A world without a past is possibilistic⁶

What philosophical consequences derive from the latest findings of quantum physics

The aim of the circle of friends is to honor the life and work of the mathematician and philosopher, Kurt Goedel. In particular we want to promote his work more widely and devote ourselves to his hardly recognized proof of 1949 about the misunderstanding of the nature of time

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Preface
Kurt Goedel’s incompleteness theorem with the evidence of the unverifiability of true arithmetic statements is well known. Virtually unknown, however, remained Kurt Goedel’s proof that time in a universe in which the relativity theory applies, does not exist, at least not in the common way as we know it. Kurt Goedel published it in a book on the occasion of Albert Einstein’s 70th birthday: Goedel, Kurt, 1949.  An example of a new type field of cosmological solutions of Einstein‘s field equations of gravitation¹
He also discussed this in his later essay: Goedel, Kurt, 1956: Eine Bemerkung über die Beziehungen zwischen der Relativitätstheorie und der idealistischen Philosophie² (English translated title: “A comment on the relation between the theory of relativity and idealistic philosophy”)
In 2005 Prof. Palle Yourgrau published in his book “World Without Time“ an easy to understand explanation of Goedel’s proof, see here.

Because his findings were so radical, there has been almost no open debate about it.
My suggestion is to seek an explanation for the conception of time in the form of life (in German: „Lebensform“,  see here).
Different “Lebensformen” are based on different concepts of time:
For example, the concept of time described by John Mbiti in his book African Religions and Philosophy³ in original African ways of life is fundamentally different and corresponds with their oral tradition: so to speak a „spiritualized“ horizontal worldly experience, similar to that found with the Pirahã Indians. Time, or the right time, the Kairos⁴, is guessed, not determined by measuring or clocks. Another similar proposal, as an explanation, is the only apparent passing of the past, but in fact a continued presence in a…

 World without a past.
Such an interpretation of Goedel’s finding has found a new basis due to the following message:
On December 9, 2015 Toby S. Cubitt, David Perez-Garcia, and Michael M. Wolf reported in the journal „Nature“, that a mathematical problem, which is basic to many fundamental questions of particle and quantum physics, is definitely unsolvable: even with the theoretically complete knowledge of all microstates it is impossible to determine the macrostate of a material! See: Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable, here⁵.
Complete original text in English: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.04573v2.pdf
Supplementary Discussion: http://eprints.ucm.es/38062/1/spectral-gap_supplementary.pdf
Here a quote by Michael Wolf, professor of mathematical physics at the Technical University of Munich: „But up until now, such [in principle undecidable problems] were found only in very abstract corners of theoretical informatics and mathematical logic. No-one had expected something like this right in the heart of theoretical physics. However, our results change this picture, …because the insuperable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of the macroscopic properties of a microscopic description.“

With that, the hopes in physics are ruined, just as Kurt Goedel dissapointed the hopes of the Hilbert program in mathematics.

If it is in principle no longer possible to delimit or distinguish between macro conditions and micro conditions, then the micro conditions also apply to the macro conditions.  Quantum physics can no longer be limited to a nuclear micro world, but instead is applicable for entire physics.

Accordingly, one can no longer talk on the one hand about a rigid, causal occurrence, but rather about different risks and probabilities that are calculable and thus so far predictable. In constructive matters only necessary safety margins can be estimated to be plausible.

On the other hand that has the effect on the conception of time that presence should be understood as the integral over a merely apparent past. It is like a puff pastry made of transparent layers of simultaneous moments (within the same inertial system), which have been compressed, or like many layers of translucent foils, fused with each other, transparently resulting in a revealing image, namely the present. Scripts and images (power constituting pre-scripts) simulate a „delamination“, resulting in local islands of a temporality. Correspondingly, a previous occurence seems to be finalized to the present, converting into an alleged „past“.

In transparency, all repetitions, the similar they are, all the more they reinforce the contrasts. The “past” remains fixed in the present, is contained there, therefore present, not past. Although consecutive moments can be counted, the possibility of counting is in itself again only a resonating repetition. This resonating resembles a rigid wave in a “formation of waves“, constantly widening in an accumulative charged information „field“ (which can also be described with the term “Possibilism“⁶ in a special variation of a “block universe”, or symbolized by an internet in which everything is always saved in an archive. The storage “place” is the quantum world, as is interpreted by the De-Broglie-Bohm theory.) Thus it could be explained as a solely ever increasing entropy. Entropy is an expression of such an increasingly complicating world.

Reactions are enforced “vertically” by repetition, even deterministic. But especially because reactions horizontally “create” interactive changes, they are unpredictable and the effects of resonating causes – and in particular the reasons for certain actions – are “opaque“. Despite determining causes there is neither any limitation of the ability to act, nor any safe predictability.

Probably this concept should be supplemented by a description of the beginning of everything:
My fundamental point is that quantum physics is the basal, and in it space and „time“ is blurred. However, the theory of relativity is secondary and in all “big bang“ concepts “time“ could have first only appeared from previously expanding fields, energy and particles, when they were slower than the speed of light.

It is therefore only a case of adjusting the theory of relativity to quantum physics, no longer of a quantization of the theory of relativity.
For the beginning of the universe I therefore propose a concept of a habitualizing  universe, in which the natural constants (in particular the fine-structure constant) first formed, adopted, assumed and defined into a rhythm, so to speak.

Our currently widespread intuitive time concept with causality, as well as the Theory of Relativity, can only be perceived or conceptualized within a “Goedel horizon”. Outside this horizon, and before the end of the imagined period of a “cosmological inflation”, the world’s realm is without a past, the laws of which are still noticeable or appear in quantum physics, etc. [added 8/2017]

About the original state it can only be said that it either had always begun (infinitely back in time) and/or contained all of space. Both conditions are possible and only a (false) projection gives a deluding impression that the world had a definite datable beginning and arose from the singularity of a void. There is much more evidence that these false projections “embezzle”, so to speak, a covert unknowable part of the universe, which is outside this retro projection. It might include for example the suspiciously invisible „dark matter“.

An “habitualizing” world replaces the concept of natural „laws“, thus being habits instead of laws. Or habits which have become as if they were laws.
Accordingly, recollections or memories are based on filtering, thus forgetting and not on a „recording“, the thesis being that all past remains present. Thus a new explanation for blindsight is offered and ahabitually acting automatically or unconsciously as well as an intuitive premonition.
Phylogenetics is explicable and it is not the ontogenetic that is unclear, but rather that memory or recollection without location for the record is the unsolved problem in physics and biology, which could be explained by this suggested approach. In this respect, Rupert Sheldrakes⁷ concept – while correct – has not been thought through quite enough. He got stuck in a biologistical swamp, trying „scientifically“ to prove something which is not able to be proved, because it only shows up „mystically“, as Ludwig Wittgenstein describes it.  In the “hidden variables“ of the interpretation of quantum physics, as conceptualized by David Bohm⁸, it is undetectable, like „invisible“, thus no calculations are available for confirming or refuting this.
So only speculation is „allowed“, if at all.
So everywhere undecidedness and uncertainty surprises us.

Franz Bockelson in September 2016