rodolf (08/01/82)
I think that the best analogy I've seen of time is that of a series of cross-connected rivers. Given no outside interference, it will flow in a predetermined path. However, this is not to say there are not other paths. The point is, we will never know if there are other paths until we reach a point where we *can* travel backwards. For instance there may be an infinite number of possibilities right now: I finish this article and send it off, or I decide it is worthless and hit DEL, or I am interrupted and never finish it, or the system dies and with it my article... So I guess the point that I am trying to make is that while the paths are predetermined (although varied and multiply branched), the choice of which we take is, whether we do it consciously or not, ours. Thus if someone did make it back in time and managed to change a minor event (my ancenstor was killed by a runaway horse carriage 3 days before he would have died a natural death) it may not change the course of the future. Yet if another person stopped Booth from killing Lincoln, the course of time would change. The time in which we now live might become an eddy, whereas the mainstream might be a time where the South (or North) was vastly different than what we know of it today. Rick Lindsley uwvax!rodolf