Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

At the moment time is thought of as a property of the universe. There was no time before the universe came into being, and there will be no time after the universe comes to an end, if it should indeed end. This, of course, is provisional! There may have been universes before ours, our universe may have always existed, or it may go on forever. Or there may be other universes that exist now, or will exist in the future. Humans (or some alien species) may even interfere with nature in order to sustain the universe indefinitely, even if this was not going to happen by ‘natural’ means. So the prospect of infinite time, or eternity, is very real.

Whilst obviously our lives are time-limited, nonetheless notions of eternity still intrigue us. Having purpose, for instance, assumes some longevity to our efforts. It would be frustrating to think that all impacts of our lives would be immediately snuffed out at our death.

People are probably more comfortable with a universe that is eternal, even though eternity is a difficult concept to grasp. The reason, perhaps, is that the alternative is to try to think of non-existence, which is an even more perplexing concept!

Another really paradoxical thought arising from all this is that formlessness does not just create form in the present, but might also create it in the past. As the ancient Greeks observed, there seems to be a quality of objects that allows them to somehow transcend the boundaries of clock time and exist in some state beyond it.

96