221 BC
or
The Marvelous Life and Inventions of Ionides of Alexandria: Engineer to the King's Army and Consulting Natural Philosopher.
By his friend Joseph ben Kophar
(known in Alexandria as the physician Nikolaos)
(Translated from the original Greek by JSR)
Introduction:
After my father passed away all of his accumulated papers and books came to me. Aside from the remains of his pantry and the contents of his closet this constituted the bulk of my inheritance. I diligently searched through the library for any first editions or other rarities that he might of accidentally acquired (he had neither head nor eye for investments). Other than countless works of classical and popular literature, this yielded little more than some weighty references on ancient history and numerous textbooks from his career as a professor. I then turned my attention to the several trunks of papers. Among the curious and pathetic scraps (he saved every piece of professional and personal correspondence he received) I came across a small bundle of notes on a translation from the ancient Greek that he had been working on. My father had published a few scholarly works, primarily translations from the French and German on classical history, and I knew that he was studied in Greek and Latin as I had once asked for his assistance on a reinterpretation of the mathematical work by Diophantus (I was curious to discover and analyze the passage that had inspired Fermat's famous theorem). But this particular project was unknown to me and appeared from its age to be something that he had put aside unfinished many years before. Looking through this package of notes and drafts I found a letter from a Mr. Toledano whose name I recognized as being an old friend of my father's from his days as a student. My father often mentioned him and I recalled hearing as a child that he was an art dealer who lived in Amsterdam. His friend requested that the next time my father came to Europe on sabbatical (his specialty was "sabbaticals") that he stop over in Amsterdam and take a look at a document that was written in Greek and evidently quite old. Mr Toledano also related that this document came from within his own family and was traditionally believed to have been written by a distant ancestor of his and he was extremely interested to discover anything about the author and what it contained concerning the family history.
Apparently my father did eventually examine this old family heirloom of Mr. Toledano's and made particular remarks about its physical appearance. He noted that it was an actual book consisting of over two hundred separate leaves sewn together and tied with leather straps between two wooden boards. Unusual for an ancient text, but not unknown during the late Hellenistic and Roman times. It seems that one of the Toledanos' ancestors was a physician living in Spain during the thirteenth century and that he had made a special effort to collect as much in the way of medical writings as he could find. When the family left Spain during the fifteenth century, due to the growing intolerance of the church towards Sephardic Jews, they managed to take along this valuable library of medical and pharmacological texts. The library was preserved and added to by succeeding generations (the current Mr. Toledano's father was himself a medical doctor) and in the early twentieth century the collection was donated to a university's medical library. The book in question was withheld because of an inscription in medieval Hebrew pasted to the inside of one of the cover boards. According to Mr. Toledano it stated that the book was the "personal testament of Joseph ben Kophar" and beneath "some mention of the Arabian red berry (or nut)- nothing new (or notable)" and it was concluded from this brief note, assumed to be written by the thirteenth century Toledano, that there was nothing of medical interest within.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
The Notes:
The first page is translated revealing that "Nikolaos" was commanded by the Queen to record the life and achievments of Ionides. The Queen tells him it is for herself alone and that he should write frankly and completely, "as two friends would confide". (He of course keeps a copy for himself.)
It is concluded that Joseph/Nikolaos is probably not an ancestor of the Toledanos.
It is stated that Ionides is presumed lost at sea along with his "most marvelous" invention.
Nikolaos expresses a great sadness that after waiting two years for news of the expedition he will probably never see his friend again. (Last messenger sent out to search had returned with no news from Tartessus.)
The expedition was authorized and financed by the King based on Ionides' claim that his invention would make the navy and merchant fleets of the King the most versatile and powerful in the world. Further, Ionides had claimed that with his invention it would be possible to circumnavigate the earth thereby demonstrating that the theory of a spherical earth was true. (Something that Nikolaos had originally doubted but had been convinced by his logically persuasive friend must in fact be true despite the apparent difficulties of someone actually traveling around the globe to return where they had started).
Biography and background:
Ionides, son of Anaximander of Mytilene, studies the philosophy of Aristotle in Athens but is drawn to Alexandria in order to learn more through the study of nature. He develops skill in engineering and the manufacture of fine instruments (mostly for making astronomical observations, invents a type of astrolabe and possibly a mechanical chronometer). He is conscripted as an engineer (thereby gaining a permanent position in the royal college of librarians/teachers at the King's library in Alexandria). While in the field with the army he meets the army surgeon Joseph ben Kophar. They become friends partly because Ionides is oddly unconcerned (according to Joseph) about being criticized for consulting with a Jew on matters philosophical. They discuss botany, pharmacology, and anatomy at great length. During this expedition Joseph is signally honored by the King for advising that the army's camp be abandoned to the enemy based on his correct conclusion that a sickness that was spreading among the troops was caused by a polluted water supply. The army of Antiochus takes over what they assumed was a superior position but after several days is sufficiently weakened by disease and is easily routed by the King's forces. The King rewards Joseph and bestows upon him the appellation "Nikolaos" (victorious throughout the land).
Nikolaos has a lucrative medical practice after the war. He is frequently consulted by the Queen's Greek physician on questions of prescription and preparation of medicines (this doctor tells him that he trusts him far more than the Egyptian physicians because they are so thoroughly superstitious). Nikolaos for his part though maintains close contact with certain friends who are members of the Egyptian priesthood and frequently consults with Egyptian physicians.
Ionides is considered an eccentric by the other teachers and philosophers associated with the library. Not committed to any particular school of philosophy, he is Aristotelian in his reliance on logic, Epicurean in his rejection of superstition. In metaphysics he often quotes Heraclitus the pre-Socratic (though he rarely discusses religion or metaphysics except to refute the superstitious and ludicrous, and is careful not to insult "Egyptian science {magic}" publicly as he likes to maintain good relations with certain local temples). He says of Heraclitus that his enigmatic writings appear as naive or paradoxical observations of nature but in fact they always point to some profound truth underlying the world as it appears on the surface. Ionides liked most to investigate paradoxes. He calls the Platonists superstitious.
Nikolaos recorded numerous tales of how Ionides helped a wide assortment of people from all classes and races. Most involved private situations and disputes of the local Alexandrians that had some aspect of mystery, or involved a paradox of nature, and that had created a problem for someone. He was irresistibly drawn to strange and difficult questions. Ionides performed at least two significant services for the Queen, one Nikolaos relates involves disproving certain false claims against the Queen (the other is obviously too sensitive even for this confidential record and is only alluded to obliquely). The successful resolution used logical proof followed by a physical demonstration which impressed the King so much that he had Ionides come to the palace for a private audience. Ionides later told his friend that the King had been slightly disappointed that he wasn't interested in administration or military science as such, but decided that Ionides was most valuable where he was, ready at hand for consultation as needed. Ionides was obviously pleased with himself that he had avoided being drafted into a job he would have loathed and had instead had made his position at the library more secure (politics among the Library's philosophers being a threat for someone with few close friends). He was rewarded by the Queen with enough money for him to buy out the owner of a small foundry and blacksmith shop that he had often made use of for manufacturing his instrument designs. He relied on this shop not because the owner was so skilled (a Syrian merchant who used it to manufacture mostly pots and pans) but because of one of the slaves who worked there was from India and had not only superior skill in fine brass work but had confided to Ionides (who had made it clear how much he valued this individual's abilities and that the Syrian was wasting his talent) that he was trying to negotiate his freedom from the Syrian by claiming that he knew secrets of iron manufacture that were unknown to the Greeks. After buying the shop lock, stock, and slaves Ionides remarked that the Syrian had the typical shortsightedness of a merchant; he would have made much more money employing his Indian slave to make cutlery. This slave was made the manager of the shop with the promise of both his freedom and ownership of the place if he kept the business profitable and supplied Ionides with whatever he required for a set period of years, in addition to telling Ionides exactly what kinds of things he could create with "Indian steel".
Nikolaos tells of how Ionides served the Jewish community in Alexandria (at the request of Nikolaos) by solving the "Mystery of the Disappearing Cats". The native Egyptians held the local cats in great reverance but it had been noticed that in one particular quarter of the city the feral cats were disappearing. The Jewish neighborhood was in this quarter and a certain rabble rouser was going around suggesting that the Jews were responsible. After some investigation and a confrontation with a small mob Ionides ingeniously solved the problem by getting the cats back into the neighborhood. Only Nikolaos knew how he did it and Ionides was only credited with "predicting" the return of the cats by a particular day. Nikolaos accused him of being modest when Ionides told him not to tell anyone what he had discovered concerning the cats. Ionides explained that in this case it would be better for all involved if the Egyptians were allowed to believe that the cats had left and returned of their own accord and for their own "mysterious" reasons. Nikolaos reflects that indeed his friend was looking out for him and his family by taking this approach because while Ionides would have preferred to have clearly demonstrated to all that the situation could be explained by the natural behavior of the cats the Egyptians would have resented any conscious manipulation of "their" cats by a Greek philosopher and that would have just fed into the bad feelings toward foreigners in general. The neighborhood was therefore at peace. (Oddly enough Ionides kept a cat in his own house, but said it was to keep the mice from eating his books. He complained that the cat always had fleas and that reminded Nikolaos of something he had read in an Egyptian text that said amongst other things a certain plant was used by the priests of Bubastis to keep the temple cats free of fleas. Ionides practically forced him to find the plant for him and he fashioned a collar for his cat out of it that he renewed every couple of months. He told Nikolaos the cat was grateful.) continued:
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
About Flatland and Time
Time in Flatland
Imagine a 3d pencil passing through 2d space. First you see a black dot (pencil tip), then a brown circle appears around the dot (the sharpened wood), first the circle grows slightly and then abruptly changes into a yellow hexagon (the six flat sides of a yellow pencil). The thin (because it's just paint) yellow hexagon surrounds a thicker brown hexagon (the wood) and in the center a small round black dot (the pencil lead). After a while the hexagon disappears and is replaced by a metal circle surrounding a pink rubber disk (the eraser). Very quickly the metal circle is gone and only the pink disk remains. Shortly afterwards this completely disappears and nothing is left. This whole process took place over a period of TIME.
If the 3d pencil passed completely through the 2d space at a constant rate (not stopping or changing speed) then a 2d person observing this strange object that appeared out of nowhere, changed shape and color, and then disappeared, might be able to think of time as a third dimension and picture in her imagination an overall strange (3d) shape that all at the same time possessed the different changing shapes that appeared as simple 2d objects. In other words, by thinking of time as a third dimension the 2d person can picture what we would think of as simple 3d object, a pencil.
We, as 3d people, can do this if we imagine a changing process that takes place over time as existing simultaneously in all of its different aspects. Imagine yourself as a baby, a child, a young adult, a mature adult, and an old adult. Now imagine yourself as a long, stretched out object that at one end is a baby and at the other end is an old person, all at the same time. This is one way of considering or picturing time as another dimension.
Swiped this from a Yahoo Answers post. BTW, I don't think that 2D space is really like this. It is more like what is described at the end of the last post; the third dimension is "contained" inside the more fundamental 2D space. I think that energy (a photon) is a 2D phenomenon existing (from its own perspective) in 2D space. We perceive it as "painting" what we see as the 3D universe.
Imagine a flat, 2D space with a flat dot (a photon) embedded in it. A 3D observer imposes, or forces, a 3D perspective on this phenomenon and by doing so "sees" the photon stretched across 3D space, but the 3D observer only perceives the end points of the photon and assumes that he is looking at two separate and distinct objects. He takes measurements from the "two" photons and has to conclude that they are mysteriously and inexplicably "entangled" with each other. In reality it is simply the same photon being simultaneously observed from two differing perspectives. Things are simply simpler at the quantum level. Being mysterious to us we assume that it is complex.
Imagine a 3d pencil passing through 2d space. First you see a black dot (pencil tip), then a brown circle appears around the dot (the sharpened wood), first the circle grows slightly and then abruptly changes into a yellow hexagon (the six flat sides of a yellow pencil). The thin (because it's just paint) yellow hexagon surrounds a thicker brown hexagon (the wood) and in the center a small round black dot (the pencil lead). After a while the hexagon disappears and is replaced by a metal circle surrounding a pink rubber disk (the eraser). Very quickly the metal circle is gone and only the pink disk remains. Shortly afterwards this completely disappears and nothing is left. This whole process took place over a period of TIME.
If the 3d pencil passed completely through the 2d space at a constant rate (not stopping or changing speed) then a 2d person observing this strange object that appeared out of nowhere, changed shape and color, and then disappeared, might be able to think of time as a third dimension and picture in her imagination an overall strange (3d) shape that all at the same time possessed the different changing shapes that appeared as simple 2d objects. In other words, by thinking of time as a third dimension the 2d person can picture what we would think of as simple 3d object, a pencil.
We, as 3d people, can do this if we imagine a changing process that takes place over time as existing simultaneously in all of its different aspects. Imagine yourself as a baby, a child, a young adult, a mature adult, and an old adult. Now imagine yourself as a long, stretched out object that at one end is a baby and at the other end is an old person, all at the same time. This is one way of considering or picturing time as another dimension.
Swiped this from a Yahoo Answers post. BTW, I don't think that 2D space is really like this. It is more like what is described at the end of the last post; the third dimension is "contained" inside the more fundamental 2D space. I think that energy (a photon) is a 2D phenomenon existing (from its own perspective) in 2D space. We perceive it as "painting" what we see as the 3D universe.
Imagine a flat, 2D space with a flat dot (a photon) embedded in it. A 3D observer imposes, or forces, a 3D perspective on this phenomenon and by doing so "sees" the photon stretched across 3D space, but the 3D observer only perceives the end points of the photon and assumes that he is looking at two separate and distinct objects. He takes measurements from the "two" photons and has to conclude that they are mysteriously and inexplicably "entangled" with each other. In reality it is simply the same photon being simultaneously observed from two differing perspectives. Things are simply simpler at the quantum level. Being mysterious to us we assume that it is complex.
What is Time?
(I found this as a comment on another blog. It interests me so I stole it.)
On The Nature of Time
To me (subjectively!) time consists of four qualities that can be considered separately:
There is a moment when something happens. Other things happen at the same moment. When it is morning here it is evening there. When the crime was being committed I was elsewhere. I have an alibi. When the ball is flying through the air in front of me my hand will be there at the same time to catch it. At this moment in a distant galaxy something is happening simultaneous to what is happening right in front of me. Despite my inability to ever know what is happening (it is outside of my "light cone") I am certain that there is a simultaneous event. Everywhere in the universe there are events occurring that are just as simultaneous for me as what is going on in the next room. This is the universal moment of simultaneity.
We experience time as continuous. We may divide up our days and lives, but we know that there is no time between one division and the next. Each identifiable moment glides seamlessly into the next. When we anticipate the clock striking or the water boiling we never experience a time between the waiting and the moment of the event. This is the perfect continuity of time.
Time doesn't run backwards. The entire experience of humanity has been a forward flowing experience. Growth and decay, while seeming opposites, are always experienced as the result of time constantly flowing into the future. This fact allows us to define what is past and what is future. Neither is there a sideways movement in time. Time has a permanent direction.
I read somewhere that Einstein, when asked "What is time?", replied "Time is what clocks do." I suspect that he wasn't being entirely facetious and was simply stating the definition that he found sufficient for his purposes. The fourth quality of time can be put simply as "Clocks work". How is it that I can relate the revolutionary period of a remote neutron star with the life span of a dog? Why are the rates and durations of distant, unrelated events seemingly consistent relative to each other? Of course this fact allows us to invent calendars and construct clocks. At first glance many things seem consistent but when we look closer we notice variations. We count more carefully and measure more accurately and discover that a year isn't 360 days. But we do discover that 365 is more consistent, until we realize that's not perfect. Add a quarter day and consistency is regained. Sometimes it is our imperfect counting methods and measuring tools that are the source of inconsistencies. On the other hand many events seem to have random elements that create random variations of period, as in not all dogs living to the exact same age (or the year not being exactly 365.25 days). Looking at the phenomena at a deeper level reveals the consistency. The durations and rates of the biochemical processes that can describe a dog's life are more consistent among different dogs than their separate life spans. Tidal forces and energy loss slow the earth's orbit and almost imperceptibly lengthen the year. These can be accounted for, and consistency regained. Apparently the simpler, or more basic the phenomena the more consistent the periods of duration and rate. It seems that the relative consistency of period between different phenomena is something that applies to all at a fundamental level. The most accurate clock is one that counts the periods of an exceedingly fundamental phenomenon, the energetic vibrations of an atom. The fourth quality of time is that there is a basic consistency of duration and rate for all phenomena relative to each other. (Note that the very concepts of duration and rate are explicitly temporal. The concepts themselves arise from the fact that all phenomena share a consistency that reveals itself when the various phenomena are compared or related to each other- thereby making clocks and calendars, which are designed on the principles of duration and rate, possible.)
Given that the experience of these four qualities of time has always been a commonplace, taken for granted experience, and that the qualities do not present themselves in obviously separate ways, that is, the experience of time is always, more or less, the experience of all qualities together as a piece, then it is reasonable to view time as though it were a separate force of nature. But that force remains undetected and apparently does not exist.
When some ancient philosophers asked the question- What is Time?- they saw an obvious answer. Time is nothing more than change, for without change, how could there be time? In those days one could give a counter-argument that some things are changeless and therefore timeless, yet still exist within and experience time. We now know better. In fact everything is changing all the "time". If we equate time and change then we can say that at the most basic level change is fundamentally consistent, permanently directional(?), perfectly continuous, and universally simultaneous.
What is change? Change reduced to a fundamental level always involves the flow, transfer, or transformation(?) of energy. The flow of energy across the smallest possible distance will occur at the speed of light. This can be seen as representing the briefest possible moment and the most fundamental element of change. These moments of change must be consistent with each other because they all occur at the speed of light. Further, if the speed of light were to "change" self-consistency would be preserved because there exists no phenomenon whose apparent duration or rate is not the result of the "fundamental element" of change. Consistency exists because it is the result of existence itself being necessarily self-referential. This fundamental flow of energy must appear continuous throughout the universe because if it wasn't then parts of (or things in) the universe would appear and disappear spontaneously. Similar to consistency, if there was a universal discontinuity the entire universe would "wink" out of existence and no part (or person) could be aware of it. (I don't think this could ever happen because of the "arrow of time", material existence would have to start over from scratch.) The appearance of simultaneity is also the result of change (the flow of energy) being fundamental to existence. We (or any measuring instrument) can never be aware of an event (at its most fundamental level) except that it is simultaneous to our awareness. When we witness or measure a distant event we say it occurred in the past because of the limiting speed of light. The witnessing or measuring of the event itself though is simultaneous to the effect (change) of the event reaching us or the instrument.
The qualities of consistency, continuity, and simultaneity are therefore all the result of the flow of energy being fundamental to change and existence itself. Another way of putting this is that if existence is all of a single piece then everything occurs at once and therefore at the same "speed" (another explicitly temporal term), that is, the speed of light. This suggests that reality relative to the concept of time is momentary, past and future do not have an independent existence but are conceptual abstractions created by our senses of memory and anticipation. (Time travel is therefore impossible, except in the trivial sense of travel into the future, which nothing can escape.)
What about the time dilation effect? I am not a physicist so I can be glib and simply say that it doesn't exist. What does happen is that clocks (and every macroscopic phenomenon is a clock) can experience spatial distortion under the effects of gravity or acceleration. It is not time but rather the clock (or space, if you prefer) that is being dilated. The spatial path of energy can be expanded or contracted but the speed of light remains constant.
That leaves the Arrow of Time to be dealt with. I think that perhaps this quality of time is not really a quality of time at all, so to speak. It is obviously tied into the concept of increasing and decreasing entropy. It has to do with the effect of energy on matter. I don't understand how energy "condenses" into matter but I would guess that the arrow of time becomes manifest at that point. To again be glib about it I would say that this quality of directionality is an "emergent form".
Overall time is a psychological experience. It is the result of all change being brought about by the universal flow of energy that is necessarily self-consistent and therefore these changes more or less manifest the qualities of simultaneity, continuity and consistency. We humans perceive these qualities in all the phenomena around us (and within us) more or less imperfectly, and in combination with the Arrow of Time, this psychologically forms our concept, or experience, of time. In the end it all rests on the idea that the speed of light is the single, fundamental constant of existence.
Time and quantum weirdness? I've thought about it, but those thoughts might just smack too much of "science fiction". It could be that because existence is less differentiated at the quantum level time as we conceive of it simply doesn't exist. With less differentiation there is less change. With no differentiation there is no change, with no change there is no time. Maybe.
I imagine that our traditional 3-dimensional view of space is like an optical illusion and that illusion betrays a basic fallacy. You are familiar with "Flatland"? It is created by subtracting one dimension from our intuitively based concept of three dimensions, yielding a weird and strangely "incomplete" world. What if 2-dimensional space contained the third dimension in a collapsed, or potential state? If that was so Flatland would look quite different, there would be no "missing" parts or incomplete perspective. Instead of seeing less we would see more, but that "more" would be simpler or less differentiated, which implies that 3-dimensional space is an emergent form.
On The Nature of Time
To me (subjectively!) time consists of four qualities that can be considered separately:
There is a moment when something happens. Other things happen at the same moment. When it is morning here it is evening there. When the crime was being committed I was elsewhere. I have an alibi. When the ball is flying through the air in front of me my hand will be there at the same time to catch it. At this moment in a distant galaxy something is happening simultaneous to what is happening right in front of me. Despite my inability to ever know what is happening (it is outside of my "light cone") I am certain that there is a simultaneous event. Everywhere in the universe there are events occurring that are just as simultaneous for me as what is going on in the next room. This is the universal moment of simultaneity.
We experience time as continuous. We may divide up our days and lives, but we know that there is no time between one division and the next. Each identifiable moment glides seamlessly into the next. When we anticipate the clock striking or the water boiling we never experience a time between the waiting and the moment of the event. This is the perfect continuity of time.
Time doesn't run backwards. The entire experience of humanity has been a forward flowing experience. Growth and decay, while seeming opposites, are always experienced as the result of time constantly flowing into the future. This fact allows us to define what is past and what is future. Neither is there a sideways movement in time. Time has a permanent direction.
I read somewhere that Einstein, when asked "What is time?", replied "Time is what clocks do." I suspect that he wasn't being entirely facetious and was simply stating the definition that he found sufficient for his purposes. The fourth quality of time can be put simply as "Clocks work". How is it that I can relate the revolutionary period of a remote neutron star with the life span of a dog? Why are the rates and durations of distant, unrelated events seemingly consistent relative to each other? Of course this fact allows us to invent calendars and construct clocks. At first glance many things seem consistent but when we look closer we notice variations. We count more carefully and measure more accurately and discover that a year isn't 360 days. But we do discover that 365 is more consistent, until we realize that's not perfect. Add a quarter day and consistency is regained. Sometimes it is our imperfect counting methods and measuring tools that are the source of inconsistencies. On the other hand many events seem to have random elements that create random variations of period, as in not all dogs living to the exact same age (or the year not being exactly 365.25 days). Looking at the phenomena at a deeper level reveals the consistency. The durations and rates of the biochemical processes that can describe a dog's life are more consistent among different dogs than their separate life spans. Tidal forces and energy loss slow the earth's orbit and almost imperceptibly lengthen the year. These can be accounted for, and consistency regained. Apparently the simpler, or more basic the phenomena the more consistent the periods of duration and rate. It seems that the relative consistency of period between different phenomena is something that applies to all at a fundamental level. The most accurate clock is one that counts the periods of an exceedingly fundamental phenomenon, the energetic vibrations of an atom. The fourth quality of time is that there is a basic consistency of duration and rate for all phenomena relative to each other. (Note that the very concepts of duration and rate are explicitly temporal. The concepts themselves arise from the fact that all phenomena share a consistency that reveals itself when the various phenomena are compared or related to each other- thereby making clocks and calendars, which are designed on the principles of duration and rate, possible.)
Given that the experience of these four qualities of time has always been a commonplace, taken for granted experience, and that the qualities do not present themselves in obviously separate ways, that is, the experience of time is always, more or less, the experience of all qualities together as a piece, then it is reasonable to view time as though it were a separate force of nature. But that force remains undetected and apparently does not exist.
When some ancient philosophers asked the question- What is Time?- they saw an obvious answer. Time is nothing more than change, for without change, how could there be time? In those days one could give a counter-argument that some things are changeless and therefore timeless, yet still exist within and experience time. We now know better. In fact everything is changing all the "time". If we equate time and change then we can say that at the most basic level change is fundamentally consistent, permanently directional(?), perfectly continuous, and universally simultaneous.
What is change? Change reduced to a fundamental level always involves the flow, transfer, or transformation(?) of energy. The flow of energy across the smallest possible distance will occur at the speed of light. This can be seen as representing the briefest possible moment and the most fundamental element of change. These moments of change must be consistent with each other because they all occur at the speed of light. Further, if the speed of light were to "change" self-consistency would be preserved because there exists no phenomenon whose apparent duration or rate is not the result of the "fundamental element" of change. Consistency exists because it is the result of existence itself being necessarily self-referential. This fundamental flow of energy must appear continuous throughout the universe because if it wasn't then parts of (or things in) the universe would appear and disappear spontaneously. Similar to consistency, if there was a universal discontinuity the entire universe would "wink" out of existence and no part (or person) could be aware of it. (I don't think this could ever happen because of the "arrow of time", material existence would have to start over from scratch.) The appearance of simultaneity is also the result of change (the flow of energy) being fundamental to existence. We (or any measuring instrument) can never be aware of an event (at its most fundamental level) except that it is simultaneous to our awareness. When we witness or measure a distant event we say it occurred in the past because of the limiting speed of light. The witnessing or measuring of the event itself though is simultaneous to the effect (change) of the event reaching us or the instrument.
The qualities of consistency, continuity, and simultaneity are therefore all the result of the flow of energy being fundamental to change and existence itself. Another way of putting this is that if existence is all of a single piece then everything occurs at once and therefore at the same "speed" (another explicitly temporal term), that is, the speed of light. This suggests that reality relative to the concept of time is momentary, past and future do not have an independent existence but are conceptual abstractions created by our senses of memory and anticipation. (Time travel is therefore impossible, except in the trivial sense of travel into the future, which nothing can escape.)
What about the time dilation effect? I am not a physicist so I can be glib and simply say that it doesn't exist. What does happen is that clocks (and every macroscopic phenomenon is a clock) can experience spatial distortion under the effects of gravity or acceleration. It is not time but rather the clock (or space, if you prefer) that is being dilated. The spatial path of energy can be expanded or contracted but the speed of light remains constant.
That leaves the Arrow of Time to be dealt with. I think that perhaps this quality of time is not really a quality of time at all, so to speak. It is obviously tied into the concept of increasing and decreasing entropy. It has to do with the effect of energy on matter. I don't understand how energy "condenses" into matter but I would guess that the arrow of time becomes manifest at that point. To again be glib about it I would say that this quality of directionality is an "emergent form".
Overall time is a psychological experience. It is the result of all change being brought about by the universal flow of energy that is necessarily self-consistent and therefore these changes more or less manifest the qualities of simultaneity, continuity and consistency. We humans perceive these qualities in all the phenomena around us (and within us) more or less imperfectly, and in combination with the Arrow of Time, this psychologically forms our concept, or experience, of time. In the end it all rests on the idea that the speed of light is the single, fundamental constant of existence.
Time and quantum weirdness? I've thought about it, but those thoughts might just smack too much of "science fiction". It could be that because existence is less differentiated at the quantum level time as we conceive of it simply doesn't exist. With less differentiation there is less change. With no differentiation there is no change, with no change there is no time. Maybe.
I imagine that our traditional 3-dimensional view of space is like an optical illusion and that illusion betrays a basic fallacy. You are familiar with "Flatland"? It is created by subtracting one dimension from our intuitively based concept of three dimensions, yielding a weird and strangely "incomplete" world. What if 2-dimensional space contained the third dimension in a collapsed, or potential state? If that was so Flatland would look quite different, there would be no "missing" parts or incomplete perspective. Instead of seeing less we would see more, but that "more" would be simpler or less differentiated, which implies that 3-dimensional space is an emergent form.
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