bte (08/01/82)
I am really not sure what to think about all this discussion about Angels Dancing on Pins, Time as a Fourth Dimension, and Free Will vs Determinism. I will try to make a few points that I may have already (God alone knows what that means) made. 1. Time is currently viewed as a dimension, in that it has all the qualities of a spatial dimension. It is not however,the fourth dimension in a linear sense; that is, Time is *not* to Space as Up is to Flatland, if that makes it any clearer. However, in all quantum mechanics, it is treated as a spatial dimension to be traveled along. In fact, P Dirac's major contribution to quantum mech was the revised Schroedinger Wave Equation, which makes the spatial and temporal dimensions equivalent. So, yes, you can view the Universe as a 4-dimensional graph (with axes of up-down, left-right, forward-backwards, and past-future) of events (an event is basicly the use of energy over a given time, an action). 2. To ask the Question, Does the Future Already Exist?, is to contradict terms. The words "exist" and "already" imply something having a state of being at the space-time coordinate at which the the question is asked. "Future" implies a series of events occurring at STC's with a time value higher than the one in which the question was asked. So, therefore, the Future does not Exist until it happens (I'm not sure what that means.) 3. However, this question asks a deeper one: Is there a time-space system existent which allows observation of ours? If so, what happens? I.e., can you hop in a time machine, travel to the future, get infor- mation, travel back, and use this information to change what you saw? I don't know. Flame about it on your own, as I have no definite knowledge on the subject. 4. As for Angels Dancing, the answer is definitely maybe. And thank you, Charles Wetherell, for explaining the Angels Dancing on Pin Heads question to us. I really did not know that it ever was a serious quest- ion, meriting any thought at all. Until Next Time, Blackhand the Evil (Kevin Maroney) unc!bte