Time after time

When Einstein developed his special theory of relativity, and later his general theory of relativity, he did not address the implications of this theory for the existence of time. Indeed, he seemed somewhat averse to doing so. But mathematician (and Einstein’s close friend) Kurt Gödel, did not have such apprehensions. His view can be summarized this way: If time is really just another physical dimension (the fourth dimension of space-time), then time as we understand it, can’t exist. Time as a river that flows along just doesn’t exist, because a spatial dimension doesn’t flow, just as width doesn’t flow, height doesn’t flow, etc.


The question is, how is that we do experience time as something that flows (what Gödel referred to as “intuitive time”)? One way of thinking of this is by analogy. Think of a strip of motion picture film. We watch the film shown through a projector, and it seems that things and people are moving on the film. But of course, they’re not. There are, on the film, a series of still two-dimensional photographs (length and width) arranged in order so that as light passes over the individual photographs in rapid succession through the third dimension (depth), they appear to us as movement. But the reality is they are static.


Now imagine this again, except instead of two-dimensional photographs, there are three-dimensional photographs (length, width, and depth) which are static; they don’t move. They’re arranged in a particular order and arrangement through the fourth dimension (time). Then, somewhat like the light in the movie projector, our consciousnesses pass through these static stills and this produces the impression or “illusion” of intuitive time.


The key point here is that it’s not our bodies or environment that’s moving. Rather there are countless copies or versions of our bodies and environment arranged in these 3D stills; it’s our consciousnesses that are moving through the stills.


This is exactly how time is presented on Lost. Brilliantly, when Daniel Faraday experiments with time travel, he doesn’t send the rat’s body back and forth through time, but her consciousness. Likewise in the episode “The Constant” Desmond’s body doesn’t travel through time, but his mind does. In effect what’s happening is his mind is passing through the arranged sequence of stills in his life then suddenly he skips back to a much earlier slide (in 1994?) and then moves along nicely in that part of the still arrangement, then jerks suddenly back ahead to a much later part of the sequence. In other words his body doesn’t move through time because it’s stuck in each of those slides; only the mind is free to skip back and forth between the slides.


On the other hand, on the island when Ben turns the donkey wheel and moves the island, the wheel gets off track and the people on the island move back and forth through different times; not just their minds, but their bodies as well. Remarkably Daniel Faraday describes this as being “unstuck”; that is, their bodies as well as their minds are unstuck from the stills and actually move to other stills in the island’s “life”.


There’s another application of this view of time that is demonstrated on Lost: the occurrence of event conundrums in the story. I mentioned one of these in my last post. Locke lands on the island and, long story short, meets Richard Alpert who tells Locke that he will be the leader of the Others. Eventually as the survivors skip through time, Locke meets Richard in 1954, two years before Locke will be born and tells Richard that he (Locke) will be their leader because Richard told him so. He also says, “May 30, 1956 I’m born….if you don’t believe me, I suggest you pay me a visit.” Then Locke disappears, an event sufficiently impressive enough that Richard takes Locke up on his invitation, goes stateside in 1956, and sure enough, there’s infant Locke. Richard is impressed enough that he visits Locke again in the early 60’s and even when Locke fails his test Richard gives him another try when Locke is a teenager. By the time Locke comes to the island, Richard is convinced that Locke is their leader and tells Locke so. So when Locke goes back in time to 1954, Locke tells Richard……


You see that there simply is no beginning or end to this loop. Which makes no sense because things have to have a beginning and end, right? Not according to Einstein’s and Gödel’s view of time. If all fractions of a second are 3D stills that are arranged in a sequence, maybe some stills are arranged in a circle and one consciousness can enter at any point and exit at any point. Richard’s consciousness entered that loop in the 1954 meeting, while Locke’s consciousness entered the loop in the meeting with Richard in 2004 after the crash.

Another example of this kind of loop is the connection between Sayid and Ben. Ben is a sociopath who commits atrocities and ultimately manipulates Sayid to kill many people for him. Then Sayid goes back in time and meets Ben as a child in 1977. Ben totally trusts Sayid and looks to him to liberate him from his abusive father. Instead Sayid shoots Ben in the chest intending to kill him. While Ben does not consciously remember the details of this event, the producers themselves have stated that this event was pivotal in turning Ben into the heartless sociopath that commits atrocities and ultimately manipulates Sayid to…..


Again, we can understand that all the moments in these events are arranged in one giant loop which Ben’s consciousness entered in the 1977 meeting with Sayid and Sayid’s consciousness entered in the first 2004 meeting.


All this seems very neat and tidy except for two things. First, even if all events are series of static motionless 3D stills arranged in the fourth dimension, our minds still move through them. And movement requires time. It’s like the sunrise: the sun doesn’t actually rise; it’s static; rather the earth turns. But something moves. Maybe the physical universe doesn’t actually move in the passage of time, but our minds do; something has to move for us to perceive movement and time, even if, as with the sunrise, what seems to be moving is static and what seems to be static is moving. This is what’s wrong with Justin Barbour’s thesis in his book, The End of Time: in this treatise on time, similar to Gödel’s, he nevertheless makes the further claim that Gödel never made: there is no movement at all. But that is clearly impossible. Movement may be different than what we perceive, but it can’t be altogether absent. The sun may not be actually moving, but earth and sun can’t both be still. Likewise, the physical universe may not be moving, but our minds are. And that means there’s still time. Only that time, i.e. intuitive time, is a spiritual, not a physical phenomenon. And that in turn opens up the possibility for what Faraday considers the great revelation: that we are the variables in the equations of relativity. Our free will allows us to make choices and therefore to move to other series of events. This seems to resolve the dilemma of destiny vs. free will. Destiny is where you end up if you stay on a given track of stills, but one can, by choice move to another series of stills. This seems to be what lies ahead for those who blew up the nuclear device in the finale of season 5.