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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Created Yesterday
Message-ID: <333@spar.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Jun-85 13:53:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.333
Posted: Mon Jun 17 13:53:26 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Jun-85 03:48:36 EDT
References: <2163@decwrl.UUCP> <93000002@hpcnoa.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
Lines: 39

>...There exists somewhere outside of human
>perception an absolute time reference...
>...Similarly, I see no reason why absolute time isn't simply
>another dimension in our universe...
>	An argument in favour of time being another dimension 
>can be obtained by moving 'down' a level of existence to the
>two dimensional world of Edwin Abbott's "Flatland"...
>... Well?  Anyone have any comments about this? -- Dave Taylor

    Ever since Newton, time was mathematically a 4th dimension, exactly as
    you described in your article, where you used our 3 dimensions to
    represent a 2-D world, representing time with the third dimension.

    However, until Einstein, there was little motivation to think of things
    this way; time was always totally separate from the indistinguishable
    spatial dimensions.

    For example, how would you interpret a cross-section not perpendicular
    to the dimension you used for `absolute time'?  And in your model
    universe, there is no meaningful interpretation of the distance between
    two different points in two different cross-sections.

    Einstein's special relativity, much of which can be derived with little
    more than high-school algebra, views the universe somewhat as you
    described, except that time behaves formally as an `imaginary' spatial
    direction. One of the many odd results of this theory is that there is
    no absolute time such as you mentioned. Using your model, this is
    somewhat like saying that no reason to prefer one direction over another
    to represent time, or that one may arbitrarily select the angle for
    cutting cross-sections {however the existence of a speed limit `c'
    imposes a restriction on the slice-angle}; consequently events that are
    simultaneous to one viewer may not be to another.

    This is all admittedly hazy -- there are MANY good intro texts
    that describe Einstein's special relativity far better than I can.

    SMASH CAUSALITY!!

-michael