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The nature of time
environment of Earth: “Later when their bodies were examined in laboratories, it was found that they were killed by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared . . . slain after all man’s defences had failed, by the humblest thing that God in His wisdom put upon this earth.”
UK, Cambridge University Press, 1986), 680 pages, f40. Pioneeringthe SpaceFrontier.
References
2. 3. 4. 5.
1. Michael J. Crowe, The Extratmestriul Life Debate, 1750-1900: the I&a of a Plurality of Worlds from Kant. to Lowell (Cambridge,
6. 7.
the Report of the National Commission on Space (New York, Bantam Books, 1986), 212 pages, illus, $14.95. Hadley Cantril, The Invasion from Mars (Princeton, NJ, USA, Princeton University Paperback, 1986), 224 pages, f6.25. Crowe, op tit, reference 1, page xiii. Ibid, page 486. Ibid, page 403. Pioneering the Space Frontier, op tit, reference 1, pages 72-73. Cantril, op tit, reference 1, page 93. Ibid, page 23.
BOOKS Theories of time John Chris Jones The
Nature
Raymond
of Time Flood
and Michael
(eds) 187 pages, f19.50 hardback Basil Blackwell, 1986)
Lockwood
(Oxford,
UK,
The What is “the nature of time”? editors of this book seem to have decided that time can be perceived as an object, detached from ourselves, and that lecturers in the physical sciences, mathematics and in philosophy are the people who can best describe its nature. Their book is a collection of public lectures given at the University of Oxford, England, in 1985. Six of the authors are from that university and two are from others. To give an unbiased impression of what the text is like I’ve used random numbers to select one sentence from each author. The response of R (the reviewer) to each of these quotations is of John Chris Jones is a member of Futures’ advisory board and can be contacted via the editorial office.
FUTURES August 1997
equal length to it. The resulting conversation is meant to reveal more of the writers, and perhaps of the reviewer, than might appear in a ‘more objective’ way of reviewing the book. Although it is composed semi-randomly, readers may find more meaning than they might expect, particularly if the text is read more than once. Dennis Sciama: If the atmospheric p mesons were decaying at the same rate as they do in the laboratory, when they are moving at only a tiny fraction of the speed of light, then we would expect to detect only about one hundredth of the number we actually do. R: In describing one of the verifications of Einstein’s theory that time goes more slowly for fast-moving objects, you manage, as Einstein did, to show that, DOES connect, and yes, everything science IS as magical as art, or life. Thank you. W. H. Newton-Smith: This suggests that no satisfactory philosophical under-
484
Books
standing of the nature of space, time or space-time can be achieved by remaining at the purely semantic level. R: I learnt from your paper that Leibnitz refused the idea that empty time (and space) can exist in the absence of matter. But time, space, and matter too, are abstract words, depending on minds. Roger Penrose: But the Weyl curvature hypothesis unambiguously rules this out too. R: No, it’s Weyl and Penrose that do the ruling out. Hypotheses are not people. Michael Shallis: The suitability of galaxies as standard candles is not fuliy justified and galaxies may not necessarily have well ordered and stable luminosities, all of which leaves us knowing the deceleration parameter roughly to 0.5 + l! R: I like your awareness that theories of time are not truths but myths, revealing our beliefs. And I like your doubts about the evidence for expansion of the universe, upon which the theory of the big bangs, and the new cosmology, depends. P. W. Atkins: Heat is an energy transfer in which atoms are stirred into chaotic thermal motion; if a lot of energy is transferred as heat a lot of chaos is generated. R: In that sentence, as in the paper Dr Atkins, I feel the moral statements presented the implication that chaos is
rest of your presence of as facts, eg bad?
Paul Davies: So the collapse of the wave function, which is the key irreversible step, is associated with going from an overlapping superposition of worlds either to one concrete world or to the other. R: I see that you are writing of Niels Bohr’s ‘theory of theory’, a way to resolve the contradictions of physics by ‘including the physicist’. Does the new physics do this? I fear not.
J. R. Lucas: In our generation scientists have come to recognize their moral and appreciate that responsibilities, although a particular science cannot answer questions of right and wrong, that does not mean that these are questions that scientists can put aside. R: Is it right, or wrong, to present time as an abstract object, ignoring that it is we, the mortals, who inhabit it, name it, live it, independently of ‘the world of clocks’? Surely to do this is one of the crimes ‘of our time’, that of treating life as mechanism, people as things. M. Dummett: The assumption of the paradox is that, in every instance in which someone chose to take both boxes, the closed box proved to be empty, and, in every other instance, it contained $10000: all those choosing both boxes got $1000, and all those choosing only the closed box got $10000. R: It’s the implausibility of the examples so often used in philosophy that leads me to doubt such theories. As you are trying to illuminate the idea that time past can be changed by actions in time present, why don’t you give the example of history, a fabrication if ever there was? Having composed this rather one-sided conversation with the authors, what can I say to the editors? As a picture of ‘scientific time’ (that of clocks, taken to extremes, where it begins to contradict itself) I have found your book to be both informative and fascinating. But almost everywhere it is written without awareness of itself, or of what’s outside itself. I’d like to know why, in attempting to state “the nature of time”, you have invited no one to speak of language, of memory (or of Marcel Proust!), of anthropology,’ of history, of Utopian writing, of political revolution, of religion, of futurology, of Kant, of Hume, of Marx, of Heidegger or of anyone else who has thought profoundly about time but is not a writer on modern physics? Do you really believe that physical science is ‘above every-
FUTURES August 1987
Books 485
thing’ and ‘above mind’? That it is ‘true’? And to us, the students of future, what is the relevance of this book? I’d say that it is very relevant, that discussion of ‘ ‘the nature of time” is something we need to do ourselves. If we did discuss it, possibly at a conference of futurologists together with all the different kinds of theorists included in, or excluded from,
this book, the results could be profound, perhaps disturbing. Would futurology survive? Perhaps not, but if it didn’t might surprising something more emerge. New life. Note I. Yes, Michael Shallis writes with awareness of anthropology but that is not the substance of his paper.
ODinions about this and that Trevor Williams Science and Beyond Steven Rose and Lisa Appignanesi (eds) 211 pages, f 14.95 (Oxford, UK, Basil Blackwell, 1986) This is an entertaining
book. How useful
is it?
The core of the book is, in the words of Steven Rose’s Introduction, the exploration of “themes of major conceptual controversy in science, where conflicting positions have been taken, where the kaleidoscope [of theory] is constantly the patterns re-interbeing shaken, preted. . . . In each case our method has been to invite leading protagonists of particular positions in a controversial area to state their case in debate.” The first such “debate” is between James Watson and Steven Rose. The subject is the limits to science. Watson believes that in the next lo-20 years the pace of discovery in biology, or more generally in science, will not slow. He rejects various possibilities for attempting to limit scientific advance and concludes that the major task is to respond rationally and compassionately to what is discovered. In opposition to Watson’s
Trevor Wmiamf is a management consultant, and a member of Futwcs’ advisory board, and can be House, Dinedor, contacted at Bodenham Hereford and Worcester HR2 6LQ, UK.
FUTURES August 1987
view, Rose argues that sf’ience is unavoidably limited by ideology and by institutions. It should, also, be limited by ethics. This would best be done by opening “all laboratories up to community involvement in their direction”. Part II of the book contains two debates. John Maynard Smith believes that Darwin’s theory is correct, although not suflicient for a full understanding of evolution. In “Is Biology an Historical Science’ ‘, Brian Goodwin argues that Darwinian insights may prove to be less important than increased “understanding of morphological stability and change”. The second of these debates is about sociobiology. The burden of Richard Dawkins’ discussion is that the “alleged ‘debate’ or ‘controversy’ over sociobioiogy” is misplaced. Patrick Bateson in his response is less concerned with the field of enquiry itself than with the danger of its appeal to “people with a strong interest in maintaining their [own] power and privileges”. The fourth of the book’s debates is about brains and machines. Margaret Boden states that to function intelligently does not need protoplasm. The response from Patrick Wall and Joan Safran centres on the notion that human and ‘intelligence’ are at best non-human analogous. Richard Gregory offers a brief, witty commentary.
UK, Cambridge University Press, 1986), 680 pages, f40. Pioneeringthe SpaceFrontier.
References
2. 3. 4. 5.
1. Michael J. Crowe, The Extratmestriul Life Debate, 1750-1900: the I&a of a Plurality of Worlds from Kant. to Lowell (Cambridge,
6. 7.
the Report of the National Commission on Space (New York, Bantam Books, 1986), 212 pages, illus, $14.95. Hadley Cantril, The Invasion from Mars (Princeton, NJ, USA, Princeton University Paperback, 1986), 224 pages, f6.25. Crowe, op tit, reference 1, page xiii. Ibid, page 486. Ibid, page 403. Pioneering the Space Frontier, op tit, reference 1, pages 72-73. Cantril, op tit, reference 1, page 93. Ibid, page 23.
BOOKS Theories of time John Chris Jones The
Nature
Raymond
of Time Flood
and Michael
(eds) 187 pages, f19.50 hardback Basil Blackwell, 1986)
Lockwood
(Oxford,
UK,
The What is “the nature of time”? editors of this book seem to have decided that time can be perceived as an object, detached from ourselves, and that lecturers in the physical sciences, mathematics and in philosophy are the people who can best describe its nature. Their book is a collection of public lectures given at the University of Oxford, England, in 1985. Six of the authors are from that university and two are from others. To give an unbiased impression of what the text is like I’ve used random numbers to select one sentence from each author. The response of R (the reviewer) to each of these quotations is of John Chris Jones is a member of Futures’ advisory board and can be contacted via the editorial office.
FUTURES August 1997
equal length to it. The resulting conversation is meant to reveal more of the writers, and perhaps of the reviewer, than might appear in a ‘more objective’ way of reviewing the book. Although it is composed semi-randomly, readers may find more meaning than they might expect, particularly if the text is read more than once. Dennis Sciama: If the atmospheric p mesons were decaying at the same rate as they do in the laboratory, when they are moving at only a tiny fraction of the speed of light, then we would expect to detect only about one hundredth of the number we actually do. R: In describing one of the verifications of Einstein’s theory that time goes more slowly for fast-moving objects, you manage, as Einstein did, to show that, DOES connect, and yes, everything science IS as magical as art, or life. Thank you. W. H. Newton-Smith: This suggests that no satisfactory philosophical under-
484
Books
standing of the nature of space, time or space-time can be achieved by remaining at the purely semantic level. R: I learnt from your paper that Leibnitz refused the idea that empty time (and space) can exist in the absence of matter. But time, space, and matter too, are abstract words, depending on minds. Roger Penrose: But the Weyl curvature hypothesis unambiguously rules this out too. R: No, it’s Weyl and Penrose that do the ruling out. Hypotheses are not people. Michael Shallis: The suitability of galaxies as standard candles is not fuliy justified and galaxies may not necessarily have well ordered and stable luminosities, all of which leaves us knowing the deceleration parameter roughly to 0.5 + l! R: I like your awareness that theories of time are not truths but myths, revealing our beliefs. And I like your doubts about the evidence for expansion of the universe, upon which the theory of the big bangs, and the new cosmology, depends. P. W. Atkins: Heat is an energy transfer in which atoms are stirred into chaotic thermal motion; if a lot of energy is transferred as heat a lot of chaos is generated. R: In that sentence, as in the paper Dr Atkins, I feel the moral statements presented the implication that chaos is
rest of your presence of as facts, eg bad?
Paul Davies: So the collapse of the wave function, which is the key irreversible step, is associated with going from an overlapping superposition of worlds either to one concrete world or to the other. R: I see that you are writing of Niels Bohr’s ‘theory of theory’, a way to resolve the contradictions of physics by ‘including the physicist’. Does the new physics do this? I fear not.
J. R. Lucas: In our generation scientists have come to recognize their moral and appreciate that responsibilities, although a particular science cannot answer questions of right and wrong, that does not mean that these are questions that scientists can put aside. R: Is it right, or wrong, to present time as an abstract object, ignoring that it is we, the mortals, who inhabit it, name it, live it, independently of ‘the world of clocks’? Surely to do this is one of the crimes ‘of our time’, that of treating life as mechanism, people as things. M. Dummett: The assumption of the paradox is that, in every instance in which someone chose to take both boxes, the closed box proved to be empty, and, in every other instance, it contained $10000: all those choosing both boxes got $1000, and all those choosing only the closed box got $10000. R: It’s the implausibility of the examples so often used in philosophy that leads me to doubt such theories. As you are trying to illuminate the idea that time past can be changed by actions in time present, why don’t you give the example of history, a fabrication if ever there was? Having composed this rather one-sided conversation with the authors, what can I say to the editors? As a picture of ‘scientific time’ (that of clocks, taken to extremes, where it begins to contradict itself) I have found your book to be both informative and fascinating. But almost everywhere it is written without awareness of itself, or of what’s outside itself. I’d like to know why, in attempting to state “the nature of time”, you have invited no one to speak of language, of memory (or of Marcel Proust!), of anthropology,’ of history, of Utopian writing, of political revolution, of religion, of futurology, of Kant, of Hume, of Marx, of Heidegger or of anyone else who has thought profoundly about time but is not a writer on modern physics? Do you really believe that physical science is ‘above every-
FUTURES August 1987
Books 485
thing’ and ‘above mind’? That it is ‘true’? And to us, the students of future, what is the relevance of this book? I’d say that it is very relevant, that discussion of ‘ ‘the nature of time” is something we need to do ourselves. If we did discuss it, possibly at a conference of futurologists together with all the different kinds of theorists included in, or excluded from,
this book, the results could be profound, perhaps disturbing. Would futurology survive? Perhaps not, but if it didn’t might surprising something more emerge. New life. Note I. Yes, Michael Shallis writes with awareness of anthropology but that is not the substance of his paper.
ODinions about this and that Trevor Williams Science and Beyond Steven Rose and Lisa Appignanesi (eds) 211 pages, f 14.95 (Oxford, UK, Basil Blackwell, 1986) This is an entertaining
book. How useful
is it?
The core of the book is, in the words of Steven Rose’s Introduction, the exploration of “themes of major conceptual controversy in science, where conflicting positions have been taken, where the kaleidoscope [of theory] is constantly the patterns re-interbeing shaken, preted. . . . In each case our method has been to invite leading protagonists of particular positions in a controversial area to state their case in debate.” The first such “debate” is between James Watson and Steven Rose. The subject is the limits to science. Watson believes that in the next lo-20 years the pace of discovery in biology, or more generally in science, will not slow. He rejects various possibilities for attempting to limit scientific advance and concludes that the major task is to respond rationally and compassionately to what is discovered. In opposition to Watson’s
Trevor Wmiamf is a management consultant, and a member of Futwcs’ advisory board, and can be House, Dinedor, contacted at Bodenham Hereford and Worcester HR2 6LQ, UK.
FUTURES August 1987
view, Rose argues that sf’ience is unavoidably limited by ideology and by institutions. It should, also, be limited by ethics. This would best be done by opening “all laboratories up to community involvement in their direction”. Part II of the book contains two debates. John Maynard Smith believes that Darwin’s theory is correct, although not suflicient for a full understanding of evolution. In “Is Biology an Historical Science’ ‘, Brian Goodwin argues that Darwinian insights may prove to be less important than increased “understanding of morphological stability and change”. The second of these debates is about sociobiology. The burden of Richard Dawkins’ discussion is that the “alleged ‘debate’ or ‘controversy’ over sociobioiogy” is misplaced. Patrick Bateson in his response is less concerned with the field of enquiry itself than with the danger of its appeal to “people with a strong interest in maintaining their [own] power and privileges”. The fourth of the book’s debates is about brains and machines. Margaret Boden states that to function intelligently does not need protoplasm. The response from Patrick Wall and Joan Safran centres on the notion that human and ‘intelligence’ are at best non-human analogous. Richard Gregory offers a brief, witty commentary.