A COSMIC ANALOGY: THE ECLIPSE (A Post In Which Miss Dreamy Explains How The Present Determines The Past)

All Shook Up: “I'd say that things like gravity, radio waves, magnetic forces.. were in existence long before humankind developed the means to measure
and utilise them and that, based on that fact, many other phenomena yet to be
discovered similarly exist.”

Note, however, that with different values of the physical polarities and different initial conditions, nearly every potential universe could be ‘paralleled’ elsewhere. Which makes it attractive to suppose that all combinations or configurations are equally probable. The view
that there is a unique universe of only one possible type would have to be discarded. One cannot prove it, but even without stretching the facts beyond a reasonable application, it seems more likely that the question of the uniqueness
is closely related to the act of knowing.

We can see this easily if we imagine a standard cosmic phenomenon: the
Eclipse. Rather than listing the various ecliptic possibilities, such as
annual, partial, total, solar, lunar etc., let me say that the interception of a
luminous body by the interposition of another body between itself and the eye of
the observer, is what constitutes an eclipse. However, it would seem more
compatible with this meaning to say that a total eclipse, such as that of the
Sun for instance, is seen along a narrow band called the band of totality.
Outside this band the screening of the Sun by the Moon when seen from the Earth is only partial. But either way, it has to be seen to be perceived.

Now, all these effects can be calculated in detail. Computations, in
other words, can be directed backwards to determine previous eclipses.
Conversely, prediction can be made with a view to future eclipses. This may seem obvious, even self-evident. The point, however, is that although the notion of a trajectory implies clear knowledge of its progression, the eclipse only comes into existence at the moment that we observe it. The act of observation, in other words, has not only created the eclipse - but its complete and entire past.

It may seem ludicrous to claim that the eclipse actually antedates the
causal conditions it appears to institute. But my own view, from this
perspective, is that unless so perceived, no one will ever attempt to suggest
that an eclipse has taken place, say, in some far corner of the universe or with
reference to any one of an infinite variety of potential trajectories in some
wayward, yet unalterable, path to a predetermined assignation. Note, moreover,
that unless lodged firmly in the sense data of intelligent observation, there is
nothing irreversible about such an eclipse. It hinges on one’s ability to
determine its past as one would the backward movement of a clock. And this
becomes obvious when we consider that the Eclipse is a representation of our
knowledge, so that if our knowledge changes unexpectedly, the past must also
change unexpectedly. Without it, it may mean, simply, an imaginary event which
is ideally but not literally true, residing only in the consciousness of some
mind whose supremacy is undoubted but not easily defined.

To some, God still preconditions the mind of the observer. Yet, nature
can rarely bring herself to ignore loose ends. The search for an absolute norm
outside reality is doomed to frustration. Being must be interpreted in terms of
knowing. To the physicist, reality depends on his ability to produce for every
idea a formula or an equation. He can only specify an event through its
measurable properties. And mathematical analysis clearly shows that to account
for its fine balance the density of the universe must have had a particular, or
critical, value, and no other, at a very early time. The most explicit set of
equations, on the other hand, can never bestow life and meaning, but only an
emulation of facts, precisely like the Big Bang, which can have no history,
unless the history is a derivative of the event. And not just a single history,
but an infinite cluster of possible histories of every possible path or record
in space-time, and each one equally real whenever so observed.

Thus, the empiricist’s analysis prevails: there is no past, there is no
future, we initiate both.

Dreamy