Things Happen Because Time Exists

by Brian on 12-08-2009

Diving in even further over my head, here’s further elaboration of the philosophy I use.

To understand why we do things, we have to appreciate why things happen at all.

It’s ridiculously simple: things happen because time exists.

I’ve found this principle to be a useful heuristic for grounding uncertainty and making random occurrences continuous with the rest of experience.

If something weird happens — e.g. someone acts crazily, markets go haywire — rather than guessing wildly at causes or dismissing the event as completely unexplainable, we can start by reminding ourselves that “something had to happen” and organize our thoughts from there.

In many cases there isn’t enough information to know why or how something occurred, sometimes we have to wait for more information or develop some intermediate ideas first.

But some people (like me) can’t wait; we need something to fill that gap while we continue to wait and work for something better.

The principle that “things happen because time exists” looks a lot like vitalism (an old idea, largely discredited), except instead of postulating some kind of “force” that’s impossible to ever prove or disprove, this principle simply recognizes and respects temporal qualities that are undeniable in reality but are very difficult to transcribe into theory.

Refer back to my earlier post on object bias, or reification, and consider how we evolved for survival in a world of concrete objects.

We naturally think in terms of permanent objects; time is something we intuit quite naturally through our actions but we have trouble forming it in our conscious minds without making time analogous to space.

(As discussed by Lakoff and Johnson in Metaphors We Live By and Philosophy in the Flesh, and reiterated by Steven Pinker in The Stuff of Thought.)

Try to visualize the smallest particles of matter. If you’re like me you see little stone-like objects, to which only then am I able to add temporal qualities like motion and change.

Now try doing it the other way, try imagining particles with only temporal qualities first…

If you’re like me you can’t do it — it seems absurd — because I don’t know of anything that’s purely temporal. My brain isn’t equipped for it.

As far as anyone really knows, there are no purely temporal objects, everything must have spatial qualities like location and volume.

But take a closer look at life, everything has temporal qualities too — everything moves and affects other things — nothing is purely spatial.

Yet we routinely allow ourselves the liberty of imagining purely spatial objects with no temporal qualities.

For the sake of balance, what would happen if we allow ourselves to postulate purely temporal objects as well?

That isn’t as weird as it might initially seem, we sort of already do: think of uncertainty and chance.

Science makes use of purely temporal concepts (in the sense I’m using the term) by applying notions of uncertainty and chance in theories of quantum physics and evolution.

The idea that “things happen because time exists” doesn’t really answer anything, it’s a way to admit uncertainty and ambiguity where it belongs, to prevent myself from resting too comfortably on supposedly stable facts and ideas.

http://www.phronk.com phronk

Would time exist if things didn't happen?

Seriously, does the existence of time necessarily imply change? Thinking in spatial metaphors, as we're designed to do, you can think of time as the distance between two things that happen in the same place. In that sense (and ignoring quantum properties), time can flow on just fine without any change, instability, or ambiguity except in the linear flow of time itself.

Of course, in the real world, everything has been set in spatial motion and allowed to bounce around thanks to time, so your point holds true.
http://brianfrank.ca Brian Frank

Good question.

According to the SEP's article on Time, this is an old philosophical controversy, with Plato and Newton having argued that time exists independently of events (like an empty container) and Aristotle and Leibniz having argued that everything we can say about time can be reduced to events.

Needless to say I don't expect to settle it…

This is something I've been carrying around for a while, and pretty much “believe,” but now that I'm trying to really make a public case for it I'm having a lot of doubts – though arguing the other way I'm convinced is much more difficult and less fruitful.
http://www.plumblinemedia.com/james James Shelley

Lewis Mumford postulated that “time” as a concept “originated” because of the ringing of church bells at regular intervals, reminding the residents of the city of the to pray regularly. Thus was born the divisional atomization of hours into societal governing minutes and seconds. Prior to “time” being understood in this way, Mumford says, everything was referenced to EVENTS themselves, not the “time” they occurred (i.e. who was the ruler? how were the crops? environmental conditions?). In this way, people's reference to the world was not time, but happenings, occurrences and events.

Of course, a spatial concept of time has existed long before church bells: but the point would be to not anachronistically read “our idea” of what time is into the words of the ancient philosophers.

If we go with Mumford for a minute (no pun intended), I think it might be worthwhile to contemplate the opposite proposition: Time exists because things happen.
http://brianfrank.ca Brian Frank

I'm intrigued by that church bell idea. It shines a light on all of the little adjustments of thinking and practice through history we take for granted.

Reminds me of a great history of science book by Peter Galison: Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps. It covers the projects in the late 19th century create unified, non-local times and systems of measurement. Apparently there is an official metre stick in a Parisian vault — something I'd never thought of before — and we easily forget what an engineering accomplishment it has been to separate time from events.
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http://www.phronk.com phronk

That book looks great! Thanks Brian.

An official metre stick seems kinda like the equivalent of an atomic clock that sets the official time (which is itself just an update to the church bells).

We do need to be careful not to stuff ancient philosophers into modern understanding, but still, I doubt the human understanding of time has fundamentally changed much due purely to cultural changes, even if how we talk about it changes.
http://www.phronk.com phronk

That book looks great! Thanks Brian.

An official metre stick seems kinda like the equivalent of an atomic clock that sets the official time (which is itself just an update to the church bells).

We do need to be careful not to stuff ancient philosophers into modern understanding, but still, I doubt the human understanding of time has fundamentally changed much due purely to cultural changes, even if how we talk about it changes.
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Things Happen Because Time Exists

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