[Phys-l] Deep Metaphysical Implications or Hubris???

[Spinozalens@aol.com]

> From an ongoing discussion on another list. Perhaps this might be of  
interest here. 
 
 

In  response to "what does topologically prior to t" mean:

This is a link  to posts by Sinclair, the physicist who co-wrote the 
Blackwell volume and  specifically the Kalam arguments.  There is discussion re: 
topological  vs. temporal existence of various things including God and 
quantum gravity  towards the bottom, though I would read through this in its 
entirety to see  how they respond to objections.  Reading this may help address 
objections  that have already been responded to by either Sinclair or  Craig.

http://rfforum.websitetoolbox.com/post/show_single_post?pid=27780645&postcou
nt=36

and  general posts by  Sinclair:
http://rfforum.websitetoolbox.com/search?searchid=8733582&showas=post&userid
=870845




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Smith makes the obvious point that it's not logically consistent to talk  
about there being a time before time existed. Language of emergence of time  
always falls into this semantic trap. We can't help it, we are "beings in 
time"  and our brains and our language can only form conceptions in terms of 
time  evolution. But the question of time, it's apparent non existence in 
Quantum  gravity, and the apparent illusionary nature of time evolution in 
relatively  which gives us the block Universe paradigm isn't going to go away in 
my  opinion. Carroll tries to model time as ever present and eternal but I 
think his  efforts fail. 
 
One of the things that attracted me to the ideas in Vic's book "Timeless  
Reality, Symmetry, Simplicity, and Multiple Universes" was that Vic offers us 
a  way to think about "timeless reality" that doesn't cause our thought 
processes  to spiral into the ground. In Vic book, he models timelessness as a 
kind of  superposition of time reversed states. I think this is very 
helpful. I  related how one might think of this in terms of a simple toy model 
which is  really just a helpful mathematical cartoon, nothing more, but I think 
it helps  us get our brain around this question. 
 
Here it us again.
 
Emergence of Time 
 
 
.  There is a toy  model I use which illustrates, I think, how we can 
"imagine" time emerging from  a timeless Universe. It's inspiration is Vic's 
"Timeless Universe" though all  the blame here is mine.  
In QM time evolution  is represented by the rotation of the state vector. 
But in the Hawking Hartle  wave function we can write as a toy model  
Y_HH= (1/2)* {Y (+CPT)  +Y (-CPT)} = (1/2)*(exp [-i*theta] +exp [i*theta])  
Here we have no  rotation hence this is a timeless wave function. But we 
can decompose this as   
Y (+CPT) = {1/(x+2)}*  exp [i*theta] + {(x+1)/(x+2)*exp [-i*theta]  
Where  time emerges as x grows 
(in the  negative rotation direction)  
and   
Y (-CPT)  = {1/(x+2}* exp [-i*theta] + {(x+1)/(x+2)*exp [i*theta]   
Where time emerges as  x grows 
(in the  positive rotation direction, which is time reversed from the 
Y(+CPT) wave  function)  
This is crude but  perhaps makes it easier to think about emergent time. 
Smith is quite right  in his criticism of the language physicist use to 
describe the emergence of  time. But Hawking in his best seller book "A Brief 
History of Time" seems to  describe timeless reality in a way that makes 
sense and in my view escapes  Smith's critical comments. In my opinion, it's too 
bad that Smith doesn't take  the leap that Hawking does, but it's 
understandable. Like fish in water we  are beings in time, we can't conceptualize 
timelessness. Hawking  writes: 
"If Euclidean space  time stretches back to infinite imaginary time, or 
else starts at a singularity  in imaginary time, we have the same problem as in 
the classical theory of  specifying the initial state of the Universe. God 
may know how the Universe  began, but we cannot give any particular reason 
for thinking it began one way  rather than the other. On the other hand, the 
Quantum theory of gravity has  opened up a new possibility, in which there 
would be no boundary to space time  and so there be no need to specify the 
behavior at the boundary, There would be  no singularities at which the laws 
of physics broke down, and no edge of  space-time at which one would have to 
appeal to God or some new law to set the  boundary conditions for 
space-time. One could say - The boundary condition of  the Universe is that it has no 
boundary-The Universe would be completely self  contained and not effected 
by anything outside itself. It would be neither  created or destroyed, it 
would just BE. " 
End Quote 
Imbedded in the no  boundary model is the BIVERSE, the perfect expression 
of timelessness.  Hawking resisted this idea, he and Hartle mistakably though 
their  Euclidean space time formulation was describing a cycling Universe 
which  reverses the AOT during collapse. It wasn't till the actual 
implication of their  model was pointed out to them by Don Page that Hawking accepted 
the possible  reality of a CPT reversed partner to our Universe.  
Of course, it must be  kept in mind that the physics here may be wrong, in 
part or whole. But I don't  think we will find a way to have common sense 
notion of time (or space) in any  future Quantum theory of gravity. We see 
this in String theory, for example  (though through a glass darkly) because the 
very notion of event is banished in  the string theory formalism. What 
replaces any notion that the Universe is  a set of events is a topological 
structure of world sheets. Likewise, in  describing the behavior of fundamental 
particles, as pointed out in Vic's book  "Timeless Reality," we may think of 
them as static four space structures  which emerge as the time evolution of 
the particle's history by the coarse  graining of information. Obviously if 
this s itrue, this has enormous  metaphysical implications. Is physics 
really giving us deep and counter  intuitive insights into the foundation of 
reality or is this just  terrible Hubris. No doubt opinions will always differ 
on the answer to this  question.  
Bob Zannelli