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Anne Dalke's picture

the loaf of space/time

I very much enjoyed our discussion yesterday about Properties of Light, and was particularly struck-and-intrigued by our exploration of time, no-time, the loaf of space-time, etc. Anyone interested in learning more about these matters might want to check out the Symposium on Time that was sponsored here by the Center of Science in Society in Spring 2003; see in particular the opening talk, by Cheryl Chen, on The Philosophy of Time, which was where (hm--when?) I first learned about the "block universe" view:

"Physicists prefer to think of time as laid out in its entirety - a timescape, analogous to a landscape - with all past and future events located there together ... Completely absent from this description of nature is anything that singles out a privileged special moment as the present or any process that would systematically turn future events into the present, then past, events. In short, the time of the physicist does not pass or flow." --Paul Davies, "That Mysterious Flow"

Not unrelatedly: this morning's Science Times has a piece called "Time in the Animal Mind," which seems related to the probings by Rebecca and Elizabeth, last week, about the problematics of limiting agency to human beings.

I remembered, too, A Conversation About "How To Get Through the Veil"
in which I participated a number of years ago, which also seemed relevant--

with continued pleasure in our shared explorings--

Anne

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