Whether you want to scoff about deep time or an eternal universe, it’s on topic for the thread.
Whereas solipsism / Last Thursdayism isn’t.
1 Like
It is not any of those you seem to mislead into. It is called honest Realism.
I have read this a few times now and it’s brilliant how the first 2 sections are just for the average person to vision it. But the third section is absolutely fantastic.
It’s the first thing I have read in a long time that makes so much sense.
I believe that to be completely true, it really opens the mind to make you think more.
Genius
1 Like
Material time is the process of asymmetry dissipating. Where there is a difference, it tends toward evenness. That tendency — that directedness — is material time. No intervener. No agreement. Just what differences do when left alone.
When you see two things as different — visible and invisible, still and moving — something makes that difference possible. Call it the capacity for difference. Without it, nothing could be distinguished from anything else.
My question is simple: can that capacity have a limit? Is there a point where difference becomes impossible — where nothing can be distinguished from anything else?
If yes — what is on the other side of that limit? And how do you know it’s there, given that knowing it would require distinguishing it from what’s on this side?
If no — then the capacity for difference has no boundary. No outside. It is unbounded.
The relevance to the beginning of time: if the capacity for difference is unbounded, then perfect stillness — no difference anywhere — cannot be enforced everywhere at once. Something always differs from something else somewhere. That first local difference is the first asymmetry. And the first asymmetry is where time begins.
So the question isn’t abstract. It goes directly to whether time had a beginning — and whether that beginning needed a cause.
This is an attempt to derive matter, space and time from a single primitive — the capacity for distinction. It is not a physics model. It is a philosophical account of why something rather than nothing, why asymmetry rather than stillness, and why the first event needed no cause.
Before explaining what this has to do with the beginning of time, one foundation is needed — P0.
P0. To exist is to be distinguishable from nothing. That distinguishability is a relation — two terms facing each other with a difference between them. And that difference is distinction. Existence, relation and distinction are not three separate things. They are one structure seen from three angles. They arrive together or not at all. Everything that follows rests on this.
P1. The capacity for distinction is the single brute fact. It has no ceiling, no external cause, no boundary. There is no outside from which to limit it — to posit an outside would itself require a distinction between inside and outside, which already uses what it tries to bound. Follows from P0.
P2. Because distinction is unbounded, it cannot prohibit difference. To prohibit difference would require a boundary on what distinctions can exist. There is none. Follows from P1.
P3. Therefore all possible configurations are realised. A configuration is any particular arrangement of distinction — any specific pattern of difference. What cannot be permanently excluded will be realised. In an unbounded system the gap between possible and actual collapses. Follows from P1 and P2.
P4. Every configuration has its opposite. If all configurations exist, their opposites exist too. The net tendency of unbounded distinction is toward cancellation. Follows from P3.
P5. The system tends toward equilibrium. Opposites dissipate, differences level out. Perfect stillness — no asymmetry anywhere, every difference fully levelled, nothing remaining unresolved — is what the system moves toward globally. Follows from P4.
P6. But perfect stillness everywhere simultaneously is impossible. To coordinate perfect stillness at every scale at once would require an outside from which to coordinate. There is no outside. The system is too full to enforce silence everywhere at once. Follows from P1 and P5.
P7. Therefore asymmetry is inevitable locally. The system tends toward zero but cannot achieve it everywhere. Something always remains. Not caused — just what unbounded distinction cannot avoid being locally. Follows from P5 and P6.
P7a. Local asymmetry has a position — it is here rather than there. That positional difference is spatial distinction. Space is what locality looks like when distinction produces multiple positions simultaneously. Follows from P0 and P7.
P8. Asymmetry that persists before fully dissipating is a bubble — stable incomplete levelling, a local pattern that holds before resolving. Each bubble generates a boundary: the limit of what it cannot be. That boundary is a relation of difference. By P0, relation and existence arrive together — the bubble exists because its boundary holds it apart from what surrounds it. Follows from P7.
P9. Each boundary is itself a configuration of distinction, subject to the same conditions. It cannot cancel perfectly at its own scale either. So nesting is inevitable and infinite in both directions — every bubble inside a larger one, every bubble containing smaller ones. No level is more fundamental than another. Follows from P1, P6, P7, and P8.
P10. Energy is distinction in the act of happening — the capacity for distinction at the moment it cannot remain undivided, appearing as difference in the world. It is not a substance. It is what unbounded distinction looks like locally when it shows up as asymmetry rather than remaining potential. Follows from P0, P1, and P7.
P11. Material time is the process of asymmetry dissipating across space. Where asymmetry exists, difference is levelling. That levelling is time. Where there is no asymmetry there is no process, no before or after, no time. Space and time are not two separate things — space is where asymmetry is, time is what asymmetry does. They arise together from the same source. Follows from P5, P7, and P7a.
P12. Matter is asymmetry that has found a stable pattern before fully dissipating — what a bubble looks like from inside it. Follows from P8.
P13. Force is asymmetry pulling toward balance — the tendency toward evenness experienced locally as directedness. Follows from P5 and P7.
P14. Before the first asymmetry there is no time. The capacity for distinction in perfect global equilibrium is timeless — not empty, but full and still. Follows from P11.
P15. The first asymmetry has no cause and needs none. There is no time before it in which a cause could operate. It is simply what unbounded distinction cannot avoid being locally. The circle of existence, distinction and relation has no outside. The first asymmetry is inevitable without being caused. Follows from P6, P14, and P0.
The problem seems to be coming from your misunderstanding time as some existence which started in the past, or comes from somewhere.
Time is just your perception and understanding of the intervals, movements and motions of objects. It is not some physical existence.
I think I said it above or somewhere before, but will say again. Time starts when you start knowing how to read time, remember, and imagine. It is your psychological event or state of understanding on past, present and future.
Nothing in the universe starts or ends. It is all your imagination.
Please read my post above for the answers.
Material time is the interval of an object being existing to the end of the existence. MTBE (Material or Meantime Between Existence) is the abbreviation.
For time to exist, you must measure or read it using your watch or clocks. You could record the start time, if needed, and end time of the intervals of events or movements of objects, or the interval taken to start your journey from home to your shop or school. Time exists in the process, when you perceived it from the measurements or readings.
Are you saying that time requires process, that time starts when something moves?
So, no response from the original creator of this thread.
No, never said that. Time is your perception. Nothing requires time. Things will move without time. Things move via gravity or other energy applied to them.
Time is the quality of intervals on the movement in your mind when you perceived the movement.
1 Like
Time I am considering now is “structural time”. Time isn’t something that started. It’s what’s already operative whenever anything is the case.
Is that close to your understanding of nature of time?
Time not being something that ‘started’ is something said in my first reply, post 4. I’ve not figured out what you mean by all the rest. My view is more in line with that expressed by @FlannelJesus and/or @Mijin1, separating experienced time from time in itself, the latter lacking a preferred moment.
The universe has an age under experienced time, but does not have an actual age, but there’s a coordinate where the people are.
Time is bounded, probably at both ends. There doesn’t seem to be any viable model of a cyclic universe that matches empirical data. Thus there is no need for time to be not bounded.
Somebody else has notice enough to post about it.
Thank you for the clarification. I also think time didn’t start and that there is time in itself and experienced time. You ground time in itself in cosmological time. I’m trying to reach what generates the ordering that cosmological time describes. Maybe that’s a question for another time.
Without motion or process, time has nothing to measure. No process ~ no time. So creation isn’t in time, it creates time. The first movement is the moment time begins.
Time didn’t begin to exist if by begin you mean that time didn’t exist and then exist. That is true since beginning to exist is a change, any change requires time, time is then needed to begin time, this leads to an infinite regress, the infinite regress is logically impossible, therefore time didn’t begin to exist.
The first point of existence was simply the beginning of time, no before, but after!
The first point of spatial existence was probably the beginning of time. But energy might exist on a more fundamental level, from which space and time emerge. Perhaps because virtual particles cause fluctuations in the energy?
The stuff that existed at the beginning was either static or dynamic. Time cannot possibly be an emergent thing from a static entity. By this, I mean that there was a point at which time didn’t exist, and then time emerged from this entity. That is not possible since the emergence of time is a temporal process as well, and for that, you need time. Saying that time emerged from a dynamical entity is problematic as well, since time is required for any dynamism. Therefore, the beginning of existence and time is the same point.