Freedom and Time Crystals

How can anyone talk about ‘free will’ when events seem to follow one another in a certain lock step we call causality? “Everything has a cause; actions have consequences.” How can anyone be free in a world where the course of events is determined by inexorable laws (aka physics)?

This question was, in my view, conclusively settled forever ago, i.e. back in the 20th century. A French novelist, Marcel Proust, a German scientist, Werner Heisenberg, a French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, and a Butterfly from Borneo each made an essential contribution to the solution.

Heisenberg demonstrated that the world is not ‘determined’ after all. A system can only be deterministic if every element has precise values, e.g. position and momentum, at each moment of time (T): “Where am I and where am I going?”

This assumption seemed too obvious to question in the context of Newton’s world, but Heisenberg proved that it cannot be the case in any world governed by Quantum Mechanics. The more precise the position of an entity, the less precise its momentum…and vice versa. Therefore, determinism is incompatible with Being as we know it.

But there is an even deeper problem. Being is Process and Process requires multiplicity. To quote Buckminster Fuller, “The universe is plural and at minimum two.” If the universe were determined then the universe would function as a single entity, which means it could not act (or be). Determinism (like quiet Laplace) is just nihilism all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Enter Jean-Paul Sartre with a brand new model of freedom. Well, not that new! Turns out, consciously or not, Sartre was channeling Pope Leo XIII. Freedom is absolute! What we do is neither caused nor even influenced by anything else. In the language of the Scholastics, every human event is sui generis and causa sui, i.e. a manifestation of perfect freedom. 

Sartre: “Man is free. Man is freedom…… Man is nothing other than his own projects… There is no difference between free being – being as a project, being as existence choosing its own essence – and absolute being… Life is nothing until it is lived, it is we who give it meaning, and value is nothing more than the meaning we give it.” (Existentialism is a Humanism)

Every agent (e.g. me) is free to do anything at any time and my trying to ‘explain’ my actions based on something in my past is classic bad faith: “I was overserved, poorly parented, born posh.” I might just as well say, “The devil made me do it.” In fact, I did it and I did it freely. I am totally responsible. 

But if I am totally free, why then can’t I leap tall buildings in a single bound? Well, I’m welcome to try. Neither my age, nor my weight, nor the pesky force of gravity compromises my freedom. But my efficacy? That’s another story.

Say I decide to go to Los Angeles; can’t imagine why I would, but I’m totally free to do so. But that does not guarantee that I will actually arrive in LA. How far away am I? How mobile am I? What modes of transport are available to me? Can I afford a ticket? It goes on…

Chances are, I won’t be going to Los Angeles any time soon, which is fine by me, but that’s not because I’m not free to do so. I am totally free, but I can only exercise that freedom in the context of facticity, i.e. physical limitations imposed by the external, material world.

We are free to choose to do anything we wish; and we are free to try, but our ability to accomplish our goal may be externally constrained. I cannot realize my dream of playing basketball for the Boston Celtics, but I am perfectly free to show up at team headquarters and request a tryout.

Enter Butterfly! It flaps its wings and a tornado ravages Chicago. No flap, no tornado…maybe. Fact is, the tornado in Chicago is the result of everything that has ever happened anywhere in its rearward light cone. One less flap may mean one less tornado…or not; on the other hand, nuclear war might have no impact on today’s weather. That’s chaos for you!

This is not ‘the three body problem’, it’s the ‘every body problem’. Everything causes everything else, so nothing causes anything. No wonder we’re all crazy! Welcome to Cloud Coo-Coo Land. 

In Marxist terminology, what we actually do is alienated from what we intend. In Christian terminology, “What I wish I do not do and what I do I do not wish.” (Romans 7: 19) Colloquially, “There’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.”

A team of scientists headed by Leo Joon Il Moon (Nature Physics, October 14, 2025) has discovered a new phase of matter, Rondeau Time Crystals, named for the musical figure known as a round. 

A Time Crystal is a pattern that repeats in time rather than in space. Rondeau Time Crystal is a special class of Time Crystal consisting of just 3 ‘states’ that recycle indefinitely through time: 

• An atemporal Alpha state that is perfectly ordered (zero entropy);

• An Omega state, also atemporal, also entropy free, structurally identical to Alpha but phenomenally different. In a simple example, the elements in Omega may be the reciprocals of those same elements in Alpha; in any event they are related to the Alpha state deterministically.

• A temporal state we’ll call Delta that bridges Alpha and Omega. 

What is ground breaking, and mind boggling, about this…and what makes it relevant to our topic (Freedom)…is that the Delta state is chaotic. To paraphrase Stephen Hawking, ‘It’s butterflies all the way down’.

Oddly, this model corresponds perfectly with Sartre’s. The absolutely undetermined ‘freedom’ that exists in the Delta state is bookended by two perfectly ordered templates. Nothing in the Alpha or Omega states causes, influences, or in any way constricts what happens in Delta. Likewise, nothing that happens ‘on the Delta’ impacts the structure of Alpha or Omega. Yet Alpha causes Omega through the medium of Delta.

How can this be so? Delta is chaotic, but it does have an underlying topology, ‘the shape of things to come’, which is the relationship between Alpha and Omega. Delta evolves chaotically but only in the context of Alpha and Omega. The topology of Delta corresponds to Sartre’s facticity. Freedom is absolute within the parameters imposed by the topology of the cosmos.

Let’s be clear. No event in Delta is caused by Alpha, Omega, or the topology that connects them. To reiterate, every event in Delta is sui generis and causa sui. What is guaranteed is Omega. Someway, somehow, some day, the chaos of Delta will yield up the order of Omega… but the how and when of it are unknowable. Like the Second Coming of Christ, it might be a long wait. 

It is the topology of the phenomenal world that prevents me from leaping over mountains. Likewise, it is the topology of the noumenal world that assures me that Omega will ultimately emerge from Delta. 

Critics will say that the notion of a vectored topology is unacceptably prescriptive (or restrictive or proscriptive).

But that is so only to the extent that you find my 5’ 9” height and my 70+ years of age to be ‘unacceptable’ limitations on my goal of playing professional basketball.

In fact, there is no freedom without facticity, no Delta without Alpha and Omega. Implicit in the notion of ‘freedom’ are the consequences of its absence. Without topology, freedom would be anarchy and ‘free will’ would be nothing more than an accidental sequence of random, disconnected events.  

Sartre makes that point clearly by associating freedom with negation. He even calls the agency Le Neant. British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead also argues that novelty (i.e. a unique actual entity or event) begins with a critical assessment of the Actual World, i.e. things as they are, the status quo ante. 

Concrescence starts with a rejection of that Actual World in the  active pursuit (‘project’) of the Eternal Values (Beauty, Truth, Justice) that constitute the essence of Alpha and Omega. These Values are Being itself and so they constitute the topology of Delta, permitting the emergence of Order in an otherwise chaotic medium.

Moon et al. describe the immanence of Alpha/Omega in Delta as ‘fine tuning’. Think radio. The ‘tuner’ enables the set to unscramble the chaotic EM spectrum revealing islands of order, i.e. signals, limited in space, time and quality, by noise, i.e. entropy.

These islands do not take from or add to their chaotic medium; their existence is ephemeral but nonetheless significant. They constitute the world as we know it. Which of course makes Shakespeare the greatest of all philosophers:

“Our revels now are ended. These, our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air; and—like the baseless fabric of this vision— the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on…” (The Tempest) 

You and I and everything we know will ‘melt into thin air…dissolve and…leave not a rack behind’. We are the image and likeness of Alpha and Omega in Delta.

And now, at last, it’s time for  Proust. (Did you forget or have you been waiting patiently?) In Remembrance of Things Past, he demonstrates that time and place are epiphenomenal. Pattern (Buber’s ‘relationship’) is substructural. “At the foundation is the Logos.” (John 1: 1) 

When Proust experiences the same pattern of sensations in France that he had previously experienced in Italy, he is instantly co-located, obliterating space and time. There is one event, bilocated in time and space.

Odd? Not at all! It’s the norm. Think of ‘entangled’ particles (John Bell).

Now, when the ‘image’ that we are in Delta, resonates with the Eternal Values immanent in Alpha and Omega, we are instantly co-located in the Garden of Eden (Alpha) and in the Kingdom of Heaven (Omega). This is the meaning of Salvation and Redemption. This is eternal life. 

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States of Mind II: Those Who Go (1911) by Umberto Boccioni portrays travelers departing by train, rendered in fragmented, swirling forms that capture the emotional turbulence of leaving. The sharp diagonals and fractured faces convey both anxiety and anticipation, suggesting movement that is physical, psychological, and existential. Through Futurist dynamism, Boccioni turns the act of departure into a powerful symbol of modern mobility and the uncertain freedom found in moving toward the unknown.