The way it is

I decided to stick my neck out, a few millimetres, and make a proposition about the nature of being. It is audacious I suppose. I suspect most philosophers have a least pondered about us and the universe. Rather than accept that some things are beyond our comprehension, I offer up a semi-plausible explanation of how things are. Conveying difficult concepts using simple words is challenging. I want you to think in ways you might not have thought of before. You can take this all as either bold, arrogant, or plain daft. Nevertheless, at least it is a valid attempt.

People talk about there being many dimensions, the fourth being time and then the 5th, 6th, 7th and so on. Instead of all that hyperbole you can settle on just one dimension and nothing more whatsoever. One problem with multi-dimensional thinking is that it does not stack up in reality. It is like saying my cat ate my house. We can visualise a cat eating a whole house from the front door to the chimney and every brick, but it is a cartoonish idea and never possible. We have a capability to conjure up mad ideas in our mind that have no basis in the physical world.

Can you have a two-dimensional object? Can you hand me a two-dimensional object? No, you can’t. If it is to be 2D then it will have zero thickness and hence will not exist. If it is assumed to be infinitely thin, then it has a thickness and thus is 3D. The same goes with 1D. People struggle to escape the architects view of the world. Up is up no matter what you say. But your up is down to those on the other side of the world and sideways for those living halfway around from you. What is consistent is that up is always away from the centre of the earth no matter where you are pontificating from. Each object is a set defined distance from all other objects. Change the relative distances and the object’s position has moved. If you turn the whole universe upside down it makes no difference, nobody will notice. Turn an object over and the top gets closer to some things and further away from others.

As you read this, the top of the book is say one metre from the door, one metre from the floor and a whole range of distances from everything in the room. Turn the book over and all those distances change. Each object, each atom, every item in the universe is a certain distance, a relative distance, from one another. You may roll, pitch, slide up, slide sideways, slide forwards or yaw the book. Objects have six freedoms of movement. But and this is a big but, they are only human interpretations. Any movement made by the book simply changes the relative distances between the top/bottom of the book and all the other objects in the room and the universe.

We can use a distance measuring tool to work out where you are on Earth by working out the distance you are from devices floating in space. Get a signal from four of them and the position is quite accurate. You do not move up, left, right forward and backwards you move nearer or further away from other objects. When you climb the stairs, you don’t walk five steps forward and ten up, you move diagonally away from the bottom. Whilst nothing changes apart from the mental mapping, you no longer think in terms of three planes of movement but see it as items being a set of straight line distances apart. So, the 3D representation still works but there is nothing other than a single arena of space. We do not live in a three-dimensional universe. There are no dimensions. Dimensions only exist in our imagination. Objects are a relative distance apart.

Time is not a fourth dimension but another human abstract. It is just a measure of rotations or oscillations of an object. We see something turn and once a certain number of revolutions has been made, another object moves from one point to another. It is all relative with some covering a greater relative distance than others and hence they are described as moving faster.

Time has historically been derived in part from the rotation of the earth. Hours and minutes, subdivisions of one rotation, using convenient numbers such as 60 which can be handily divided by lots of numbers; 2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30 to make half hour, twenty minutes, quarter hour and so forth. Metric time would be awkward. A hundred minutes cannot be divided so well. Anyway, put two super accurate clocks side by side, synchronise them, then take one on a journey. When they return next to each other the time displayed differs. Add this to the fact that the earth is gradually slowing down making each year a little longer and it begins to tell you something.

Time is invaluable for approximating things, vital for issuing speeding tickets, wonderful considering that we are travelling at over 600 miles an hour when standing still. Spinning around, orbiting the sun in a galaxy on the move. It is perfectly acceptable to ascribe us as being static with everything else moving around us. We thought that the earth was at the centre of the universe, then thought that we orbited the sun and then realised that both are true according to your standpoint. Time spanning the universe can speed up and slow down and there will be no way of knowing as there will be nothing to compare it with. The oscillations in your timepiece would adjust in line with all else. The relative speed of light appears to be constant when measured in a vacuum. Whether it is the same when surrounded by a huge mass is hard to ascertain.