Gödel universes spin around an axis determined by geometrical laws that are extensions of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Time as we know it, intuitive time, may exist for us, but time from an objective perspective does not. As a consequence of both the spinning of our entire universe, and of a subset of spinning universes, time disappears. We have a choice of either a universe or of time, and since the universe exists, time does not. “For Gödel, if there is time travel, there isn’t time (Yourgrau, Palle, A World Without Time, The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein). Ontologically neutral are both temporal distance—past and future—and spatial distance.
Gödel and Einstein were brought together by circumstance. Both accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in the ‘30s when neither could remain in Europe any longer because of Nazism. Their outsider status also brought them into close proximity and as a 70th birthday present Gödel contributed an original essay that radically extended Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
I first read about Kurt Gödel last year (2011) and it caught my eye because I had had a similar idea to his about five years ago. What if the universe spins? I asked myself, and then a couple of other physicists and scientists. They had no idea, and had never heard of Gödel’s model. Then I read about Cooper’s interest in spinning universes and how she queried Arthur Gamow about them. She went on to develop concepts of dark matter and dark energy from this foundational perspective. So I pursued the original source and unearthed this fabulous book (above). Put yourself on my mailing list—I am sending it to all my interested friends as pre-Chanukah presents (or choose your reason to celebrate physics and the mathematics of the iconic Einstein and Kurt Gödel).
Einstein finds Gödel’s reasoning entirely reasonable and considered it an extension of his own mathematical understanding of the cosmos. There is a deep philosophical foundation they shared, most specifically that of the later works of Husserl, the phenomenologist. Husserl may be one of the most profound influences on my thinking. I am amazed he was just as influential for Einstein and Gödel. I am not the one to expound upon the philosophical principles at play here—read the book and get back to me.
This is the logic of an outsider, the logician whose Incompleteness Theorem establishes that mathematics cannot completely describe all phenomena. This is the person who Stephen Hawking failed to take down with his “chronology protection conjecture.”
Why do I care whether or not time exists? Music for me has rested upon a temporal structure. “Time is the skeleton upon which the flesh of music hangs” has been my mantra. I love meter. Indian ragas consist of tals of different meters and I have written pieces of various meters. I love playing with tabla players because their training is to improvise within complex meters. Jazz, too boring with 4/4 and ¾ and 6/8, needs to stretch out. Free jazz ignores meter at its own risk. No meter—better beware of boring. So if time does not exist, time must be imposed upon reality by someone. We are at the intersection of East and West. East—no time. West—time.
So, to a logician, which I am not, in a world without time, existing in spacetime, does consciousness impose time? Is there a “western” consciousness that imposes time? And does this western consciousness, the father of the scientific method, contain within it the seeds of no time?
m2theory 
Here is my 3D presentation of a spinning universe:
Hey Gareth,
I am speechless. My perspective is strictly earthbound–not celestial or informed by contacts. I will pay attention to other research and look for correspondances between your concept, Godel/Einstein rotation theory, and my own slightly twisted POV in the future.
I agree–it is a universe.
I would particularly like to know how your model matches up with these concepts. Much to chew upon.
peace,
Michael
Hi Bro,
I am enclosing a link to an article on nothingness. This is not the existentialist’s argument re being and nothingness–leave out the being. It is, from what I can tell, a typical quantum physics argument–these are the laws, they work, end of story. Einstein, even though he took Max Planck’s discovery of the quantum (1900) and ran with it to posit quantum solutions (the black box paper, 1905) that won him the Nobel Prize, fought the implications. Which is why I’m sending this to you as a partial response to your wise comment on the little note I wrote in my new webpage. Einstein and Gödel were quite religious and neither genius argued for the elimination of God as a first principle. Unlike Krauss, the lead author of this book (below):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/science/space/cosmologists-try-to-explain-a-universe-springing-from-nothing.html
In response to your excellent comment I should clarify your first parenthesized assumption. Einstein and Gödel were/are/will be never were (without time, is there tense?) metaphysicians but were rather in a very long tradition stretching back to Aristotle, Kant, and Plato. In fact, Aristotle’s concept of prime mover still bugs me, as it has since I first discovered it many years ago (if there is a past). In my thinking, the need for some primer mover is unnecessary in the study of science. However, the need to study the world in we inhabit does not exclude the possibility that our experience of intuitive time may be relative.
One of the reasons I am in so in love with this book is that it takes me back to those glory days in which people actually thought about these things, that physics and metaphysics had boundaries, and with the setting of boundaries I could examine them without the need for a religious belief system.
I have read (and even experienced) what you refer to as a transcendent status, but don’t wish to categorize it as “beyond” mind, space-time, or as a religious experience which is how you advance it as a proposition. But if Gödel, a supreme logician, extends the radical thesis founding Einstein’s position that time is relative, that it is part of space, and that if time doesn’t exist, perhaps we should consider the consequences, I’m ready to look down that road.
And, yes, such a transcendent status enfolds spacetime. To leave ego out of this, mind participates, but is not enfolded by the elimination of time-like conditions. This boundary, this limitation, does not obviate the purpose or meaning of Gödel’s argument. To my thinking, it leaves it open, which may be what both Gödel and Einstein might have approved.
Hey Bro,
Yes, here’s to the glory days when scientists were a little more aware of the limitations of their knowledge! This article you link to is a typical example, where this physicist claims to have “explained” the existence of the universe [assuming the science writer, who seems to have done a creditable job, is explaining his position correctly] using this “deus ex machina” [sans deus, that is] of the multi-verse — a fantasy web of mathematical formulae that might [or might not] be the answer to “Life, the universe, and everything”. Just seems somehow sadly desperate to me.
But I love what you say about having, and acknowledging, boundaries. I freely admit I know little or nothing about advanced physics, beyond my college intro course and my limited self-study since then, while you have made it your passion. My passion on the other hand is in the realm, as I said, of spirituality and metaphysics. These are sometimes incorrectly crammed into the same box as “religion”, but they’re more like second cousins than twins connected at the hip. Religions often derive from the spiritual revelation of an enlightened individual [Christianity, Buddhism and Islam eg.], but their followers and those who develop the institutions of religion mainly travel further and further away from the initial impulse just by the fact of institutionalizing the Master’s teachings.
Anyway, back to your main point, I would just like for once to see a modern scientist acknowledge that science can only go so far in explaining the origins of the universe, perhaps filling in the processes followed once there was a “there” there, but has to sit back when it comes time to ask, what preceded the “big bang”? Even if there is a “multi-verse”, does that preclude an omnipotent/omniscient Being any more than a single universe does? Of course not. Does the discovery of increasingly complex and subtle natural laws tend to rule out the existence of an all-wise creator? Or make such a one even more likely?
If we are to listen with even the slightest respect to the testimony of hundreds, possibly thousands of wise men and women who report first-hand experience of some kind of higher consciousness which they identify as the Self of all, then the specter of a biblical god shaking his lightning bolts at poor sinners can be set aside as tales fit for children, and a more mature consideration of an inner Reality that embraces both science and spirit can at long last commence in earnest.
[Reply part deux]
Or, if you prefer, the Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Taoism refer to an impersonal Reality, the Ground of our [and all] being which informs and fills this world [I promise I’m coming back to physics — soon.]. This Reality can appear as a featureless zero or Naught, or it can make our sensory world appear to be an illusion, a dance of Maya [appearances]. And there is a good reason we should pay attention to this — after all, our modern mathematics and science owes its’ existence to the discovery in India of the mathematical “Zero”, carried to the west by Arabic thinkers. And where would the computer you’re reading this on be if there were only ones, no zeros?! There goes your binary code!
But getting back to physics [see, I promised I would], whether you posit a supreme Person Who transcends all of time and space, or rather prefer a fundamental impersonal Being or featureless Consciousness-Force; either way, this is one way of looking at What preceded the Big Bang, what transcendent Infinite manifested this universe by releasing that single potent seed of pure force that expanded into all this. And my point is, if we posit this conscious Origin of all things, then what did that primal seed consist of [since before that event, there was nothing, not even a dream of nothing], other than the substance of that Origin Itself? And if that is so, then everything that proceeded from that Big Bang is also of the substance of that Origin, that space-time carries That as its’ fundamental essence. In which case, the discovery of quantum entanglement carries long echoes of the ancient proclamation that “All is One”, and follows perfectly the line of thinking above.
I think I will open up this discussion to others. Please, keep it serious. My brother wants a primordial first or primal spiritual principle. Nothing comes from nothing, he says. What do you think?
As soon as I dig up the referents to origins of the big bang, and referents to Alan Guth’s concept of inflation based upon negative false vacuum, specifically looking for quantum effects upon Planck-length energic state I’ll get back to you on the Old Man problem. Hey, if Einstein thought there is an Old One, I’m not throwing it out without deep analysis.
For now, let us say proof of the original spiritual essence promulgation of space-time is as provable as Super String Theory.
I appreciate your intent to bring into our bag of thoughts something having to do with primary intent. I cannot measure that.
You are not being logical. I cannot respond to something so irrational from a rational perspective. At the end of your thoughts you jump “back to physics” and invoke the same tired argument that because there is a beginning a supreme being began everything. I reject that argument. Just do not call the metaphor for the initialization of our own universe the “Origin” and we’ll get along fine.
It is this attitude that religion precedes knowledge that makes me tired. Religion is a system of thinking that predicates the sense of wonder about the unknown upon a “supreme Person Who transcends all of space and time” which because I do not see, I do not know. You may notice I am not a faith based person. Faith, East or West, is spiritual. Science is not faith based.
There may be parallels between scientific results and spiritual principle. In the observational level of science there is room for such speculative correlations. This does not make them valid or reliable which is a higher level of hypothesis testing.
Finally, “All is One” is not what quantum mechanics describes. Quantum mechanics ascribes to atheoretical positions. It is mathematical and very precisely measured. This was a sticking point between theorists like Einstein and mechanics-oriented quantum founders such as Bohr. Richard Feynman said no one can understand quantum mechanics. On that level there might be an argument that science and quantum mechanics occupy the same position–no one understands this area. Because I am not interested in accepting such a position I will remain agnostic on whether this is the correct line of reasoning.
Dear big brother,
You are absolutely correct — I am not being logical — or mathematical, or scientific. As I stated from the beginning, my POV is supra-rational, and I am only trying to build bridges between the Left and Right brains for those who are interested in crossing over to see what’s on the other side. Not trying to “prove” anything either. Just opening up minds over matter, for that matter.
So, for those Einsteins amongst us who do not feel they have to choose between rationality and spirituality [note — “religion” and “spirituality” have only a minor overlap, and I am speaking from the latter, and decidedly NOT the former], my comments are there to say, “There are options other than the reductionist materialist viewpoint”. Therefore I have no “argument” for you to reject. Only a world-view that may or may not enrich that which you [and many others, naturally] hold.
And just a point about terms. You speak of “faith” and “faith-based”. That term most often speaks of the irrational belief in a received dogma or credo. I prefer to speak of spirituality because for me, this implies an inner perception of a reality that transcends the material, and leads one to explore that inner landscape as assiduously as the scientist pursues natural law. I just enjoy drawing parallels, as you concede may well exist. And if they do, well that’s one way that science has always progressed, by an intuitive perception that eventually leads to a fruitful line of inquiry.
Well, that’s all I got. Over and out.
-will
I accept your position as a supra natural observer of the spiritual consciousness. And that is where I leave this discussion. I do not draw parallels. I am not reduction-proof but I am not a reductionist. I must be missing the point because while I believed we would be working on a raprochement I can see that we are living in parallel universes. So I bid you adieu from the flatland of my universe. See ya on the other side.
I’m no physicist or philosopher, but in my studies of metaphysics [whose ground your post is treading on], there is a status which is beyond Mind, beyond Time and Space, but which enfolds all of these. It is a Transcendant spirit, which is also the Self of each, and the Self of All. This status of transcendance contains all of space and time, but is itself far more than both together.
To say that in this condition there is no Time is true, but also true to say that there is all of Time, all at once. Same to say that all of Space is inherent in this status, although it is beyond all space.
I think of it like I would a musical score or movie script, with the difference that the music or film is already fully realized, and that the experience of Time is needed in order to experience the “Play” from start to finish, rather than all at once.
Make any sense?