My current research concerns models of spacetime. In particular, I am working on assembling new or refined models to describe spacetime in a way that could yield new insights into both the nature of time and temporality.
The first model is one that I label "Time as 'Events'". For this model, I draw from the work of the physicist Julian Barbour. In his book The End of Time, Barbour argues that time as we perceive it — as a flow, or in a linear passage — is an illusion. He argues that there are, rather, distinct sets of moments, which he calls "Nows". These are fixed events, and Barbour further argues that in fact there is no such thing as motion or change. Barbour has also published a selection of academic papers outlining various aspects of this model. While this concept of a timeless universe is problematic, it is a very useful starting point in a new discussion of time and temporality.
In particular — although Barbour's work does not make this direct implication — his concept spatializes time in a particularly firm way, so that time as a geometrical identity can take full form, and be explored (in mathematical and physical terms) much in the same way as space. Barbour alludes to this in his characterization of Leibniz's model of motion as simply relational locations. This is Barbour's idea of independent events or moments — the "snapshots". They become ordered through what Barbour calls "the presumed continuity of the changes of the relative configurations" that allows, "a unique ordering of the sequence". Interestingly, Barbour does not use this depiction to provide a model of temporality, but it is possible. In my study, I hope to investigate the related concept of mathematical ordering as a possible origin for our sense of "time's passage", or temporality.
The work of Tim Maudlin, a philosopher of science at New York University, includes an approach to time that can be connected to Barbour's concepts. Although Maudlin's areas of specialty are metaphysics and quantum theory, he has also written on the nature of time. In his 2012 book, Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time, Maudlin uses a geometrical approach to explain Special Relativity, in contrast to the usual methods of coordinate systems or "reference frames". In my model of time as a set of "events", I hope to synthesize Barbour's general conception with the more specific geometrical structures of Maudlin to create a way of talking about Special Relativity in terms of a complete temporal setup. In this new model, I will articulate temporality as resulting from perspectival perceptions of events in four-dimensional structure, alluding to the potential role of a kind of parallax phenomenon in creating apparent passage of time.
The second model of time that I am researching is completely digital: in such a model, time is no more than a dataset. That dataset is a fixed compilation of encoded information that is structured in way comparable to the data in a storage medium such as a computer hard-drive. The information therein not only contains the coded "events" in time, but also contains the subcodes that dictate how the data should be accessed and read. This model provides a clear way of understanding how temporal events are read by, for example, human consciousness in a particular manner and in a particular order. Temporality in this model, then, is the reading of digital data through the form of an interface. This model, too, will be examined in terms of how it handles the results of Special Relativity, particularly time dilation.
Along with these models, I am also addressing the issue of empiricism in relation to the nature of time. Unlike scientific objects of investigation such as the nature of matter, light, or energy, models of time have yielded very little potential in terms of experimentation. That is, given all that has been written about time, actual experimentation and experimental design has been extraordinarly limited. The theory of Special Relativity is one of the few examples in this field where predictions were made concerning the nature of time, which then led to experiments, and finally experimental confirmation. Why have there been so few other experiments concerning time? Why is it so hard to design such experiments?
In terms of temporality, I am interested in why we perceive time as a series of events and how this can be connected more directly to the actual nature of time itself. This, of course, may also yield some answers to the problem of empiricism in this field.
Recently, I was invited to participate in a podcast discussion on the topic of “Time and Eternity”, which looked at the nature of time from the perspectives of physics, philosophy, and religion: https://roostercrowslpcc.podbean.com/e/time-and-eternity-1620311403