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RE: Is Time Travel is Possible?
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Better late than never, here are my thoughts. Firstly, time travel, in the sense of sending of a spaceship, having it return eighty Earth years later to find that only five years have passed for the crew of the ship, happens. Granted, not on such a dramatic scale, but the effect has been observed. A few years ago, on the Royal Society Christmas Lectures an atomic clock was placed on an airliner and flown around for a week or so. When it returned it was something like 0.0000002 seconds out of sync with a similar clock that remained on Earth. If this is considered to be time travel then we are all travelling through time constantly.
The argument that Bernie gives for supposing that if time travel were possible it would occur in the natural world is very suspect. Allow me to re-iterate the argument with my comments:
-If time travel were possible it would occur in the natural world.
Firstly, it may. One explanation for anti-matter is that it is matter moving backwards in time. Secondly not everything that is possible is observed in the natural world (the synthisization of certain elements for example, or even certain chemicals). Thirdly, it presupposes that everything that is possible (at least in some sense) has happened. Any argument following this line would need further explanation.
-Time travel in the natural world would be observable.
Not necessarily. This would suppose that either a) Time travelling objects only moved to within the observable universe, within recorded history (including fossil records, archaeological data, written sources etc.) or b) That the observer is omniscient. Denial of both poses no problem for the supporter of time travel.
-There is no evidence that time travel has occurred in the actual world.
-Ergo, time travel is not possible.
In fact all this argument proves is that there have been no recorded examples of time travel within the observed universe. To claim from this that time travel is impossible requires the claim that everything that is non-actual is impossible (which you may wish to argue for, but most would shy away from it).
Bernie then goes on to deny that the past exists, claiming that it cannot exist because we cannot interact with it. The example given is that I cannot eat a cheese sandwich in 1837. This is very true, but equally I cannot eat a cheese sandwich on Sirius B. The reason is very simple. I cannot eat a cheese sandwich on Sirius B because I am not there. Equally I cannot eat a cheese sandwich in 1837 because I am not there (or then) either. The fact that I (or Bernie) am not present does not mean that either Sirius B or 1837 do not exist. Just a couple of thoughts. People who are interested in this sort of thing might like to check out Time, Change, Cause and Effect in issue 1 of the British Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy, a superb article that I really cannot praise highly enough (if only because I wrote it).
When I get a moment I’ll knock out a few of my own ideas on this subject but I’m busy busy, and tend to change my mind on a daily basis anyway.
Love you
James
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