On 1 February 2014 13:22, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Friday, January 31, 2014 5:32:49 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: > >> It emerges along the time axis. Evolution, for example, can operate in a >> block universe. All the phenomena we experience can occur in a block >> universe, otherwise no one would entertain the possibility that we live in >> one. >> > > I don't think that very many people do seriously entertain the possibility > that we live in a block universe. >
Except physicists, who have accepted it since Minkowski, if not Newton. (And science fiction writers, like Robert Heinlein.) It's not that the effect of evolution couldn't exist in a block universe, > its that it wouldn't make sense to say that it 'operates', since the > beginning and ending of the operation would be, from an absolute > perspective, simultaneous. > No they wouldn't, they'd be separated by hundreds of millions of years along the time axis. > What is not explained is why, if there was a block universe, would being > inside of it be filled with both simultaneous and chronological sensations. > What would restrict some part of the block to the point of blindness to > most of the time axis, and then insert some kind of illusion of timing > associated with that axis? > Physics. > > >> The fact that it is "all there" from the god's (physicist's) perspective >> doesn't stop things changing and emerging within the block. >> > > It doesn't stop it, but it makes it implausible. What does a block want > with "_ing" anything? > It doesn't want anything. It's just the outcome of the laws of physics. > But there *is* time in a block universe. It's a 4D manifold, and time is >> a particular axis within it. You seem to want an extra time above and >> beyond the existing one. >> > > Just the opposite. I am fully embracing time a just one of the four D > axes. What the block universe does not explain is why that axis is > presented as a verb while the other three are not, and why that axis is > irreversible seeming while the others are not. > > We're embedded in time, and the thermodynamic arrow of time is a subject that has already been discussed at length. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
