TIME IS THE PROCESS OF THINKING...

(A Post In Which Miss Dreamy Discovers That Thinking Of Limitless Space Is Like Trying To Think Of A Box Without Thinking of Its Sides)

‘In the original unity of the first thing lies the secondary cause of all things, and the germ of their inevitable annihilation.’ Thus Edgar Allan Poe.
And to presume otherwise is instantly to abandon any prospect of the rational understanding of what is meant by cosmic evolution. What happens next is a
matter of considerable disagreement. It is difficult to imagine that a lone “irrelative” atom, a single quantum of energy in its purest and most
concentrated form, should have sprang fully formed from the stupendous brow of God. A difficulty which is illuminating in itself as it demonstrates the extent
to which, in the Big Bang, matter and mind were fused into one. “If the universe is a universe of thought,” wrote the great James Jeans, “then its creation must have been an act of thought.”

Thought becomes deed, deed becomes word, building to a tremendous climax. In the rapidly expanding fireball, the process of thought-making continues as an inflation and recapitulation of the violent beginning on so large a scale that, however complex in its details, every significant force and
field becomes distinct and magnified. It is the violence, therefore, of creation
not of annihilation. Nor need we solve innumerable differential equations. The
best advice that cosmologists have today, suggests that the fundamental
diversification of the entire process is a necessary corollary of its ever
increasing dimensions. Particulars proliferate as a necessary requirement of
this continuity, allowing for chromatic deviations and dynamic oscillations
until, ultimately, the Universe blazes forth in a grand apotheosis, generating a
powerful antithesis between the four known fundamental forces.

This language is not, one may suppose, the orthodox interpretation
of astrophysicists on this topic. But we have seen already, in a previous post,
how antiparticles began as an intellectual abstraction, and ad hoc composition
of mandatory events, drastically compressed and recapitulated, with all the
terminology of quantitative semantics. In short, we discover very little. Truth
to tell, it is from this point on that the exact events become clouded by
judgment and conjecture. For what actually happens is that, as mass can be
created from energy, matter can be created from knowledge. Albeit that every new
‘discovery’ emphasizes the extent of our inherent ignorance of the fact that we
are the causes of ourselves, chief of the fundamental forces known to man.

Extemporization fundamentally requires displaying necessary
consequences, and necessary consequences in this connection constitute phenomena
which are implicit in the representation and analysis of the event. Here, then,
for the first time arose the astonishing concept of chronology. At
10-43 second, gravitational radiation emerges from the thermal equilibrium.
10-34 second, marks the beginning of the inflationary phase. 10-30 second,
particles precipitate out of the vacuum. 10-11 second, the electromagnetic and
weak nuclear forces make an initial division. 10-5 second, protons and neutrons
become articulate.

Time numbers points in space at which each event has been determined.
One chronological event is the logical consequence of another. Hence, there is a succession here which makes it necessary to suppose that time or extension can be measured, seemingly, in complete independence from the rest of the structure. A conclusion which, as it happens, is contrary to the truth. But Relativity was clear where Nature is obscure: “Nature is such that it is impossible to determine absolute motion by any experiment whatever.” And I find it difficult to distinguish between absolute motion and absolute time. Space that lacks motion is timeless. Motion that lacks space is mindless.

Here, then, time and space, originally one conception, hold forth to a
life of their own. And thus, in analysing their division we are studying
cosmology in its most anthropomorphic phase. Matter has resolved into a function
of knowledge. Purely physical action enjoys only a transitory existence.
Everything is flux. Meaning in any intrinsic sense is dispensed with altogether.
If it was the primary function of Space to provide a fixed frame of reference,
we have already considered its non-existence. Space defines matter. It
intervenes and determines. That's all. The concept of time, too, is wholly
irrelevant in a perfectly eventless medium. Being is blind to any chronological
distinction. Time is the process of thinking.

Dreamy