like this set off those little aha! bombs in my heart. I very much enjoyed Barbour’s book, and Smolin’s as well. One of Smolin’s main arguments against schemes like Barbour’s is that they give no preferential value to the importance of the now. To the physicist, if the idea is that time doesn’t exist, and all moments exist simultaneously, then the “now” we experience as humans is in some sense robbed of its essential novelty and meaning. It is rendered inconsequential, but as humans, we find the “now” to be profoundly consequential. So to yourself, I think you agree in the importance of the “now”, but for you this doesn’t conflict with a conception of the Universe in which all moments are concurrently existing. I completely understand. I remain unconvinced we will ever have a final understanding of how “it all works”, and have accepted that the beauty arising from deepening our gaze is its own reward. There will, I suspect, be some big revolutions in our scientific future, however… 🙂
Much Love
Michael
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“So to yourself, I think you agree in the importance of the “now”, but for you this doesn’t conflict with a conception of the Universe in which all moments are concurrently existing.” Yes, exactly. The importance, the luminance of the now is not one whit diminished by the “fact” or idea that all other nows are simultaneously existing.
I should say that I have never read Barbour. I only know what you wrote in this piece and it is the same as I read from Seth over 30 years ago, and although the mind didn’t understand, it resonated deeply in the heart. At the same time I agree we may never truly understand how it all works, and like you simply accept as much beauty and love as I can into my sphere of perception.
Alison
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The now remains the now, doesn’t it? No matter how we might conceptualize it in our minds, or what constructs we might lay upon it, it simply is… Time is certainly an interesting experience to ponder. We never really experience it directly… We only have the evidence that something seemed to have happened… 🙂
Michael
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“Time is nature’s way to keep everything from happening all at once.”
– Ray Cummings The Girl in the Golden Atom 1922, and also The Man Who Mastered Time 1929. [Quote usually misattributed to Woody Allen.]
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Agreed, Hariod! Smolin described space in this book in much the same way– as a means by which every event is restrained from happening in the same place. He had a really interesting perspective in describing this, which came from models attempting to unify quantum theory with gravity. In one construct space is quantized, and each “node” connected to other nodes by “edges”. If you imagine each person as a node, then if all humans had cell phones and all were connected, this would be a very high-dimensional network in which all points in space were local to one another. But if you start to remove some of the “edges” and “cool such a universe” it decays according to the mathematics into a 3D system, where most nodes do not share edges. Space is thus a reflection of disconnection. In an interesting supposition, the early Universe could have had enough energy to exist in such a hyper-connected state, with edges from each (or most) point of space to each other, and then in the expansion and cooling process the energy was insufficient to sustain those connections and many of them feel away… And yet there could be countless such connections still remaining and we would not necessarily know it… 🙂
Wild stuff…
Michael
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Thank you for not dismissing my flippant comment with the contempt it clearly deserved Michael. The fact is, I get lost in all this theoretical physics, if that is what it is. I have read bits and pieces (Lisa Randall) in the past (is there a ‘past’?), yet something in my brain resists engaging fully, and it’s as if there’s a blocking mechanism yelling back at me and all my questions: “You just can’t get anywhere with this stuff!” I really don’t know if that is true generally, but it is for me.
Psychological time is what interests me, because whether or not physical time exists, the subjective appearance and feeling of time passing does. [“Call it a dream, it does not change a thing” – Wittgenstein] What once came as something of a revelation to me, was to discover that if one becomes really aware – and I mean awareness outside of memory function here – then nothing exists. There are no things and there is no perception of time.
Time as it is experienced subjectively is dependent upon us not being completely aware. In short, that means it comes into existence as a result of memory constructing it from prior phenomena. The Buddhist Pali term ‘Sati’, which is translated in the West as ‘Mindfulness’, actually means ‘memory of the present’. So, what we think of as being aware, or being in the moment, is actually reliving the past. And what is pure and actual awareness is outside of time and consciousness.
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Hello Hariod,
I edited my comment to add a much needed clarification in one of the early sentences. You may have inferred the missing grammatical link from the rest of the discussion already.
I greatly appreciate your admission of exasperation with the subject, if that is not reading too much into your words. I have actually not read any of Lisa Randall, and one reason is that string theory for whatever reason never captured my attention. Then I found the writing of Mendel Sachs, who was kind enough to meet with me in his home one afternoon, and we talked about relativity theory and quantum theory and string theory and all of this stuff at his kitchen table, and he disabused me of the notion that string theory was all that promising. I was susceptible to his particular view because I had known previously that string theory iss a mathematical architecture that addresses certain conundrums of quantum electrodynamics (what electrons are up to when no one is looking) by invoking additional dimensions to render those conundrums moot.
It’s kind of like explaining the appearance of a person at two underground stations virtually at once, by saying it makes perfect sense if you add a few dimensions and consider that the person stepped into a wormhole at one station and emerged on the other. No big deal.
This is not what string theorists would probably say, and I’m hardly one in position to be too convinced of my own conclusions here, but after reading Not Even Wrong by Peter Woit and The Trouble With Physics, also by Smolin, I found myself resonating with their encampment. The trouble with string theory is that despite being mathematically dazzling (to those who can comprehend such things) it explains past observations but hasn’t produced any new predictions that could be tested. So, it has yet to be truly scientific in a sense, because it hasn’t taken the plunge of making predictions capable of being falsified. All of which is to say, I’m not sure what sort of book Lisa Randall wrote, and thus am not sure if it is or isn’t a good bellwether of the overall possibilities to be explored in the non-technical literature.
I would agree you can’t get anywhere with physics, if I am correct in surmising that your own notion of getting somewhere might involve realizing inner peace and freedom from suffering. I must confess I find such pursuits daunting, and on occasion need to invest at least a modicum of my time in going nowhere, just for the fun of it… 🙂 I can only say that if you don’t experience a twinge of wonder at a chain of events that begins with Einstein imagining that space must be curved, then leads through a long string of sordid logical constructs to the realization that such an idea further implies that the radiation of an electron must red shift in a gravitational field, and ends with a pack of graduate students and some radio parts, wires and batteries confirming this through experiments conducted in the stairwell of an academic building– then this just might not be your thing! I find such chains of custody of “insights” into the natural world breathtaking– as if the truth is changing shape and color all the time, and wriggling past us in every moment.
I like your definition of time as being a partial awareness. This does make sense to me. I wonder if the awareness you felt was what A Course of Love describes as (something like) the all of all and the nothing of nothing. Without the differentiation that occurs through relationship, then everything and nothing are the same, and perfectly non-existent in a sense. There is also a lovely sentiment (to me) contained in A Course of Love which suggests prayer rightfully conceived is the remembering of what is, because what truly is, is timeless… I wonder if this isn’t a very close relative to the ‘Sati’ you have described.
Thank you for engaging with me here, Hariod, despite the foul taste this essay might have left. I do very much appreciate and savor it…
Michael
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Marvellous Michael; thank you. My inability to engage in the subject matter is entirely a reflection of my own intellectual inadequacies and nothing whatsoever to do with the style of your essay, which, as ever, is faultlessly eloquent. How marvellous that you should have been able to meet with a famously great scientific mind, and to discuss these ground-breaking ideas. I would be utterly lost for words in such a situation, being unable even to articulate a relevant question. Still, I have met George Harrison though, and he loved the same things as me so that was easy! Hare kṛṣṇa hare kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa hare hare hare rāma hare rāma rāma rāma hare hare! 😉
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Hariod, how wonderful! George Harrison and Thom Yorke both… Truth is, I was a little lost for words, but Mendel carried me through it. He was a teacher and a lover of ideas, and his Jewish faith nestled quite nicely in his heart alongside of his mathematical and scientific pursuits. Being a teacher at heart, all it took was some good-hearted clumsiness on my part to get him going… 🙂 He also told a few stories of the seedy underbelly of the physics community– the politick of ideas, the cliques, the “popular” ideas and the “unpopular” ones that die on the vine and aren’t explored. Like any human endeavor, it is plagued at times by group-think and jockeying for position. The ideas that captivate the general public and command the government dollar are not always the best or most promising, and of course, the victors get to tell the story…
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Thanks for this long and thought provoking essay.
I like the Barbour theory of time. Rames Balsekar has described similarly. Like a huge tapestry with lines on it. When we are sitting on the tapestry, we see only the current time. But when we step away from it and look at the whole thing, we see past and future. It is all there at once.
In my mind, I don’t think of it as tapestry but as a 2d ant hill, with tunnels for ants. As we crawl through the tunnels, we have only access to one point in the tunnel. But as we step out of the 2d plane into the place called eternity, we see past and future.
And people with near death experiences have all of time available at once during their life review.
And there are practical applications for that.
Gary Renard describes a time travel experience in his book Disappearance of the Universe (which is a book about ACIM).
I haven’t had a time travel experience, but I had a dream of a future event.
I very much resonate with the idea that models and theories need to be tested against reality, and if they cannot explain reality then it is the model which needs to be adjusted, and not the other way round.
Greetings from timeless peace,
Karin
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Thank you, Karin.
I like many elements of Barbour’s conception also, but I am uncertain about the part of it (and similar theories) suggesting anything that can conceivably happen, happens. I don’t think our Universe is the type of place where things happen solely because they can, or the type of place that requires itself to have every conceivable experience simply to cover the mathematical bases. I like the idea that past, present and future are somehow all actively alive and mutually informing one another, like in the movie Interstellar where “future” societies provide assistance to current ones (as a sort of example). I’ve read similar in other books, and I think it makes sense to me, though I won’t go so far as to say I think that is “exactly how it is…” I have no idea how it really is… 🙂
But in this idea the “now” would span from what to us is past, through the present and into future, and they would all be in a state of transformation together. I don’t even know what this really means, but it’s intriguing to me. Obviously it is not the case that a bowling ball set into motion in the future knocks over pins in the past. So there would be some sorts of limitations on the types of interactions that occur throughout the “now”, but this is the sort of thing I think our scientists might be more likely to delve into if they conceived of the physical universe as being, at its root, some sort of experience-generating medium or mechanism. If the “purpose” or one of the “purposes” was to generate experience, why wouldn’t the ability to alleviate suffering both past, present and future be part of the possible interactions throughout space and time?
You’ve got me rambling here…
Yes!
A timeless peace!
Michael
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“why wouldn’t the ability to alleviate suffering both past, present and future be part of the possible interactions throughout space and time?”
Maybe there is the ability to alleviate suffering from the past?
From what I have read:
-) Mary Deioma describes in ‘Loved: A Transcendent Journey’ how she went back to an event in her past in her mind and imagined a different bahavior of herself and a different outcome of the event. She wrote that afterwards she had a whole new timeline available because of that. But she didn’t go into more detail.
-) In Gary Renard’s book Disappearance of the Universe, he talks about two people appearing in his living room and acting as his guides. It turns out that one of them is his future self coming back to this time and giving him guidance. Apparently relieving his suffering here by teaching him ACIM principles.
-) Adyashanti told that during an awakening experience he saw his past lives as a point of light. Each past life was a point of light. He could focus on one and delve into it. In one of the past lives, he was a boy who drowned. He then went into that past life and hugged the boy and told that it was all ok. So, there he apparently went back in time.
Peace
Karin
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Thank you for sharing these juicy morsels of insight, Karin. I can tell you enjoy piecing bits and pieces together into a greater whole, as I do. A Course in Miracles speaks as you know about the end of time, which is when the dream of suffering has ended, and though I’m not sure how literally to take this assertion, it strikes me in hindsight of my comments yesterday to be suggesting precisely that all times are healed in the end.
I had a very strong case of deja vu the other day, and this strikes me as another type of experience related to seeing through the veils of time. I find I need to be careful not to get too strongly pulled into these ideas. I love to look at them once in a while, and to entertain them as one might the flavor of a new wine, but I feel it is best not to try and construct a defensible “truth” out of all of it, because then I will in short order be defending something I do not understand. The universe is a wine with so very many flavors– no single one of them is “the answer”… All of these experiences like those you have shared here add to the complexity of the bouquet, and suggest ever new expressions of the divine are all there is…
Thank you so much for your contributions here, my friend.
Much Love
Michael
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A very thought provoking post Michael. I must admit that much of it is beyond my reading, comprehension or interest. However, I love that you explore your fascinations with an eye toward learning and furthering the cause of love.
As you mentioned, each theory or even human experience may be but small pieces of the whole truth offering us insights into the larger truth. Meanwhile, I’ll focus on nature, love and my fascinations. 🙂
blessings, Brad
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Thank you, Brad. Follow what you love, my friend, and it will all take care of itself! I think it’s good that we have various interests and proclivities. It keeps us mixed up like so many ingredients of the cosmic recipe, and leads to new insights from our sharing. I’m happy you hung in there to the end, and glad you took something from it.
Much Love
Michael
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Thanks Michael. 🙂
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Hello Michael, there is a lot in this that felt close to me and where my exploration is taking me. I think Lee Smolin’s book Time Reborn might be a good road map for part of this journey. Keep on shining 🙂 Harlon
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Hey, Harlon–
Okay… but you know theoretical physics is pretty woo woo and maybe not entirely solid ground as far as road maps go? The key for me is to seep so deeply into the ideas that I fall right through them, but the subtle guiding… the suggestion of hidden levels of order… polarizes my thoughts into a positive buoyancy… and all that remains is a clear and non-local feeling of possibility and aliveness… If you use it like that, I say go for it! 🙂
Michael
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Aha. A scientific Koan. Zen masters of the world would delight in this, as I think a “Scientific Koan” is actually a Koan in itself. A double koan in one post. Time is such an absolutely deliciously impossible thing to my brain, as is space. Just today I was having the atom discussion with children, which turned into tiny little pulses of electricity pretending to be solids, with turned into a possible holographic universe, which then became, Time, as it were. How is there time in a hologram? And of course, I have no idea about any of this, only I like the way it makes my head hic-cup and my heart flutter. I like also what you say about revisiting our most basic assumptions; have been quite startled (and will continue to be), that many of my own basic assumptions were unacknowledged, in the sense that I hadn’t realized I made an assumption at all! To be human, yes, is so much more than just science. I like it!
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Andrea,
You wrote, “I have no idea about any of this, only I like the way it makes my head hic-cup and my heart flutter.” Me, too… That is probably my favorite part. When you encounter a genius in any field, it is the sublime dismantling of the world you once knew, by the discovery of a type of order or connection you would never have dreamed of on your own, that is so delicious. This happens with music, with science, with painting, with anything we look at closely enough (or zoomed out enough) I think.
And yes, our assumptions as beings are so deeply rooted. It seems at times there’s always another layer of silent assuming at work. More rioters of the heart with whom an audience is requested… I would have loved to be a fly on the wall to the discussion of atoms with children… 🙂 Did you skip over the part about the weak nuclear force and how if it wasn’t so busy changing the flavors of the quarks we wouldn’t have stars or organic chemistry?
(I wouldn’t have either…)
(You have to keep a few bullets in your gun for the next lesson…)
Michael
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