3. Time and Space
A New Dynamism for Philosophy
Chapter 3. Time and Space
Key Questions.
- What is Time, the passage of time and how are we to understand past, present and future within it?
- Why does Time travel in just the one direction?
- What is Space? What is the relationship between Time and Space?
- Are Time and Space real and objective?
- What are the implications of the relativity of time and space for our understanding of them?
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Summary of Conclusions: Time and Space
Time is more fundamental than space in a dynamic universe. Time features in all dynamic encounters and temporal boundaries form where these produce events. Time and change are not inseparable as only one type of change is pertinent to our understanding of time.
To some extent recognition of change will depend upon the concepts we deploy to characterise reality. A traditional understanding of causality hinders our understanding of Time and gives rise to the problem of induction.
A dynamic representation proposes a radical break from the traditional view and with the idea that causal influence is fundamental and necessary for the location of events in time. Dynamic encounters or events occur as the result of causal influence.
Causality does not emerge from between encounters or events. Relations of cause to effect explain the passage of time rather than leaving them unexplained within it. It now becomes impossible to give the problem of induction any credible expression.
The present is simply represented by the sum total of the active energy or the potent forces that are in operation. The past is a redundant or obsolete network of forces. It former pre-eminence is dynamically linked to a present that has superseded it through causal influence, and lent it structure through relations of cause and effect.
Every event represents a transition between present and past and the conversion of the influential into the obsolete. We can understand the future as the direction taken by the impetus or influence of the present.
Time is the measure of the dynamic process and consequently of everything in the Universe. It supplies the means of devising a standard or measure for the location and duration of events. Space is the arena for a subordinate set of relationships within time, and represents an axis that cuts across the passage of time.
Space is not a separate realm, but represents Time persisting under conditions where positional or displacing influences come into operation. Both space and our apprehension of it are fundamentally three-dimensional.
Time and Space are real and objective. Causal influence ensures that past, present and future exist independently of our capacity to remember, witness or predict them. Although it is the measure of a dynamic universe, Time itself can still be measured.
The relativity of time is best understood as resulting from conditions that influence its measurement. There is a danger of misconstruing the relativity of time and space in terms of a relativism that depends upon subjective observer viewpoints. There is also a habitual belief in regarding their existence as limitless beyond the scope to produce events or manoeuvre objects.
Dynamism avoids the confusions that both produce, and offers us an understanding of both time and space that is measurable, but which does not abstract them from the passage of events and the existence of objects.