doug (08/01/82)
Some more from Davies on the "passage of time": "It is one of the most perplexing puzzles in physics that the elementary conscious experience of time - the flow or motion of the present moment - is absent from the physicist's description of the objective world. Whether this is due to a deficiency in the framework of physics, which pays scant attention to the role of the conscious mind in the universe, or whether it is because the passage of time is an illusion, is by no means clear. Nevertheless, because of this profound awareness of time by human beings, the acts of violence performed on our intuitive picture of time by modern theories such as relativity ar often far more disturbing than the similar savagery carried out on space. Deep philosophical issues and paradoxes invade temporal speculation, cutting across issues such as freewill and death. The interaction of the physical world of the scientist and the metaphysical world of our minds leads to some strange and uneasy conflicts." And some more, if you are interested: (capital letters are mine) "In chapter 1 a sharp qualitative distinction was drawn between the human perception of space and that of time. The most elementary experience of time is that of *uni-directional activity*, sometimes thought of as a flux or flow *of* time, sometimes as a movement of conscious awareness *in* or *through* time. There is no comparable experience for space. Yet the mathematical developments of Newtonian mechanics, Maxwellian electrodynamics, special and general relativity and quantum theory have only emphasized in varying degrees the similarity in structure between space and time. THE WORLD OF RELATIVITY IS DESCRIBED BY A STATIC FOUR- DIMENSIONAL MAP. Thus, the time which enters into the equations of theoretical physics seems to lack that essential quality of human psychological time. In chapter 7 this strange fact will be examined in detail, and some of the arguments which have been advanced in favour of the startling proposal to relegate the flow of time to the status of a PSYCHOLOGICAL ILLUSION reviewed." I for one can't wait to get to chapter 7! Doug Lerner doug@uwisc