Revised August 12, 2019. Original draft September 9, 2016
First of
all, I’m not a scientist. I have no
letters after my name or any scientific training, except my own layman’s study
in mysteries of science and math that have always intrigued me. My best friend knows me as a person whose
mind seems to never rest but I ponder the imponderable all the time. My daughter says that I am always seeking
answers to things that other people don’t even think of the question. I don’t think of myself as a brilliant
person, though my IQ is above average I suppose. I am 67 years old, have
achieved a measure of success as a builder and developer and hotelier. And I have always had a tendency towards
skepticism and not taking the status quo as being fact. All that being said, I’m not some
crackpot that just jumped out of an H.G. Wells novel, and I’ve never believed
in Ouija boards, etc. I am just a man
with an idea here, that I think merits serious consideration by others who are
more learned than myself.
The idea
that has puzzled me for a long time is the limitations posed on me personally,
and science collectively, of Time.
However, in the past year, I came to the conclusion that perhaps much of
what I believe about Time is incorrect.
My father always told me as a child that it wasn’t what you know that
gets you in trouble but what you know that’s wrong that gets you hurt. I’ve read books on Space and Time. I remember from college and high school math
and science classes the manner in which time was factored into equations. But everything I have been taught about time
is that time is “some thing”.
What is a
thing? Things have matter. Things have dimensions. Things have mass. Things have definition. Things are describable. I suppose, in a sense, things can be
touched. While some might say that space
cannot be touched, I’d have to disagree.
If I were an astronaut on a space walk outside of ISS I could reach my
hand into space and my hand would be there in space. It would be “at” a particular point in
space, and though it would have no sensation, I would still be “touching”. The same could be said for hydrogen. Gas is a thing. Though it would be without sensation, I
could still put my hand into a container of hydrogen and I would be “touching”
the gas. I can touch a wall. I can touch a car door. I can even touch a ruler. However, I cannot touch a foot (12
inches). I cannot touch a meter. I cannot touch an inch. Nor can I touch a minute or a moment or an
hour.
A foot or a
meter or an inch can be measured, with a ruler. And a minute can be measured with a stop
watch. But that’s all a minute
is. And it is a called a minute just
because someone calculated how long it took for the earth to go around the sun
and divided that by 24 and divided that by 60 and they called that a
minute. It is just a passing between
one point in the plane of existence to another point in that same plane of
existence. And I offer that description
of points on the same plane, because that is the way we imagine life and time
goes on, in a linear time line fashion.
What if it doesn’t necessarily have to though?
I have told
my friend that only things or physical conditions can limit
us. I can sit in my living room and not
be able to throw a rock from my chair and hit my neighbor’s house. In that case, the three walls of my three
rooms, plus the brick exterior my house are certainly sufficient resistance to
render that feat impossible. I could
however overcome the resistance of those walls, and bricks, and even distance
with a 44 caliber hand gun and bullet.
Those mechanical advantages would help me overcome the physical
limitations of the “things” that stand between my neighbor and myself.
I could put
a pair of handcuffs on my wrists behind my back and I’d certainly be unable to
brush my teeth. Certainly, the man I am
still has the capacity within myself to brush my teeth, but a thing has made limited
my possibilities.
In his
interesting, and fun to read book How to
think like Einstein, by Daniel Smith, the author makes the point that one
thing that distinguished Einstein from others was that he believed if you
wanted to do something that others thought impossible, you should start with
the assumption that it is possible and then work the problem backwards from the
objective. So in this example I might
say, “I can brush my teeth with my wrists in handcuffs behind my back”. And then design a remote control, that could
be held behind my back, and keyed from memory, for my robot to brush my teeth
for me, and thereby overcome even the limitations of handcuffs. My point is still the same. The “thingness” is what meant I could not do
it and I was forced to find a way around the limitation of the “thing”.
Since things
have all of the characteristics I described above, then I can only reason that
Time is NOT a thing any more than a centimeter is a thing. Time and a centimeter are measureable. Time and a centimeter are A measure. Time does not have mass. It cannot be touched. I can’t ask you to bring me a pound of time
or a pound of meter.
I theorize
then that only things or the properties of things, can cause limits (The lack
of oxygen in my air will cause me to die.
It’s not negative-oxygen killed me, but the properties of my physical
body that demand oxygen). Certainly
gravity can limit me. Wind can limit
me. Water can limit me. The walls of my home can limit me. Handcuffs can limit me. But can a thought limit me? I say no.
Can a theory limit me? I say
no. Can a happy smile limit me? I say no.
Can a centimeter limit me? I say
no. And I say then that there should be
no limitation on me by time, which does not in fact EXIST. Matter and Energy exist. Time does not.
Time is simply
the term we have come
up with for measuring the passing of moments in existence. Just as we have come up with the term for an
inch as being the amount of space between the 1 and the 2 or the 9 and the 10
on a ruler. We can point to what 1 inch
of a piece of wood is. But we’d not be
describing “inch”. We’d be describing
the wood, and that portion of the wood between the 1 and 2 marks. When we hold up a stop watch and start it
when the runner takes off and stop it when the runner crosses the finish line,
we’re not looking down at stop watch that reads 42.12.14 seconds and saying “ah
hah. There is the race!”. We’re not even looking at the stop watch and
saying “there. That’s the runners
TIME.” Because the stop watch is only
showing us a reflection of the moments it too the runner to run the race. We’re just pointing to the number on the
stop watch and saying these numbers are the measurement, or record of the race.
I’m not sure
what learned men could do with this idea in science if they would for a moment
go back to all the myriad of equations that science uses that factor in time,
and just take that out. I’m only suggesting
that they try. I’m not speaking of time
used as a factor or variable of a required measurement. For instance, there are certain physical
conditions by which the measurement of time is necessary to complete another
action. i.e. You cannot write a mathematical equation for
boiling an egg without a factor of time. If a rocket ship only will go 100,000
km then time is a factor in determining how long it would take to reach a
destination.
I wonder
though why can’t we imagine what might be possible in certain experiments if
somehow time was not limiting to us in a linear, forward direction? Stephen Hawking has said that he believes
that at some point in the future, the universe will collapse back within itself
and all will be reversed. As a man with
more than a few regrets in my life, I look often at the figurative broken
glasses on the floor of my life and long for the day, and even imagine in my
mind, when the broken glass will reverse course and go back and up onto the
piano and be restored. Science (so far) says this is impossible because it
considers time a thing and that thing only moves forward. Physics though tells me that if I can write
out the breaking of the glass in a mathematic expression that I need only
reverse the equation to reverse the results. Maybe, the reason physics has not given
me a way to restore my broken glass is because physics has told me that time is
a limitation. I am imagining that it is
not.
In
conclusion, and at the risk now of sounding like a crackpot, I would suggest
for some learned consideration that maybe H.G. Wells was half right in his idea
about time travel. Where his traveler
made a machine that took him first backward, and then forward in time, and then
ultimately back, maybe the whimsical part of that is that it overlooks that
man’s body is a thing, and our body does act as a limiting factor to certain
things.
We cannot go back in age. We cannot go back to being a baby and into
our mother’s womb. Nor (at our present
physical condition) do we have the ability to flap our appendages fast enough
nor have the mass or feathers, to produce the lift required to fly as a bird.
But maybe there is a part of man that is without
limitations. And if time is simply a
measurement of points on a plane of existence, perhaps it is possible to
freely, outside the body, go from one point on that plane to another except not
always forward? As I said in the
beginning of this paper, I am not a scientist.
And I’ve only recently learned that scientific “purists” deny that there
is anything spiritual about man, but that mankind is simply biologic and a
product of some evolutionary process that made us simply more advanced goo and
gob than a lizard. I guess those same
purists must say that emotions are illusory? I don’t know. So I suppose for those that would think me
just an organic biologic, accumulation of proteins and waters, they would not
be able to step outside their orthodoxy to consider my own experience. But I learned many years ago, that a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.
And in my own life experience, some (not myself) would say that I have been gifted with an extra sense of being included in a conversations or experiences, in other places other than my physical location. The easiest example is in my continued experience of calling someone to confirm something that they had just been thinking or speaking with another about. I often times hurt emotionally when I am “knowing” that someone is saying some about me unflattering, even to the point of seeing in my mind the people having the conversation. So what is that? Half of Wellsian time travel? Am I moving back and forth between points on a level and present time plane? If that is possible, why wouldn’t it be possible for someone to go backward to a point or forward even?
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