Number 86 : May 1997 |
Dear Theo,
Commensal is such an awful name. Sophie’s Journal or, to give it more teeth, Sophie’s Bite or for similar reasons Minder or Mind Out as a play on Time Out, "far out" or "look out" !
Roger Farnworth
Roger - I think references to Sophie’s World (after all, not one of the world’s best books) are a bit too topical. Same goes for the other suggestions, but I agree that "Commensal" leaves much to be desired. Any other suggestions (anybody ?).
Theo
13th April I997 : Roger Farnworth
REPLY TO JONATHAN YOUNG - THE NATURE OF TIME - C85
Jonathan Young has suggested that time could be "an infinite line along which consciousness passes", so all past and future time and its contents exist constantly waiting for us to walk by and perceive it. This would have strange consequences. All kettles boiled in the past would still be boiling - what a colossal waste of energy. The big bang and the final death of the universe would be going on at the same time now and always.
To avoid such absurdities we must accept that we live only in the breaking wave of the present. Past and future are ideas which may or may not describe a situation to which the word "present" may be momentarily applicable. The word "present" can never again be applied to the past and so it cannot be sensed and therefore cannot be known and so there could be no possible reason to say it exists.
It is understandable that people are unwilling to accept that the past has vanished utterly seeing that 99.9% of our life and loves have vanished with it. That is why meditation is so helpful in that it enables us to enjoy surfing this breaking wave of the present.
Roger Farnworth
Roger - to say the whole of space-time "exists" doesn’t mean all events in it are continually happening. However, your point on energy considerations is interesting. Presumably, if I travel back in time & meet my former self, I have to create another copy of myself, which by Einstein’s famous equation is energetically very expensive. The same does not apply for travel into the future, since I’m not left in the present to catch up with a copy of myself in the future. Or maybe not ....
Theo