The American Spectator

There is actually a very basic explanation. While we, existing in the present, do go from past events to future ones, these events go the other way. First they are in the future and then in the past.

The question is whether time is a fundamental dimension along which the present moves/exists, or is it that motion is constantly rearranging the situation, so that the configuration of the pattern of what exists is continually changing and time is simply a consequence of this motion, as each arrangement is relaced by the next?

Does the earth travel the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow? Or does tomorrow become yesterday because the earth rotates?If you can appreciate that it is the latter, it does explain the many anomalies of time with which physics must contend, such as why it is affected by gravity and velocity. These affect the rate of atomic activity and thus the ticking of the clock determined by that activity. Time as the probabilities of the future collapsing in the activity of the present, then into the determined order of past events, describes a dynamic process, while time as a dimension going from the determination of the past into the vagaries of the future leads to the many worlds scenario, which proposes all possible paths be taken.

Simply, time is a consequence of motion, not the basis for it. This means it actually has more in common with temperature, the scalar average of motion, than space. In fact, I suspect this means space isn’t relativistic, but is an inertial frame that does determine such things as the speed of light and why atomic activity slows as it increases velocity. This point raises questions about current cosmology, but that’s another topic.

Suffice to say, I get little positive response when I raise this issue on various physics forums.
— John B. Merryman
Sparks, Maryland

TOUCHE
Re: Ken Blackwell’s Obama Is Right and Carter Is Wrong:

Has anyone asked Jimmy Carter, Bill Cosby, or the mainstream media if Obama’s persistent and ongoing criticism and slander of George W. Bush is racially motivated?
— Gerry Kendall   
Winnipeg, Canada

THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
Re: A Conversation With Irving Kristol:

With Kristol’s passing conservatism has lost what I consider the third of modern conservatives’ giants: Friedman, Buckley and Kristol. Their writings and editorships took this squishy early twenties moderate on an intellectual journey that settled me into a mature, deeply committed conservative.
— Paul Z.