what was spacetime like before we came along?
(continues a discussion with tiresias2)
The universe has no inherent time scale. It contains all possible time scales. There are processes that happen once every 200 million years-- like the Sun's orbit around the center of the Milky Way. And then there are processes that happen millions of times a second-- like the vibration of quartz. There are processes happening at all other timescales (spacetime scales, really) in between and beyond these two arbitrary scales I've picked.
So the universe is vibrating at all different possible frequencies; it is a pulsating electromagnetic swarm. Unless we choose a scale, it is unintelligible. If you choose a time scale where you are able to experience the vibration of quartz, then the rotation of the galaxy becomes undetectable (except as an abstraction); and vice versa: slow yourself down enough to notice the rotation of the galaxy, and quartz vibrations become too fast to grasp psychologically. (analogously, when we try to study the universe at the quantum scale, none of it makes sense; spacetime seems to "break down" and particles are in many places at the same time; and when we try to study the universe at its own scale, the mind boggles, because the universe is an already infinitely vast space which nevertheless continues to expand).
The very fact of having a human body situates us squarely within a timescale spectrum, so we can begin making sense of the world starting from this outpost. Psychologically we can grasp durations from a sixtieth of a second to, say, 120 years. Most of use have no concept of what a thousand years would be like as a duration, not to mention 200 million. (Though we can see light of wavelengths from 700 to 400 nanometers, the vibration of light is experienced as a color, and not as a duration.)
I think this is part of what Kant was getting at when he says space and time are a priori intuitions. Our embodiment imposes a timescale upon the universe which allows it to be intelligible. Of course, since we emerged from the universe, we could also put it as: the universe has imposed on us the general size and duration of our bodies, thus determining at what scale we can begin to make sense of the universe.
Trying to make sense of the universe without a body would be like having a Digital Video Disk of a movie, but no DVD player or TV screen. The player and screen take the linear information encoded as ones and zeroes on the DVD and translate it into a spacetime simulation intelligible to us.
For me, asking whether spacetime existed before consciousness is a bit like asking "did prime numbers exist before we discovered them?" The number of possible mathematical entities and theoretical properties is infinite. But until they are explicitly rendered intelligible, these entities and principles are unmanifest-- like a huge prime number that we have still not bumped into in our incremental search.
One of my questions is: how arbitrary is our spacetime scale? Maybe life can only exist up to, or down to a certain scale-- I'd have a hard time imagining, for instance, a life form the size of a solar system.
Here is an interesting quote on the illusory nature of time, from an article about Godel.
attempts to show how relativity theory can be interpreted as compatible with the indeterminist position of temporal becoming must fail. This depends largely on the denial of a privileged frame of reference in the Special Theory of Relativity--the famous relativisation of simultaneity--for any one here-now will have other here-nows in its future (whether in the same frame of reference or another), thus destroying any possibility of one objective time flow. Literally every moment of time becomes a now and is treated as a point in space on a geometric model.
There is no one objective time flow, but there are many subjective time flows-- one for every conscious observer who has lived, is alive, and will live.
The universe has no inherent time scale. It contains all possible time scales. There are processes that happen once every 200 million years-- like the Sun's orbit around the center of the Milky Way. And then there are processes that happen millions of times a second-- like the vibration of quartz. There are processes happening at all other timescales (spacetime scales, really) in between and beyond these two arbitrary scales I've picked.
So the universe is vibrating at all different possible frequencies; it is a pulsating electromagnetic swarm. Unless we choose a scale, it is unintelligible. If you choose a time scale where you are able to experience the vibration of quartz, then the rotation of the galaxy becomes undetectable (except as an abstraction); and vice versa: slow yourself down enough to notice the rotation of the galaxy, and quartz vibrations become too fast to grasp psychologically. (analogously, when we try to study the universe at the quantum scale, none of it makes sense; spacetime seems to "break down" and particles are in many places at the same time; and when we try to study the universe at its own scale, the mind boggles, because the universe is an already infinitely vast space which nevertheless continues to expand).
The very fact of having a human body situates us squarely within a timescale spectrum, so we can begin making sense of the world starting from this outpost. Psychologically we can grasp durations from a sixtieth of a second to, say, 120 years. Most of use have no concept of what a thousand years would be like as a duration, not to mention 200 million. (Though we can see light of wavelengths from 700 to 400 nanometers, the vibration of light is experienced as a color, and not as a duration.)
I think this is part of what Kant was getting at when he says space and time are a priori intuitions. Our embodiment imposes a timescale upon the universe which allows it to be intelligible. Of course, since we emerged from the universe, we could also put it as: the universe has imposed on us the general size and duration of our bodies, thus determining at what scale we can begin to make sense of the universe.
Trying to make sense of the universe without a body would be like having a Digital Video Disk of a movie, but no DVD player or TV screen. The player and screen take the linear information encoded as ones and zeroes on the DVD and translate it into a spacetime simulation intelligible to us.
For me, asking whether spacetime existed before consciousness is a bit like asking "did prime numbers exist before we discovered them?" The number of possible mathematical entities and theoretical properties is infinite. But until they are explicitly rendered intelligible, these entities and principles are unmanifest-- like a huge prime number that we have still not bumped into in our incremental search.
One of my questions is: how arbitrary is our spacetime scale? Maybe life can only exist up to, or down to a certain scale-- I'd have a hard time imagining, for instance, a life form the size of a solar system.
Here is an interesting quote on the illusory nature of time, from an article about Godel.
attempts to show how relativity theory can be interpreted as compatible with the indeterminist position of temporal becoming must fail. This depends largely on the denial of a privileged frame of reference in the Special Theory of Relativity--the famous relativisation of simultaneity--for any one here-now will have other here-nows in its future (whether in the same frame of reference or another), thus destroying any possibility of one objective time flow. Literally every moment of time becomes a now and is treated as a point in space on a geometric model.
There is no one objective time flow, but there are many subjective time flows-- one for every conscious observer who has lived, is alive, and will live.