Why Things are the Way Things are

1100 words, 5 minute read

What if Heraclitus’ ever flowing river is in fact a frozen glacier? In Block Universe, we explored the idea that the universe is best imagined as a 4 dimensional ‘block’ where so-called ‘time’ is just another spatial dimension.

The notion of 4 dimensional spacetime has been canonical since Einstein but most physicists still treat time differently from the other dimensions. Stephen Hawking, for example, measured time using so-called ‘imaginary (vs. real) numbers’ (numbers that include the square root of -1 as a factor). In the Block Universe (BU) there is no time…and therefore no cause and effect, no coming to be, no ceasing to be, because there is no privileged (e.g. vectored) temporal dimension.

What we call ‘the World’ is a cross-section, a slice (or a ‘surface’) of the Block. Unfortunately, like all projections (think Mercator), bisecting the Block distorts the whole, creating the illusion of ‘time’. On the other hand, each cross-section appears as its own ‘present moment’ within illusory time – a useful fiction for those of us who enjoy ‘experiencing’ the world (as well as just living in it).

Each world-slice uniquely values its elements and orders them in a well-defined (but acausal) web (logos). By stacking slices (present moments) on top of one another, we can simulate a time-like experience.

Think film: Running a sequence of tightly packed frames (24 per second) through a projector creates the impression of ‘dynamically ordered elements’ (aka time); but we know that the film was already a static, finished work, whole and entire, before the reels were ever delivered to the theater.

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Granted for the moment that we inhabit such a Block Universe, it is still necessary to ask, “How is it that things in BU are the way they are and not otherwise? Without becoming and perishing, growth and decay, cause and effect, what determines what is the way it is?”

Three possible answers suggest themselves:

(1)    Immanent Ordering (Passive Voice): Things just are the way they are. To ask ‘why this BU and not some other’ is the same as asking ‘why something rather than nothing’. What is just is and it is the way it is…end of! (Copenhagen Interpretation)

(2)    Transcendent Ordering (Active Voice): Things are the way they are because some transcendent agent (e.g. ‘God’) made them so. Such ‘divine agency’ comes in a variety of flavors:

a.      God sets Global Boundary Conditions and BU crystallizes accordingly (Deism).

b.       God sets Boundary Conditions but ‘intervenes’ at specific nodes (junctures) via grace, miracles, etc. (Providence)

c.       Everything that happens happens according to God’s explicit will. (Occasionalism)

(3)    Mutual Ordering (Middle Voice): Within BU, ‘actual entities’ (aka events)  engage in an atemporal process of mutual adjustment.

This third option requires elucidation! We associate process with sequence and sequence with time, but we know that processes can and do occur outside of time. A few examples should suffice to prove the concept:

(1)    Physicist Richard Feynman showed that certain quantum reactions follow no uniform temporal order. (Feynman Diagrams)

(2)    Time crystals are processes that occur outside of time.

(3)    The behavior of entangled quanta is atemporal but coordinated, even across vast distances.

(4)    According to mathematician-philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, the process of concrescence that constitutes actual entities (events) is always atemporal. Time is something that may happen between events but never within events themselves. 

In Mutual Ordering an astronomical number of events modify one another, perpetually and reciprocally. Every two events engage, at least potentially, even trivially, in a process of mutual modification, an iterative process that supports the illusion of time within and between ‘chips off of the old Block’ (slices). But in the matrix that is Universe, no consistent arrow of time is possible.

At this juncture, you may be thinking, “The author of this article needs some serious help.” Maybe so! “Causality is fundamental. I punch you in the nose and you bleed.” But ‘causality’ turns out to be a self-defeating proposition.

Consider: We say that A causes B. Ok, but then we eliminate B. But A causes B so if there’s no B, there must be no A or, same thing, A’ must be different from A. Therefore, the doctrine of causality leads either to nihilism, or more productively, to teleology: B causes A (at least as much as A causes B).

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As noted by Whitehead (above) two events may follow one another in a time-like order, but within any event, the process of mutual modification is atemporal and reciprocal. We experience mutual modification as a shuttle of causality and teleology. But every event is bidirectionally linked to every other event. While these links may appear causal or teleological, the web itself does not reveal any uniform temporal orientation.

As with entangled quanta (above) a modification of any event entails the modification of every event in the cosmos regardless of their relative positions in some local or artificial (temporal) ordering.

Sidebar: “The modification of every event in the cosmos” includes the recursive self-modification of the modifying event itself. This is Jesus’ meaning: “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “Do unto others as you would have done unto you” – because in important ways your neighbor is yourself and whatever you do you do to yourself (middle voice, above). It is also the meaning of the modern evangelists, John and Paul: “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.” And of course, “Karma is a female dog.”

While two events within BU may exhibit a temporal relationship, the web of such relationships, the Universe, exhibits none such. Universe is atemporal. In fact, Universe constitutes a single ‘meta-event’ encompassing, and communicating with, every one of its ‘sub-event’ elements.

So as with all events (above), the meta-event known as ‘universe’ is internally atemporal. And since by definition it has no ‘foreign (external) relations’ (no State Department), it is externally atemporal as well.

Bottom line: Things are the way they are for reasons offered above (take your pick); but anyway you ‘slice’ it, time is at best a local illusion.