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de Steensplinter — Geology and a cosmology of the obvious

10.2 cosmology

notes
17 This now spans a length of time,
       as in: nowadays.
18 See Glover, ed., National Geographic
        Encyclopedia of Space, 2004.
19 Rg Veda, book X, hymn 129.
        For author's translation in Dutch,
        see H.J. Mac Gillavry, Volle Middernacht,
        gedachten over de meestergraad,
        Steensplinter, 2004, page 7.
20 Scientific American, september 2004,
        special issue, page 72,
George Musser:
"A separate approach to hidden variables also
relies on dimensional tomfoolery - but in this case occurring in time.
Various physicists and philosophers have mused that quantum mechanics seems odd because we assume that only the past affects the present. What if the future did, too? Then the probabilistic qualities of quantum theory could merely reflect our own ignorance of what is to come.
This notion has been honed over the past decade by Mark Hadley of the University of Warwick in England. He points out that in general relativity, the future exists as surely as the past does, so it would be quite natural for both to affect the present. "The observation that will be carried out in the future is one of the hidden variables, " Hadley says."

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(website version 2.30 - august 2007)

cosmology   [continued]

growing universe
     As processes follow upon processes,
     shoving the precense-now¹⁷ outward
     the universe - past plus present - extends ever
     further and further outward
     (that it also expands follows from the Hubble data).

growth of time
     As processes follow upon processes,
     they add increments of time.
     As a consequence time progresses and grows.

irreversible direction of time
     Constructive processes can only
     change the records left by previous processes,
     or add to them.
     Thus time is directional, not reversible.

the dimension of time
     is not to be regarded
     as an external Cartesian line of reference,
     but as a substantial element of the framework of the world.
     On close inspection it is seen to be:
     a diffuse element, all-pervading (past and present)- not localized,
     substantial - not abstract like the notion space,
     real - not imaginary,
     outward directed.

     Together with the three shape-dimensions,
     that are also real, outward directed and substantial,
     - so that they can be distorted in relativity,¹⁸
     they constitute this framework:
          like the instruments of a string quartet
          (3 violins and a basso-continuo)
          where the music is supplied by the processes.

four dimensions
     As these four dimensions advance together
     they can mutually and reciprocally
     check their growth and extension against each other.

    in short:

the past is past
     The past manifests itself
     by the presence of preserved material and mental records,
     left by past processes
     and can be analyzed because of the information
     contained in these records.

the present
     - i.e. the 4-D universe now ¹⁹-
     is a world of multiple and successive processes,
     that shove this present outward,
     leaving the ever-growing past behind it.

the future does not exist

     Question:
     "What is there in front of the advancing present ?"
     The answer can only be:
     the same as that wherein the `Big Bang' exploded:
     the realm of non-existence, or not-yet-existence,
     about which a 3.500 years old Veda hymn ²⁰ says:
     "there was not nothing then, nor was there anything that was".

`flow' of time
     As I, somewhere in this universe now, get older and older,
     I do less and less in the same length of time,
     so that time seems to go faster and faster.
     While processes are things going on in a certain amount of time,
     personal time is the amount of time I need to do things.

end of time
     When somewhere in the `universe now' nothing happens,
     it remains part of the present
     until it becomes past, together with all the rest.

A present where no processes take place remains the present
     When there will be no more processes anywhere,
     the universe will cease to grow
     and time will stop.

     A cosmology in which past and future
     are thought to be interchangeable
     is an example of misplaced abstraction. ²⁰

H.J. Mac Gillavry