The Moonshine Memoranda: TIME IS THE PROCESS OF THINKING

The following is a topic currently featured in the 21st revised edition of V.H. Ironside, Behold! I Teach You Superman (see below):

“From deepest dream I've woke and plead - The world is deep, and deeper than the day could read.”

Nietzsche

At time zero, there was no precedent for the universe as we know it. 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 - the concept of the future concocted logically out of the past. Behold the first anthropic rapture, the most original foundation of all sense and significance.

Events now unravelled with explosive inevitability. The cosmological sense of self is inflated by instantaneous comprehension - an explosion of ‘thought’. At 10^-43 seconds, gravitational radiation emerges from the thermal equilibrium. 10^-³⁴ seconds marks the beginning of the inflationary phase. 10^-³⁰ seconds, particles precipitate out of the vacuum. 10^-¹¹ seconds, the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces make an initial division. 10^-⁵ seconds, protons and neutrons become articulate. Time elapsed: less than a quadrillionth of a second!

Time numbers points in space. A chain of events leading from moment to moment. Nor is time an intrinsic property of itself. Because extension associates itself with direction, time emerges as an idea. The inference being, that a universe which is self-sustaining as an idea, experiences the concept of being only with reference to itself and can claim to impart relevance only in that sense, whereas the principle of the multiverse demands that it has application for none and for all. The closer the multiverse approaches its proper conception, the more it becomes

absolute - that is, aloof from any auxiliary or relativistic concept - to the point even of failing to demonstrate its own existence. It is the point when the Universe finally rises superior to itself and begins to set up in its place the concept of the Infinite. But trust me on this, there is no such thing as absolute time. The multiverse does not exist as a self-defining entity. It has no coherence, no sense of itself. To acquire a grasp of the a priori it is essential to forfeit all title to the a posteriori, i.e., the post-conceptual designs that struggle with the complementarities, the uncertainties and indeterminacies, the imagery and relativity of being a self-defining universe. Admittedly, a number of physicists today argue that space-time may exist absolutely. That the architectural form of the absolute is the multiverse. But to speculate on manifestations which do not hypothesize an observer at all, other than recognizing him as a mathematical entity, is a mere waste of time. In fact, the opposite conclusion should be drawn, since the chief

characteristic of the multiverse is precisely that it lacks the cohesive ego of the relativistic and that distinctions of being or form are purely academical. The multiverse is a formidable anomaly in this scheme. It is an expedient construct, a multi-missing link that can cover a great deal of conceptual topography thanks to its wide range of differentials, involving, to begin with, an essentially Newtonian objective to apply conventional ways of thinking to a new, unconventional synthesis and, secondly, a mathematical device defining a purely conceptual abstraction that refuses to conform to the first set of assumptions precisely because it can acquire structure only through the compositional perspective of the second. In plain words, the theory of relativity put paid to the concept of absolute space and time.

From which it follows that the Universe we occupy - our very own bubble of inflated spacetime - is four-dimensional, and that each particular point-event has to be specified by the values of its four coordinates, the aggregate of which is called the Continuum. The Continuum as a relativistic and four-dimensional unit is, in fact, profoundly preoccupied with its own necessity and intelligible only in relation to and as the object of itself. It possesses form not merely as a condition of being, but above all as an idea. In other words, a comprehensive statement of this four-dimensional idea presupposes an implicit reference to some ego-centred relation. The relation, namely, between conscious and cosmic history. In fact, nothing but the anthropomorphous interbonding of the two warrants the cohesion of what, despite its natural tendency for self-effacement, must be thought of as the intelligent universe. The universe is a sea of information. The form we assign to it is anthropomorphous. But precisely because it is impossible to imagine a point in space-time without visualizing some associated event, this cohesion remains indeterminate until an observational frame of reference produces measurable properties. Indeed, it seems natural to translate the now familiar term ‘spacetime’ into the appropriate materialization of the thought. The Continuum that lacks extension is timeless. Time that lacks continuity is mindless.

Here, then, time and space, originally one conception, hold forth to a life of their own. Because we have neither the language nor the resourcefulness for a depiction of concepts that do not engage the participator, the division into past and future is intimately associated with our understanding of determinate laws. In fact, there is no link between past and future other than the existence of a linear structure of which the term ‘chronology’ denotes the form of causality. Indeed, the mere formulation of the law of linear time presupposes the existence of a closed pre-programmed system which can be demonstrated to act through known processes of cause and effect, setting up as an intellectual necessity that which consists in the accident of our own conceptual constitution. And thus, in analysing the chronology we are studying cosmology in its most anthropomorphous phase. The four dimensions do not belong to the continuum, but to an observer within, reflecting the conceptual agent who no longer feels the need to distinguish between the creator and his creation.

The good Bishop Berkeley was no less forthright: “All those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world...have not any subsistence without the mind.”

For whatever happens to these bodies, it is from their observation alone that events acquire meaning. Inevitably, from the moment we resolve the four-dimensional world into space and duration, the mind is being instrumental to the very process of determining the relation. In actual fact, duration is the effect of the application to Space of extension, and because the associated increment of extension is time, its chronology is being resolved into a function of knowledge. And any theory which does not concede as much would certainly run counter to common sense. That said, of course, it is critical to note that space and time are mere relativistic exemptions from the irrelative plenum (or multiverse), invoked only in response to an active chronological or selective requirement. And the reason is simple. Time is the process of thinking.