TEMPORAL PHASE TRANSITIONS

Gödel/Einstein narratives are interrupted at critical times.  There is a phase transition at these points and the time-like narrative begins again, goes off in a new direction from a previous point, goes backwards, reversing entropy.  Time is relative to Einstein and space-time is also relative.  Time can go forward or backward.  But Gödel asserts that time does not exist.  Perhaps time exists but it can be interrupted.

Tonight I was listening to my bowels move in a glacially slow process that was the result of a very recent hernia repair.  It was as if time slowed down.  I was deeply in tune with my body.  I even heard different personalities within my psyche speaking to me, a very unusual occurrence for me.  One was a male, another a female who might have been in her 40s.  I got the distinct impression they were selves of mine that simultaneously exist but not in this space-time.

The tension between intuitive time and objective time commands attention. Gödel posits the need to exclude time or the universe, and since the universe exists, time does not.  From what I understand this holds true in a non-expanding universe.  I have to clarify this.  We do not live in a non-expanding universe so there might be a limiting factor and time does exist. Gödel expanded upon Einstein’s theory of general relativity which was originally founded in a static, flat universe.  The cosmological constant does not seem to be a part of Gödel’s reasoning.

There is the experience of cutting through the tangle, the web, the Feynmanian potential for all things to evolve in all possible ways, that Gödel’s logic wields like the sharpest knife.  Previously, my logic was dull so it cut poorly.  Now it is sharper–so sharp I can see an individual living in his or her own timeline.  Their time-like lives might be seen as narratives.  This is similar to but different from time-like determinism.  It is not defined as causative and thereby deterministic, but rather as narrative which includes deterministic as well as acausal events.  Illogical things happen to people. Chaos, while it does not always rule, intrudes in at-times mysterious ways.  Can we impute a religious motiv here, that things happen for a reason?  If you wish to impose order and meaning.  A religious motiv is valid here and does not need to be excluded.  If spiritual, out of space-time-like experiences occur, they might be for a reason.  They could be fractures in the continuum.  And fractures are described as abrupt.  The concept of a temporal phase transition is an attempt to describe them in a more inclusive manner.

I see phase transitions as boundary conditions that apply commonly when gasses transition to liquids, or to solids, and when solids transition to liquids or directly to gases.  A magazine, Phase Transitions, publishes papers on phase transitions that include

  • structural (ferroelectric, ferroelastic, high-pressure, order-disorder, Jahn-Teller, martensitic etc.) phase transitions
  • geophysical phase transitions
  • metal-insulator phase transitions
  • superconducting and superfluid transitions
  • magnetic phase transitions
  • critical phenomena and physical properties at phase transitions
  • liquid crystals
  • technological applications of phase transitions
  • multiferroics
  • quantum phase transitions

Transitions occur on the macro levels and on the quantum levels.  Super string theory does not exclude the potential for multiverses.  Temporal phase transitions are permitted within super string theory.  At each fracture point where time makes a transition to a different status time breaks off into a new space-time-like pathway.  I assert that this does not happen except in extreme circumstances such as when there is a singularity.  When mathematical equations approach infinity, temporal phase transitions can potentially occur.  Otherwise time-like experience cannot alter, and new time-like universes do not form.  This limiting condition introduces both consistency and clarity.

An individual is an individual due to temporal “narratives.”  Your narrative differs from mine even though you are standing right next to me.  You do not need to be moving at the speed of light for this to occur.  Any experience of an individual or monad is relative to the experience of any other individual or monad.  Please let me refer to a description of Gottfried Leibniz’s definition of monad in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  Time to Leibniz is an illusion.  Time is immanent to a monad and it is within time that monads transform into what they are.  Monads become what they potentially are in time.  Time does not exist outside an object or a monad.  I as a monad differ from you or anyone else in my transformative capacity.

My intuitive understanding of time as transmutative property agrees with Leibniz–different people (monads) might live in precisely similar universal lawfully grounded conditions and still be different because individuals do not occupy the same exact space-time position.  Since that would not be possible, we live relatively, and we see things and experienced things differently from each other.  Living relatively means something—all experience is valid.  This profound truth relativizes Truth, and, vice versa, large and small truths are valid for each of us because our experience is relative to every other being.  What is valid for me may not be valid for you, though we may have shared experiences and can communicate them through whatever medium we can.  Monads communicate, I believe, on a quantum level that permits us to relate to one another.  The relativized individual is connected, is entangled with, the other individual so we can understand one another.  I find this to be true concretely and abstractly, on the level of existence and on the level of abstract reasoning.

In extreme conditions our time-like relativization breaks down.  That is why Gödel states time does not exist.  Time obviously does exist intuitively, but mathematically and objectively it does not.  How this can be so is the subject of my meanderings.  I believe the complex world within which we live can be understood better if temporal phase transitions become part of the lexicon that includes relativistic time-like experience.

A better question to ask might be what are the phases?  Is time different at different times?  I don’t want to stumble into a time loop here, or into what philosophy refers as a tautology.  I think we would all agree that time can speed up, slow down, stop, is excited in the moment, or is eternal.  To an existentialist, time exists only in the moment and the point is to excite the moment, to intensify the moment.  To Moses on the mountaintop bringing down the 10 Commandments time is eternal and every Jew who was ever born, who exists at that moment, and who will ever exist is present.  Thus a phase that is transitioned into and out of has many temporal properties, not just a different time-like line.

When I play music I often play in time.  But even as I measure out the music in beats, I am in an eternal space of no-time.  Time stops for me and music subsumes everything.  I cannot believe this is not true for any poet in the moment of inspiration, every artist engaged in whatever medium, or every dancer, musician, or performing artist expressing someone’s poem, performance piece, choreographed piece, or composition.  Going back Leibniz, each monad realizes him/herself in the moment.  That moment exists in different phases.  Passing into and out of such moments I refer to as a temporal phase transition.  Gödel and Einstein would agree.