Speculations on the essence of time

Time exhibits a dual perspective with respect to sentient beings. That as described by Einstein as a physical dimension of Space and Time and that entropic experience of time by sentients. What creates confusions in our understanding of time is that both are intimately and simultaneously experienced. However dimensionality aspect of Time is a far more fundamental aspect of our time. It provides a unifying experience for sentient beings and inanimate matter. Its time arrow neutrality is an aspect of the laws of physics of the movement of particles, waves and fields of as of yet unorganized or under organized matter. Time as its entropic experience is a contextual law of nature. Entropy runs from low to high along a specific arrow of time. However all models for such behavior are based on undifferentiated and simplistic particles.

Life is obviously a contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics. But physicists retort that the lowering of entropy comes at the cost of low entropy shifting from the Sun into the Earth's biomass. Is self organizing matter limited to biological forms of matter and energy? Is there not self organizing matter outside the biological World. A virus lying desiccated on a table appears to be just a highly organized crystal. The part of Nature that we perceive is organized into complex and intricate structures.

The stability of the Sun. Earth's unusually strong magnetic field. Fortuitous collisions by a large planet with Earth leaving us a season stabilizing Moon. A Jupiter that sweeps the Solar system from incoming global destroying asteroids. One could make a reactionary leap of faith and introduce the unseen hand of God. Or what is much more plausible is an emergent self organizing process embedded with the Laws of Nature. Even a retreat into mere mathematical probability does not detract from this basic argument. Although it should have considerably length the process.

Note this does not violate Darwin's Natural selection. Since what is selecting is still an unconscious process. I propose that Darwinism be extended further out and into the inorganic World. The formation of Stars is perhaps the first step in Nature self organizing process. Through Supernova more complex forms of elements come into being. Solar systems are formed that create the stable and protective environments for further development. Black holes form holding together significant parts of the Universe together in order that those self organizing aspects of itself have a sufficiently diverse environment within which to develop.

Matter and energy appear to be an extremely small percentage of the existing expanding Universe. Yet all the structure that I refer to has developed within that part of the Universe. Dark matter roughly a third of the entire Universe seem to be performing some constructive role as gravitational glue holding together galaxies. However the 60% of the Universe that is Dark Energy is still driving the Universe apart from its constituent parts. These proportions between Dark and visible parts of the Universe are presumed fixed and determined by Quantum Mechanic during the Big Bang. But what if what we consider normal matter and energy are just an evolved aspect of the Universe.

Entropy is generally defined as unidirectional movement from low to high. But what if we are anthropomorphically dismissing potential repositories for order conservation and transformation. At face value the first and second laws of physics appear to contradict each other. The First law are the conservation of matter and energy and the second being the seemingly permanent loss of all order or thermal death. Shannon information entropy laws very much parallel that of the unconscious atomic particles. I think that this is not a coincidence. Another fundamental aspect of Nature needs to be added to the first Law of conservations. That of the conservation of information. Information not merely in its software aspect but its hardware as well. A galaxy or solar system embody information just as much or more than a greatest book ever written by Humanity.

An artificial dividing line has been made in between human or biological informational systems and more primitive systems like a galaxy. The very laws of physics are embedded in the Universe and often have an emergent existence. At the Big Bang all the four forces of particle physics where as of yet subsumed within a single governing paradigm. Only when the Universe had cooled down has the Strong, Weak, Electromagnetic and Gravitational forces reign supreme. I would speculate that perhaps given ever changing context other law currently unknown force of Nature will exhibit itself.

All the Law of physics whether that of the very large as modeled by Einstein or the very small as by Quantum mechanics have Time as bidirectional. How is it that we Humans perceive and experience it as unidirectional? Entropic perception for Human being itself has a dual nature. Reiterating Time is a dimensional as well as an entropic property. But within the strictly entropic perception lies the distinction between perception of an individual experiencing entropy as an individual and that of the individual within a species.

The individual perceives the ever accelerating disordering of his own body. Yet the Human acts as if he was eternal. Much of this is the case behind the act of reproduction which feeds this perception. Psychology is an important pathway which binds a society and the individual to the species. It is no less a aspect of the physical Universe then any other part, merely more difficult to quantify and model.

Regarding the actual process of entropy modification by an advancing civilization. It is clear that as society expands the lifespan of an individual his concept of time correspondingly expands. Modern man forgets what his perception of time was like when he only averaged 20 or so years. No doubt when Humanity multiplies his average life span almost fourfold again, reaching over 300 years his sense of time will change again. There are no natural limits to life expansion. No reason to doubt that one day we will learn to transform an egg sandwich into an egg.

In discussions of the unidirectionality of Time much is made that a human being knows his past and is completely unaware of his future. Neither is true. Few individuals know anything substantial about their past, many live entirely in the present and many very knowledgeable people can easily predict a great deal of the future. Knowledge of the future and the past are both accessible to genius and the hard work involved in exploiting that genius. The laws of Nature are there for all to see and study.

Present Time

What unifies Time as its dimensional and entropic aspects is Time as it is experienced in Real-time. A generalizable concept typically understood as Time in which sentient beings are immediately conscious of. In the Quantum mechanical World this is interpreted as the collapse of a wave function. Something which occurs when the observer directly interacts with the observed. This interaction is moderated by the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle which limits the classical possibilities of interactions. Classical physics allows the observer to completely measure all aspects of an observed object without limitations. Heisenberg discovered that their are limitations given the scale of the objects observed. Basically in the classical World very small particles like light photons can be shined on huge objects without effectively affecting that object. All that one wish to discover about the object can be safely performed.

Small objects are not only far more vulnerable, but are fundamentally different then large objects. They are able to simultaneously exhibit to qualities that would seem to be magically if a large object where to do so. In the atomic particle World, particles can be both point objects and and wave objects. It is only after an specific physical interaction that one or the other quality is exhibited. The story become even stranger. Particles do not exist as a distinct actuality until an interaction is performed. Quantum Mechanist's call this collapsing the wave function. Until the said interaction the particles lives in a probabilistic World.

Anthropomorphic interpretations of this phenomenon has led to paradoxes like Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. Where a cat is placed in a sealed and completely unfathomable box connected to a pipe which releases a poisonous gas. A controlling mechanism governed by a nuclear isotopes that releases alternatively or not a particle which triggers the release of the poisonous gas. Thus the cat is said to be stuck is a contradictory state of being both dead or alive. This paradox was meant to ridicule the concept of collapsing wave theory description of Reality.

The essence of the paradox is rather that it requires the existence of conscious observer to collapse the wave function. The cat's mortality is based on the collapsing of the wave function by the inanimate controlling mechanism.

Human beings collapse wave function all the time. In fact it is the important function of the autonomous nervous system. Our hand being touch by a flame reacts to this pain stimulus milliseconds before the conscious mind is cognizant of it. It is clear that inanimate objects have been collapsing wave functions for eons before any form of life existed.

I propose that what is defined to be the Present is precisely the collapsing of the wave function. The progress of time is the cascading of collapsing wave functions. It is much like the rippling of water when one throws a pebble into the water.

Note none of my ideas are original I am not a physicist. I am merely philosophizing. It is important to try pull them together in a manner that does not contradict the hard science driving the process all of these vast concepts as we explore them mathematically. Context and propective are essential even for the hard scientistis.