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What is time?

Michael A. Dingwall (michael_a_dingwall@hotmail.com)

Is time really moving?

Man has always wondered if he could defy time. The past, present and future are moving along, seemingly in perfect order. Could it be possible that we may be able to move back in the past or forward into the future? Can we really change our futures or are they permanently fixed?

Let us look at the issue of time from this angle. We know for sure that certain events in the past actually happened. World War I and II, the independence movements in Africa and the Caribbean and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, to name a few. What if we could go back to that time?

Why then, are we under the impression that time is moving forward? Could it be that at present, the past and future exists along side us and for some reason we don’t know it? Would it be better for us to know our futures?

Let us assume that we could go back. Let us also assume that we could come back. Let us call the past “A”, the present “B” and the future “C”. If we can move from B to A and from A to B then we know one thing for sure. That both A and B must be happening at the same time. The logic then follows that if we can move between A and B, we must also be able to move between B and C. Our present is the future of our past. This must therefore mean that B and C are also happening at the same time. This then means that A, B and C must all be happening at the same time.

If we can continue to move from A, B and C, then not only must they be happening at the same time, but they must always be happening. In other words, if we can move to any of these times and stay there at any time, then that time must always be there. The past, present and future must be existing permanently – an eternal present.

We have no hard evidence to support the concept of an eternal present. But we also don’t have any hard evidence to support the existence of any god, yet many people find one to worship. What we do have, however, are some strips of “evidence” that, admittedly, are not very convincing, yet which cannot be entirely ignored. “Evidence” that can be checked against known historical facts. Let us look at one possibility.

We all must have heard of a French scholar known as Nostradamus. This man lived during the sixteen century. He was a doctor, very brilliant and highly educated. He is mainly known for the many predictions that he has made and the alleged accuracy of some of these predictions. Checking through the prophecies, it is easy to see how many of them would be fulfilled. They are mainly general predictions that any educated person, after giving the issues enough consideration, could make. What makes this “prophet” different from the others, including Jesus and Moses, are some of his other predictions. These are prophecies about specific events and persons that appear to be more than inspired guesswork. These include the ones naming Hitler and Napoleon and the Spanish civil war in the “century of the sun”, naming the two main players – Franco and Riviera. These are events that occurred centuries after Nostradamus’ death.

If these predictions were in fact made by Nostradamus and not written after these events then attributed to him, then we must look at two issues to do with time. The first must be that the past, present and future not only co-exist, but there is some way of moving between them. The second must be that the events of the past, present and future must be fixed.

This now raises another issue. This being that our future is fixed. Again, we have to use our three time periods – “A” for the past, “B” for the present and “C” for the future. Let us now assume that event “x” will happen in the future (C), and we know this for sure. This event is fixed, now matter what we do. Some people will disagree, and say that if we know for sure that “x” will be happening in the future, then we can change what we do now, in the present (B) by doing an event that we can call “y”, to change “x”. But this is not true. Remember that our present is the future of our past; B is the future of A. At time A, the past, event “y”, which will be used to change event “x”, is a future event in B. Remember we are currently in the present, at B. The event “y” in B, the present for us now but the future for A is itself a fixed event, because, in relation to A (the past), it was a future event that must happen.

What or who then, one may ask, controls all of this? Is it some god, as some people believe? This does not appear so. If there is any intelligent being out there (or up there or down there or where ever), then he, she, it or them must also be following the laws of time like the rest of us. This is true even if this being(s) has full knowledge of the past, present and future. Whatever changes that this being, or these beings, make to the present to change the future known, will themselves be fixed events which have already been set.

Sounds crazy? Maybe not. Maybe the day will come, when we will be able to fully understand the past, present and future. We may finally get the answers to these mysterious questions that man has always been trying to answer. Who knows, maybe the events of today are events that our very distant future generations have “corrected”.

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