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?
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