Another Way of Looking at Time

A book by Guy Murchie called The Music of the Spheres was published in 1961. It’s recommended in one of Kurt Vonnegut’s books. I forget which one now. And yes, I think Vonnegut

It’s little known nowadays and that’s too bad. It’s not that it’s an unambitious endeavor!

From the publisher’s blurb about it:

The first half of the book–Moons of Rock and Suns of Fire–deals with major astronomical phenomena viewed poetically from an imaginary earth satellite. In the second part the realms in which physics holds sway pass in review; the forms and nature of matter, the atom, waves and music, light and color, space and time.

I don’t know about you but I like the second part. Now focus on the last word in that blurb, “time.”

In that book, Murchie posits a fascinating notion. Instead of the past, present, and future all being separate and discreet things not a whole lot related to each other, Murchie says that in terms of physics, the past, the present, and the future are all simultaneously occurring right now as I write this. I know what you’re thinking. There goes Bob with another of his nutty ideas. But hold your horses a second, Hoss, and listen up for a bit.

I think there may actually be something to this and what follows is my version of Murchie’s theory:

The past has the seeds of our present and future within it already, so the present and future are contained in the past. We can say that the past contains the dual tails of the present and future in it. Of course when the past was happening, it had its own past and future embedded in it.

The present was brought here by the past and the future will contain the seeds of the present, so the present contains both the head of the past and the tail of the future in itself.

The future obviously doesn’t even exist. Think about that a bit as most folks don’t realize that. We Americans treat the future as if it’s a sure thing and often as if it will be better than the present. But we are thinking about something that doesn’t even exist yet. But even if it did exist, the future would be literally an outgrowth of the present, which, like it or not, is literally an outgrowth of the past, so the future would contain the heads of the present and future in it. The future of course contains the growth from the seeds of the past and the present, otherwise it wouldn’t even be there.

Your move, commenters.