Musings/Träumereien/Devaneios

“I propose that time and its passage are fundamental and real and the hopes and beliefs about timeless truths and timeless realms are mythology.”

In “Time Reborn - From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe” by Lee Smolin

Impermanence, Buddhist style?

Buddhism seems to acknowledge the play of opposites I've referred to elsewhere.

Recognising the yin-yang nature of the universe, in order to claim there is constant 'flux' (fluidity, rather than change; a subtle difference) - or for argument's sake, change - Buddhists balance that by asserting a 'greater' reality - the one, eternal, stable, whole (a supposed 'deeper' reality).

Contradiction and paradox is near the heart of evidenced, reasoned contemplation?

As for Aristotle:

time is a measurement of change is a measurement of time.

Change makes time possible, and vice-versa.

In principle, it seems that time persists, even in conditions of perfect stillness.

Yet any attempt to conceive a temporal progression, absent all change, seems to lead us into perplexing self-contradictions: any attempt to imagine how such unchanging time-flow could be measured, requires changing. It seems that time must be more than change; yet remove change, and time vanishes!  But if time is just a means to measure change, then in principle, it should permit the possibility of a world where change is cyclical. Yet our understanding seems to limit time to a linear, one way progression.

Or does it?

If you're into shitty physics, read on.