From: Menno Rubingh (rubingh@delftnet.nl)
Date: Sun Dec 19 1999 - 05:19:31 MST
Hi,
> From: Madame Ubiquitous <eileen.krasowski@yale.edu>
> Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 15:48:52 -0500
>
> If time is an illusion, then you can pretty much give up studying physics,
> chemistry, biology...just about everything that relies on motion or
> reactions, because if time is an illusion, they are as well by extention.
> And since illusions are of no importance to us, those of you in these
> illusionary sciences are in the wrong line of work, epistemologically
> speaking.
I think that a honest, rational physicist already *knows* that time is a
fiction. Exactly like energy, velocity, pressure, and ALL physical
quantities, time is a mathematical *abstraction*: it is a concept that lives
only on our mind. (By the way: mathematics is IMO exactly synonymous to the
process/method of rational thinking/reasoning.)
I personally have never directly experienced time (let alone Time). If I
see a stone falling, then I simply infer that the "position" of the stone
changes with "time"; i.e., I *INVENT* abstract, mathematical quantities like
time and position to make it easier for me to reason about & to make sense
of the things I "think" I see. The concepts of time, energy etc. that you
Think you Believe in are just simply some of the inventions of physicists that
have survived (1) Occam's Razor; and (2) The ''memetic'' survival struggle in
people's minds over the last few centuries or millennia -- but this gives
these concepts no inherent, abolute, final Truth. :-) (Sorry, I like these
capitalizations.)
Greetings, Menno (rubingh@delftnet.nl) (Who has joined the Zombie camp :-))
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