I’ve Moved!
November 20, 2008
So I’m sure that most people have noticed that the site has been offline for a few days. There’s a reason for that, which I will get to shortly. But first, let me just say this:
In fact, I am blogging at a new site I have just finished setting up: kennethhynek.net. A full explanation for the reasons behind the move can be found here
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That said, this is not the end of Time Immortal. My wife Grace has expressed interest in taking over blogging at this domain, and I am working to make sure that she gets set up here as soon as possible.
Also, my profound apologies for the modification to the site face; the move was not as seamless as I would have hoped, and many of the image files for this theme, and in the gallery, were corrupted during the course of their evacuation from my previous web host’s servers. Until such time as I have repaired them, I’ve put a clean-looking template in place of the previous one.
Update: for the purposes of further traffic shaping, new posts from kennethhynek.net will be excerpted below. Full articles can be read at the new blog.
John C. Wright goes Greek
October 21, 2008
He’s been reading Cicero again. And, being a science fiction author, finds a way to relate it to modern cosmological theories and, in particular, Stephen Hawking’s hypothesis about time and space.
Stephen Hawking asks us to imagine the universe as a four-dimensional plane through which a four-dimensional sphere is passing. The first moment of contact between this hypersphere and hyperplane is the Singularity: as the sphere intersects the plane, the dot becomes a small circle becomes a larger circle, which represents our timespace continuum suffering Hubble expansion.
For Hawking, there is no such thing as before the Big Bang because timespace is represented by the expanding circle. One cannot speak of one second before the Big Bang any more than one can speak of one inch to further north of the North Pole.
The paradoxes of a cause of the first cause still exist in Hawking’s image, merely at one remove. If the hypersphere is drifting through the unimaginable medium of inter-cosmic nonbeing, what set it in motion? If there is such a thing as the state of being closer and farther from the hyperplane it eventually intersects, then there is something like time, or some sort of sequence of events. Where did this hyper-objects come from and how were they set in motion?
It answers nothing to say that these events proceed from no cause, because to assert that something comes from nothing undermines not merely science, but reason itself.
(However, let me suggest that a distinction can be made between Boethius’ answer and Hawking’s, because Boethius has a metaphysical underpinning to his answer that Hawking lacks. Hawking cannot explain how a natural event arose from a condition of pre-universe non-being-ness where nature had no laws because it did not exist. For a natural universe to arise from a non-natural pre-universe by a natural and mechanical process of physics is a paradox. The law that ‘Nothing Comes from Nothing’ cannot arise from nothing. For Boethius, however, a Necessary Being can perform an intelligent and deliberate act of will to create a universe where cause and effect can rule, without itself being bound by mechanical causation. The Creator of a universe can write into the foundations of that universe that ‘Nothing Comes from Nothing’ without Himself being bound by that law. There is no paradox to postulate a Supreme Being with the ability to create ex nihilo a large arena of timespace in which nothing can be created ex nihilo. To use an analogy, Susan Calvin of US Robots and Mechanical Men does not herself need to be bound by Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.)
I’ve often wondered why I find this sort of thing fascinating, but there it is, and I love it. Wright has brilliance to spare, and is a prime example of the sheer philosophical power that erupts from a marriage of Catholic insight to cosmological analysis.
