Peter Lynds and Idea of Time?

[stevemoss]

To be fair to Lynds' paper, consider that it would be very difficult to mathematically prove his concept given that much of what's taken for granted as far as math's ability to demonstrate falls apart in the face of his idea - math is dependent upon a level of precision (and a conceptual misunderstanding about our ability to be precise) that his paper suggests we simply cannot have.

Earlier, someone mentioned that if Lynds knew Calculus or momentum theory, he'd have never written his paper. Perhaps that's exactly the point!

The Lynds Super-Uncertainty Principle is as much philosophy as science. Precision is based upon perception, and perception is relative (therefore suspect).

Although complex mathematic equations and theories have so far been able to successfully model the perceived behavior of universe... it's all about perception.

If a fundamental perception used while developing a system was even slightly wrong, then no matter how precisely the results of that system might seem to match, they'd still be still wrong. Remember that it was only the little boy in the crowd who pointed out the simple truth about the Emperor's New Clothes.

[rocketa]

Not to subtract nor add to the possible validity of Lynds hypothesis:

There will be great waving of arms and gnashing of teeth on the part of the established scientific heirarchy upon the presentation of the next real advance in understanding the universe.

[imported_Voyager]

Originally posted by Jason@Aug 13 2003, 09:17 AM
Anybody see Legally Blond 2? Timeless.....

I didn't but it sounds like it's a good movie.

[Turgent]

Peter Lynds is not a hoax.

The physicist Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel laureate in particle physics and considered the most great physicists since Einstein said, in a recent TV-interview, that Lynds’ ideas “was very interesting” and that some of the ideas of the new theory “were investigated by itself” before Lynds!

Lynds is doing impressive advances in theoretical physics without an academic background in physics. In fact, it was to university only for six months and achieved an understanding of quantum physics and relativity comparable to that of Gell-Mann. Lynds also has done a criticism to the Stephen Hawking theory of imaginary time. It is unnecessary said.

Other of the fascinated by Lynds theories is the recognized John Wheeler, a physicist who actually worked with Einstein.

Without any doubt, the young professor Peter Lynds is the new genius of XXI century.

[Staypuffed]

Peter Lynds seems to have provoked everyone into a frenzy by being identified with Einstein. Let's settle that now. The initial comparison appears annonymously on a message board by a scientist reviewing the Lynds piece, stating that, like Einstein's paper:"[the] validity [of Lynd'spaper] is not destroyed by the [circular reasoning] from which it is derived." It is a measure of style not a measure of genius.

With regards to fraser's post on experimental verification it should be remembered that Einstein's special theory was not experimentally checkable. And in order to produce the General theory, he needed help with the technicalities themselves. So maybe some kind and enterprising physical scientist should look at helping Lynds formulate his own Generalised theory of discontinuity. I suspect it would require a little re-thinking about the traditional use of mathematics (how can you have units if you can't have intervals?), but no-one ever said this stuff would be easy, did they?

And before you point at me and say 'why don't you do it then?', I should simply tellyou a little secret: I'm mostly an idiot.

[kafkas_hat]

If anyone has the opportunity, they should read Leo Sartori's "Understanding Relativity." Several writers have referred to Einstein(okay, he may have been an egregious plagiarist!---a fact Sartori's wonderfully opines) and Special Relativity as unprovable. There have been experiments, and the majority of the features have been proven. There are still issues(given c) which can merely be adumbrated, but particle accelerators are slowly adducing these points.

Someone brought up Calculus, and the issue of limits, while another expunged the issue by contending, "Maybe that's the point(regarding not knowing calculus)." But here exists the conundrum. To explicate the world at large, we as human beings ostensibly classify things. As the philosopher Jacques Derrida told me "We make cause and effect." EVERYTHING becomes a fabrication of our world(see Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" an idea elucidated and elaborated upon by Schopenhauer.) Michel Foucault in "The Order of Things"(see his exegesis of the Port Royale grammar system) discusses how humanity has always sought for a way to ossify our existence; to crystallize and solidfy it in lists and other means. Nomenclature was Foucault's primary argument. For Noam Chomsky, in his post-structural lustre, it ended up being the structure of a sentence. The way all culture's treat verbs, nouns, etc. in explicit and well defined ways.

You could get rid of all of it, because it doesn't really say anything. Just an agglomeration of arbitrary sets and symbols. You could get obviate of cause and effect, taking the most nihilist extention of this idea of showing the otiose qualities of calculus and math, but where do end up? As Bryan Magee once told me, "At what point does that wall in front of you not exist? At what point are you going to quit and say, 'I KNOW these systems don't denote anything, that even though I want say that wall doesn't exist, but it does?'"

I could continue ad nosium. The point being, as Heisenberg argued(and Godel deeply mined---in fact Lynds argument reminds me of Godel's work), mathematics and all systems have flaws based on our quest for grounding. There are points where we can only conceive of a particle's residence; we can never discreetly know, however. These separations from the "world"(from Kant's noumenal) are an inherent part of our existence.

Time, as considered by Henri Bergson, is merely a personal construct; one which we force as fact. We place limits and use Calculus to analyze our world. We accept it because it WORKS respective to our worldly comprehension(NOT because it is!). There in lies the distinction. Lynds' argument may result in a infinitesmal rephrasing of Calculus, but would hardly bring down the "heinous pompous throne of alabaster sitting physicists" because they already know of this. If they don't, then I would be somewhat dissappointed. I do know Hawking still has this "River of Time" construct, so Lynds could be merely exploring this contentious point(as an aside, many physicists don't accept imaginary time or the river of time theory. Guth discusses the commencement of time at the bang where movement commences. Likewise I would think of this as how we "perceive" time's beginning, as Guth contends, with the exact motives and moments being ambiguous---as they dubiously should be.).

Lastly, I completely respect Gell-Mann. If he believes Lynds has discovered something shattering, or he has the potential to, then I should accept reticence. Likewise, Cesar Sirvent's analysis I don't trust and hope others avoid his rambling accounts(though he does mention Calculus limits, ironically). I simply believe we have heard these ideas before. I know from my studies in Literature and Philosophy, this idea has been widely accepted(the literary present I imagine arguably underscores this idea, metaphorically speaking). Which doesn't make Lynds a hoax, just reiterating an idea which has become a common component of literary theory(then again, Einstein probably falls into a similar category. He merely took the Lorentz transformation and the notion of relativity and made it more philosophically lucid).

Lastly, I would argue Lynds' argument makes life easier for physicists, allowing them to accept space-time with more ease; to make the analysis more palpable. Without a river of time, the possibilities become more intriguing...

[philip slater]

Hello kafkas_hat.

I would like at this time to just pick up on a couple of points in your post above, Aug 29 2003, 03:03 PM.

In para. 2 you state ‘...... (see Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" an idea elucidated and elaborated upon by Schopenhauer.)’

It is not immediately clear to which idea of Kant you are referring or whether you class the entire 'Critique' as a single idea that could be later developed by others.

It would be helpful if you could narrow down the reference somewhat.

If everyone following this thread is asked to go away and read the entire Critique before being able to post anything new there could be a bit of a quiet patch from now on.

Even when they return from their studies they may have differences of opinion resulting, if they are not really capable readers of German, from differences in translation and which edition the translator has used to put into whatever may be their native tongue. (If wanting to read it in English the version "Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Translated by Norman Kemp Smith (pub. Macmillan) might be as good as any, but do take a second opinion on that. The text followed by Kemp Smith is that of the 2nd edition of 1787, but translations of all passages from the first edition which have been changed or omitted in the second are also included.)


The second point refers to your mention of Bryan Magee. You quote him as follows: "At what point does that wall in front of you not exist? At what point are you going to quit and say, 'I KNOW these systems don't denote anything, that even though I want say that wall doesn't exist, but it does?'"

That raises a number of further questions worthy of serious discussion such as for example does the system of organised thought named science exist? Or could it? Or should it?

For the moment I will just give you another quotation from Magee: "There is no philosopher writing in English who can match Karl Popper in range or in the quality of his work ... Politics, science, art... in fact few broad areas of human thought remain unillumined by Popper's work."

One suggestion, which I hope may be helpful. I believe that your work of explaining the idea that is the subject of this thread might gain in clarity and power to convince if you were to take the time, whilst everyone else is reading Kant, to dip into the works of Popper if you have not yet done so. You might particularly enjoy "Logic der Forschung".

After a period of immersion in Popper's thinking regarding scientific enquiry you might wish to either revise or expand your para. 1 above in which you refer to a theory as being proven.

More later, I expect.


Philip

[Staypuffed]

Hello Kafkas_hat and Philip Slater both,

I should like to propose that kafkas_hat has inadvertantly nailed the key to our discusion in his reference (para. 6) to Einstein. Is not 'philosophical lucidity' the paramount key to understanding? Where Philip mentions Popper, should we not also mention Kuhn alongside, who tells us that the progress of science lies not in the proofs that a theory can support, but in the deeper schematic/paradigmatic understanding that underpins the theory - these are, apparently , what makes for interesting change. In this case, Einstein, 'plagarising' the Lorenz transformations (which he did not, by the way, he arrives at them through a different route. See Miller, A.I. 1981) and incorporating it with the notion of relativity achieves the essential feature of scientific development precisely by achieving such philosophical (or should we say ontological) lucidity.

So how does that contrast with Lynds? From what I can see, Lynds is attempting his own schematic shift. The problem is, as many people observe, the non-intermittency of time is not a new idea. But surely this is obvious from the existence of time intervals. We are all familiar with the implied creation of opposites - as soon as we comment on the absolute nature of space, the opposite (relative space) is immediately understood. Where we talk of a quantum packet of energy we understand, by evident contrast, the continuous 'flow' of a light wave.

But in the past we have accepted it as intuitive that the interval time fits into our picture of the world. If Lynds can bring such philosophical lucidity to the opposite idea (and I realise that I use the terms 'lucid' and 'intuitive' in the face of modern quantum-possibly a naive optomism on my part) then surely we must accept the heraldry of a new schema, if not the schema itself. I would like the sceptics to respond to this and explain: leaving aside experiemntal proof, how does the theory itself hang together?

[Inertia]

He has a new site at http://www.peterlynds.net.nz Note the link to his other paper on Zeno's paradoxes alone and the new one on time and consciousness....I know quite a lot about the topic, and I think its very obvious that he's right...I'm deeply impresssed

[TDHawkes]

Continuous Flow Dynamics – The Next Phase!


“Time enters mechanics as a measure of interval.”

“..there is not a precise static instant in time underlying a dynamical physical process.”

Peter Lynds, “Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminancy vs. Discontinuity,” to be published in Foundations of Physics Letters.
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/search.py?recid=622019


Mathematics and much of human thought, including language (words), is composed of established “processes” structuring the interaction between discrete “packets” of “something,” be that some kind of quantity or some kind of information, in order to communicate and make sense of experience.

This limits our ability to understand or communicate aspects of experience which don’t lend themselves to being quantified or encapsulated in a fixed form -- things like time.

Mr. Lynds’ work on time, which is generating such interest and controversy in the world of physics, has been criticized because it supplies no mathematical model to support its contentions. This is because our present mathematics has no adequate means for describing the continuous flow of energy, information, and matter which permits the Universe to exist.

Indeed, it maybe that our nervous systems have only in the last generation or two evolved to the point that we are capable of assimilating and organizing the massive amounts of information flowing continuously into our bodies from our environment, such that we can at last begin to conceptualize and organize our thoughts around what may be one of the central attributes of Nature – the Dynamics of Continuous Flow.

Our ancestors were so unsure of the flow of event and time that they actually believed if certain rituals were not performed at certain times of year that life itself would cease -- the sun would no longer rise, the rains would cease to fall, livestock and women would fail to bear offspring. They encapsulated their understanding and their experience into stories, rituals and beliefs which allowed them to feel anchored in the midst of constant change. In fact, if you examine most of the prayers and supplications of recent major religions (since about 2000 BCE) you will find that the God they postulate and petition is one who is changeless, static, and provides simple formulas for action which will permit life to continue felicitously.

All our philosophies and sciences were born within this conceptual framework postulating a static Universe composed of discrete elements interacting in precise, unchanging ways. But this was clearly just a stage in the evolution of our understanding – witness the rise of quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle, and relativity theory.

So, we have been moving into an entirely different mode of perception for quite some time now. With the aid of supercomputers, we can move even further beyond the last vestiges of old conceptual frameworks rooted in the notion of “staticness.”

Simply put, we need a mathematics, a language, and a philosophy whose structures do not arise from fear of or resistance to change – a mathematics, language and philosophy which does not encapsulate Dynamic Continuous Flow into discrete moments, objects, or processes but indicates direction, intensity, duration, interactions, and contents of Flow.

Mathematics evolves as our understanding evolves. We have seen many new mathematics arise throughout history —Euclidean geometry, calculus and its many variations, and recently fractal mathematics. We see that language evolves continuously. We do not speak the same language our direct ancestors spoke. In fact, English speakers in this 21st century, can no longer easily comprehend what we now call “Old” English, so many things have changed.

We are involved in Flow at all times, and have always been. What we need now is to seriously probe Mr. Lynd’s tentative notions, rise to the challenge he offers and create a mathematics that will adequately describe the continuous Flow of the Universe. Then we can interface new technologies with this Flow, do things, go to places our ancestors could only dream of.

c. 2003 TDHawkes

[philip slater]

It seems to me that a number of very interesting ideas, concepts, insights, observations and perceptions are being floated, aired, expressed or alluded to along the continuum of this thread.

Maybe some of these have just sprung fully formed into a human cranium somewhere. Maybe some of them have been mulled over for a period of time equivalent to the half-life of an average human being if there be any such. Maybe they have formed themselves in the interactive space between individual or group minds.

This, therefore, maybe might be as good a timeplace as any to ask the following questions of anyone and everyone who may be out there, and also to ask that they might be treated as requests for answers.

What, in your view, if you have had the time to study them, are Peter Lynds’ key concepts regarding his perception of the general attributes of the time concept?

How do these differ from previously held mental perceptions of the framework within which it is possible for things to happen?

Are these new insights going to help the humans to help Earth-developed species and intelligences devise, develop and spread to new ecological niches throughout the solar system and beyond, if no other local or general entity or entities have any objection.

Also, possibly the most difficult, can you answer these questions within the durational dimensions of an average post on UT forums, and could you please attempt to do so?

Philip

[Inertia]

Philip, you might want to check out http://www.peterlynds.net.nz/notes (particularly 1 and 9) - Also perhaps http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/200...c-gwi072703.php

[Chook]

Excuse me - but I alway thought that TIME was something like "rate of change" (no TIME no change/movement/thought even) and simply used for purposes of prediction - having in itself no significance; like "fast" or "hot".

CHOOK

[Matthew]

But time is relative. Somone on Earth will experience slightly less time than someone orbiting the Earth in the ISS. There isn't enough of a difference to worry about, but there is a difference!

[Maximum]

What is this life so full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?

People keep saying that in this 'modern' world we have no time to do this that or the other.

"There is no time to do anything."

Is it this the reason why nobody has yet had the time to try to write here a short and simple summary of what is Peter Lynds. view of time, what is new about it and how it changes things like how we look at the world, the universe and our place in time and space.

Or is it that we all, thanks to his theorising on the subject, have now come to realise that we don't understand the concept at all, or maybe that there is just no such thing as time?

[Matthew]

And if there is no time, then most of current physics is wrong. A lot of physics formula need 'time' in them to work. Are they wrong?

[Haglund]

Time as a concept is obsolete. It's a concept of the past... :-)

[Matthew]

Parker, what do you mean?

[Haglund]

Was just trying to be funny, by saying that time is not real, a concept of the past (would there be a "past" without time)

[I'm a Fan of Genisuses]

I reviewed what Lynds has to say, and I am impressed by his courage. He has done what I myself could not, which is to express how I feel. My name is CRL Scholar. I am afraid to even say my real name because I don't want it connected with my theories. In any case, I will at least clarify the difference between Lynds and Einstien. Lynds is a phylospher and Einstien is a scientist. There, that should do it.

But does that make Einstien right? Not about time, but about other things, yes. Lynds is wrong too. Time is defined in relativity to the amount of space an object can move going at a constant velocity. That was not defined by Einstien but by Newton. Einstien won a round with Newton only on the atomic level. He did what Newton could not, which is define the relationship between Energy and Matter. Perhabs overly zealous on the adrenalin from this win, he even dared to question what time was. But on that issue he lost to Newton. The issue with young physists these days is that they don't know their history. There are honorable mentions like Prince Louise-Victor Pierre Raymond De Broglie and Niels Bohr, who did a hell of a lot more work in correcting Newton than Einstien ever did. But anyone who believes that just because Einstien won a round it made him smarter than Newton is off his crock. Newton is the MAN in physics. Einstien opened up Pandora's box and allowed the world a second chance.

Earlier, someone asked what is wrong with Lynds statements. First, let me clear that up. The paradox he mentioned excludes velocity. It relies not on time but on the misconception that Achilles will run at a constant velocity. The idea here is Achilles is human. The time we want to know is at what time will he past the Turtle. In this case it is undefined. What Newton did to get time was he took out all conditions and made the body isolated and in motion under an pre-existing force. If Achilles was thrown in a vaccum, then we can estimate the time before he passes the Turtle. The problem with the Paradox is everyone has Achilles defeated because of his bad heel. But suppose Achilles realizes their doubt, and goes for broke. With this new found enthusiasm, he may get a second wind as a boxer suddenly does after accidently hurting an opponent coming in for the kill. This is called the Killer&#39;s Instinct. If Achilles gets a rush of adrenaline and is not hindered by his heel, the race is his. This is no paradox. It&#39;s bull****. The second problem, the dichotomy, is more like looking for pi than looking for time. The time at which pi terminates is undefined. Pi is now set at nearly 750 billion digits, and still growing.... whew&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33; But it has nothing to do with time, which in the case of the goal is already defined. How? Well, going at a set speed towards a goal, you define the time as the quantity of instances past before you arrive at that goal. So if the captain says we will be arriving in Japan at such and such a time provided that nothing strange happenes, generally, he&#39;s right, give or take a few minutes. The problem of this Paradox is, it is not a Paradox. The idea stated says you can not arrive at a goal because the distance to cover decreases in halfs. But if it is decreasing, eventually it must reach 0. You can argue it never does all you want, but not only does it, we can predict when. It reaches 0 when the distance is 0. And when is that? Well, you can calculate it with Newton&#39;s laws. The problem that Einstien has with Newton is Newton left T for time undefined. He needs a quantity for time. He doesn&#39;t come up with one, but instead uses Babylonian measurements of 60 minutes to the hour instead. It has been the standards for how we measure time for ages. Why would he stop then. The instrument for measuring time is the hourglass close to his time, before the Germans gave us clocks, and then dared to make them smaller via Rolex watches, and before the Japanese gave us digital clocks, and dared to make them smaller into digital watches. Application is more important than the thoeries, cuz that&#39;s where the money&#39;s at. But we know the Babylonian measurements are a system of faith, which Newton clings to. The smallest measurement for time is an instance which is set at 0. And event occurs in a flash or an instance implies before you can record the time it took. Time begins at 0.0000(infinity) + 1, which would be the smallest possible unit. And that&#39;s where the Paradox is: How can we have infinity plus a number? Einstien needed to say time started at the creation of the universe. He made the speed of light the fastest speed and defined an instance at the time it takes a proton traveling at a constant C to move a volume of space equal to it&#39;s own volume. So in a distance of 10 light volumes of space, light would have traveled at a time equal to T=d/C; divide that number by 10, and that&#39;s the smallest unit of time. Guess what? We don&#39;t know what that would be. We don&#39;t know the exact volume of light, and we don&#39;t even except light is the smallest unit of mass much less the fastest. On his win over Newton, Einstien turned GOD and decided to hand down phylosophical judgements on a concept he couldn&#39;t possibly dissolve. He should have left time the way Newton did, as faith. We now use a calendar to more meet our needs and we change the 30 in every month to a range between 28-31, but the Babs even added an extra-month every so-called leap year to keep the nights and days straight since unfortunately the Earth travels in a strange orbit and is not always in the same place away from the Sun during the year. Yippe&#33; That&#39;s why we have four seasons&#33; But there is no need to question seconds and minutes. That&#39;s a fools question, like questioning why does the universe exist, which is impossible to question for Humans without relying on phylosophy which means having faith in nothing. At least have faith in something we use every day and every minute: Time. When you are old and grey, you will then ask how did you get from a baby to an old geser, when time goes by, you can even measure how long its been since you were on the planet. Why? Just accept it by faith. Just know that it does and except it. Pi is a constant and when rounded off to 3 digits will always be 3.14. Why? Who cares&#33; It&#39;s digits never end. Why? We can keep dividing it because we can make infinitely smaller triangles to put into it. What is infinity? When pi terminates, we may have that answer. But don&#39;t bother to ask. And Lydns is moving backwords if he wants to now question Einstien. Einstien may not have been able to prove light is the best measure of time and that traveling faster than it will allow us to escape the realities of time and space, but at least he proved rigth on E=MC^2 (and even lived to see it demonstrated) before he went and dared to question Newton. Lynds will have to at least prove some Paradoxes in present physics, and some do exist which pushed Einstien into a period of isolation as he attempted to unify his beliefs with the many new observations in Quantum physics. But he couldn&#39;t even get past magnetic forces and gravity (Newton didn&#39;t even dare mention it in depth. Gravity is a force, and there are many Kinds.... END&#33; But he unlike Einstien came up with TONs of them with the corresponding mathematics).... so there is a place to start looking Lynds He, like Newton, is celebrated not for being the best physists, because Physics came after Newton, and Quantum Physics came after Einstien, but for opening the doors to these new fields of study and providing us with a direction and ideas to start proving or disproving as a way of making new experiements and documenting new observations. Please note that CERN is attempting to go one level lower to particle or rather high speed particle physics. There findings if they have an anti-particle system, may give us an anti-light, then an anti-time idea, and then we may have to consider an anti-big-bang theory, or rather, reverse big-bang... I wonder if darkness will spread over the world like that Never-Ending story idea :< I love that movie.

I think all this Greek Phylosophy and Greek Physics are going to get us into trouble. But it&#39;s not surprising since the Greeks were bad Mathematicians. In fact, I believe the Christian Bible had pi = 3. Now we know the Babylonians had a much better approximation nearly 1500 years prior...if you except Greek cronology--aka the Catholic cronolgy to coiencide with the bible, strickly enforced by the Church during the Renissance--and if not, almost 2500 years before. But wait&#33; 2500BC??? That&#39;s the exact time of Greek antiquity. How did the Babylonians get it? Mathematics, which the Greeks were never good at. As for India, a man by the name of Ramunaji gave the best Human produced way to find pi....which for some reason is not avialable in most mathematics books. Can anyone say Greek Pride? Except if they exisited 5000 years before, how could all their phylosophy now be so well recalled... even conversations between individuals. First let me just say even Newton begged that a comprehensive cronology of the dating of the universe be done in according to science, but the church had a hard time allowing it. Even Galilieo himself, who died under his attempts to question the church due to the simple statement of the Earth revolves around the Sun and not vice versa, dated the beginning of the univerese in accordance with the New Testemant, at some 4400 BC. Only Newton was willing to say that that is obviously impossible. For his time, what Newton was thinking was definitely inciteful. As for Einstien, I give him credit for being smarter than he should have been, ergo, a genius by those standards, which is how we measure Genius. Newton, when measure by that standard is far ahead of him, because his concepts were revolutionary when you consider he had to think them up with very little to work with and not as much factual observations made as what came after he opened the western world to physical secrets of the orients. He invented a new MATH&#33; Now that&#39;s a genius. If you want to know what Einstien shouldn&#39;t have known but did, that&#39;s easy to explain. Also, I don&#39;t except his redefinition of time, but then again I can&#39;t disprove it since I can&#39;t really redefine it. If you&#39;re interested in me explaining not only his genius but what conditions of the time allowed it to flourish to the heights it did, that I can explain too, but I won&#39;t unless asked since my explination is already too long.

Lynds&#33; Good on you mate&#33; Don&#39;t let the man get you down. Just keep on thinking. If it weren&#39;t for WWII, Einstien would have never had the conditions under which to turn his theories into applications. Oh, he got the last application wrong... and yes, he did try to prove it in application. If you doubt his Genius, tell it to the millions of Japanese who died under his E=MC^2 theory. He may not have been the first to come up with an approximation, some had it at E=3/4MC. But he was the first to apply it

[Inertia]

i admire his courage as well. here&#39;s a very interesting recent interview he did

http://ciencia.astroseti.org/astrofisica/e.../entrelynds.php

i also think I put in the wrong link before. it should have been http://www.peterlynds.net.nz/notes.html

[kafkas_hat]

Some comments about what I think has been a wonderful discussion:
1)I made a passing comment about Einstein and the Lorentz transformation. My point was not that Einstein "stole" the idea; he came up with the transformations through a more theoretically proper light. But that merely the reoccurring issue within academia of "stepping stones." The attempt to find a true origin and a true innovator becomes extremely arduous when you realize the answers probably have already rolled off of someone&#39;s tongue. As an aside, I completely disagree with the theory apropos Einstein and plagarism not only because of my previous statements, but my examinations of Ponicare&#39;s theories which never made the logical extension Einstein did.
2)Which brings me to Lynds. He discusses time and the erroneous notion of time in Physics as a "frozen entity," and instead sees it as continuous-discontinuous depending on the "subject." Nothing shocking here. Below are texts I used for an argument about time as merely a psychological function in my MA thesis:
a)Timaeus(the starting point---reveals Aristotle&#39;s attempt to make time a solid, hueristic definition of time--math based, and important in that respect.)
b)St. Augustine&#39;s "Confessions"(see X through XIII, I think&#33;---his notion of time is exactly what Lynds describes, though with more lucidity and many years ago)
c)Kierregaard&#39;s "Repetition"(time as psychological extended further)
d)Virginia Woolf&#39;s "Mrs. Dalloway"(the soldier&#39;s torn mental state and the theory of being "out of time" as a social pariah)
e)Nietzsche "On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life"(about time past, time present, and time future in a Nietzschean, dialectical form)
f)Henri Bergson "Matter and Memory"(a modern follow-up to St. Augustine&#39;s views and shows that the idea of time can be extended far beyond what Lynds espoused)
g)Jacques Derrida "Writing and Difference"(the cogito and connections to time are fundamentally important for modern theorists).
h)Faulkner "A Light in August"(extremely important literary example of Bergson&#39;s theories)
i)Proust&#39;s "Swann&#39;s Way"(the first page states "And as I would lay in bed, I would listen to the whistle of trains. At which point I would try to reckon the passage of time." Yes, a reference to Einstein&#39;s thought experiments and the whistles changing pitch which Proust mentions later references the Doppler effect. The well-known "eating of the madeline" flashback makes the point about time clear---everything becomes based on our mind.)

I think from these texts anyone can see the discussion of time historically and what Lynds intended. Maybe because I have been in this world, I didn&#39;t find Lynds work very important or groundbreaking. But it does offer a succinct examination of time as a psychological component, and the problem with the antiquated, solidified perspective which goes back to the "Timaeus" text.

So what do we do in Physics? What this means is as human beings we again come to the conclusion that we can never completely know reality. We always remain separated(my earlier Kantian reference glares its ugly head here), and the noumenal always untouchable. However, we make do. We accept mathematics and time because these constructs work most of the time. Through falsification, the realization that something is false(rather than proven true), what "works" will change.

I applaud Lynds for reminding everyone, especially those in the physics community of how the psychological plays an integral role in every study made(I think of the failure of measurement and various quantum issues, whether Bell&#39;s Theorem or Schrodinger&#39;s Wave theorem here). It does have reaching effects. If we achieve a Theory of Everything, will it ever be perfect? Can it be? Probably not. Something will likely slip through our grasp(Godel&#39;s number theory or Derrida&#39;s cogito for example). Mathematically it can explain the issues and the functions, but we remain separated not by the supposition being proven, but by the thing resting outside the number theory cycle which will some day prove the theory false in some way.

Thanks to everyone, Mr. Slater and the others, for forcing me to study physics and math theory more intently to clue myself in on all of their wonderful insights.