Word of the Week: A Series of Time
Definition: Time has an actual temporal becoming to it. There is an objective past, present, and future.
More about the word: The special theory of relativity (STR) states that clocks in motion slow down. This time dilation occurs with respects to the observer. In the early 1900’s, Albert Einstein’s STR changed how physicists and philosophers viewed the previous Newtonian paradigm of absolute simultaneity. If STR is correct, then an observer in motion will experience time at a slower rate than an observer at rest. Perhaps, given STR, the A series of time is really illusory since the experience of time is relative to the subject (the object being the spacetime fabric).
STR may still permit an A series of time where the subject’s experience of objective becoming is supported by the object’s relation to the subject. There are two concurrent ways this may be done: Lorentzian simultaneity (from the physical approach) and God as the prime reality (from the metaphysical approach). Hendrick Lorentz proposed the idea that time and length are absolute but there is no way these measurements could be made since the measuring devices are in motion.
Lorentz’s equations for local time and transformation may aid the A theorist in the subject to object relationship with the observer being the subject and spacetime being the object; however, if the object is changed to God then perhaps the observers experience of becoming is objective [or perhaps a metaphysical time]. Propositions that appear in the past tense are true if and only if that proposition was true at that moment it describes. The proposition, “It rained yesterday on March 12” is true if and only if today is March 13 [or any later day] and it rained the day before March 13. If the observer experienced an earlier-than, later-than sense of becoming respective to March 12 and March 13 what criteria would warrant a rejection of that sense of becoming? If on March 12 the observer objectively experiences rain and then affirms the truth of the proposition “It rained yesterday on March 12” the next day it seems that the proposition is objectively true as it stands in relation to the event and the observer. If the event experienced (absolute becoming) is objective and the proposition “It rained yesterday on March 12” is true on March 13 then perhaps the referent for temporal becoming is not mere spacetime but rather God.