THE FIFTH ISSUE - WHAT ABOUT HISTORY?
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A common notion of history is that events arise and things happen and
then they dissolve into something called history. It is like the future
is something, as yet uncreated, which is coming at you; then it happens
sometimes predictably and other times unpredictably; and then it fades away
into history, never to be regained. But in a Universe where there is no
such thing as time and space and which is essentially a solid with different
moving loci of varying degrees of density, called entities, the notion of
history takes on a different perspective.
Consider the schematic below, in which T1-T7 are different historical
times and A-F are the arrangement of entities at a particular time, with
the location of those entities changing over time.
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| As one can see, entities move and change their respective locations.
Some entities cease to exists (A), other entities remain in place (C). The
general pattern or arrangement of things changes; and particular intervals
are what we call moments in history. The cathedral, Notre Dame, is essentially
unchanged since its creation some 800 years ago (started 1163 finished 1285)
but its surroundings of people, roads, vehicles, and general environs have
changed. Theoretically, we could reverse history if we could put everything
back into the place which it had at some particular time in the past - with
"time in the past" being simply a previous arrangement in the
location of things. |
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