ATDTDA (5.1) - The Etienne-Louis Malus

[Joseph T]

Last year
On Apr 4, 2007, at 8:10 PM, Monte Davis wrote:

> David C:
> > Kurt Goedel, late in his life, wrote a chapter of a book  
> dedicated to Einstein
> > on his 70th birthday, in which he demonstrated the possibility of  
> universes that
> > conform to Einstein's relativity but in which physical time  
> doesn't exist.
>
> See my post to Ya Sam a few minutes ago: from the photon's PoV, no  
> less privileged than ours, *this* universe is one of 'em.
I think I am well out of my depth here, but isn't the reason that the  
photon doesn't experience time because it has no independent POV.  If  
it could see, for example, wouldn't it experience changes of scene  
which would approximate time as we experience it.

Couldn't  space be made to appear to be  just as illusory as time.  
Would there be space without time? They seem inseparable to me. But I  
distrust anything that is "pure" abstraction, and to me space  
separated from time is that.

My physics teacher tried to explain the possibility of a 4th spatial  
dimension by imagining moving from a plane to real space.I personally  
cannot for the life of me relate to the idea of a plane. There are no  
actual planes as far as I can tell. A plane or a line is a useful  
mathematical fiction.

I mean did Goedel "demonstrate the possibility of another universe  
that..."? I think not. He demonstrated that mathematics or the rules  
of mathematics would allow it . To me this  is not altogether  
different than saying something is possible because the "rules of  
language" allow it.

Right now we have a chemical theory of the origin of living organisms  
which should allow us to make some primitive living stuff, but there  
is a huge gap between that theory and what science or time or  
physics  or technology will allow. Maybe we are trying to reverse  
engineer something that has no reverse.

Then again, maybe not.

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