On Wed, 14 Nov 2007, Charles Henry wrote:
Zen master Dogen tells us that we say time is passing because we live in time. In fact, we are passing in time, and time stays exactly where it is.
time seen as the 4th space dimension is also a result of Einstein-Minkowski theory. It wasn't the only step in that direction, not the first step, but it was a major shift. There's a version of Pythagoras' theorem for that space-time, in which the only difference between space and time is that they have a different sign. Thus time is a kind of space with a scale factor equal to square root of -1. (You may also get to this scale factor by fiddling with the wave equation.)
Whether time "moves" or "stays exactly where it is" is a metaphysical question: you can't make an experiment that distinguishes the two possibilities. Thus it's just a matter of how we explain things to ourselves.
Maybe we can find 2-D time through transcendance. hmmm an external for that?
I think that there is hope in reversing the roles of time and space in equations, such that you have 1-D space and 3-D time. I don't think that we'd be able to get to exactly 2-D time. Thus I believe that there is more hope in [line~~~] than in [line~~].
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