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Space and time are not containers but are instead emergent features spun off from the adventures of entities themselves.
Whitehead’s cosmology acknowledges that the conditions of possibility of human experience have their own conditions of existence set by the ecological conditions of reality. In Whitehead’s approach, the ground, to use a traditional philosophical term, is not a primordial layer that sits as a backdrop upon which events occur; rather, for Whitehead the ground is a shifting and co-implicative terrain of diverse and evolving beings, a collision of multiple trajectories, lured in different ways by different concerns and possibilities. In Whitehead’s view, space and time are not containers but are instead emergent features spun off from the adventures of entities themselves. Stated in other terms, the conditions of possibility for human experience and knowledge are not Kantian a priori categories of the mind alone, nor even a fixed layer of some special substance, instead the condition of possibility for human experience, or any other being’s experience, is a multispecies collective of other beings, both living and non-living. (pp. 6–7)
Above is an excerpt from Adam Robert’s paper titled “Histories of Lived Experience Redux: Ethology, Ecology, and Aesthetics,” which claims–among other things–that “an understanding of meaning is necessary for an understanding of evolution at its most fundamental level.” Good stuff!
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Art above by Andriea Gill
Whitehead's ideas are being reflected by recent thinking by some cosmologists. Everybody thinks of Time and Space and the Earth (if they think of these at all!) merely as the "eternal" backdrops upon which our Game of Life is enacted. Our decaying (decayed and rotting?) educational system and incredible addition to mindless entertainment has produced a society focused only on the "present moment", where happiness actually depends on willful ignorance of any meaning attached to that moment. My hypothesis slowly developed during the past 20-30 years is that the human brain is rapidly evolving....wait one, let me alter that.....perhaps 10% of brains have evolved to seek not necessarily more knowledge, but rather much deeper levels of THINKING, while 90% have DEVOLVED into hardened lumps which really use only those neurons required for breathing, eating, staring at TV etc.
Was it Teddy Roosevelt who said in effect: "The weak always want to drag the strong down, never want to become stronger"? In our society MEDIOCRITY rules! Read the Sun-Gazette and any number of other popular media "vehicles" to see evidence.
Enough ranting by a 73 year old retired chem. prof who is devoting his time to strengthening his nasty olde curmudgeon facilities.
Meanwhile: We now think of Space as anything but empty. We think it is jam full of multitudes of "quantum waves" from which fantastic numbers of "virtual quantum particles" appear, transmit force, and disappear so fast that they cannot be observed or detected. This idea is strongly backed by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which underlies all of Physics - as we understand Physics today!
But if Space is so active, and if all events of any kind occur in Time, then it seems obvious that Space and Time cannot be separate entities, so now we use the concept of Space-Time as a single "thing". And since we have tremendous evidence for evolution of sub-microscopic elementary or fundamental particles, and megascale stars and galaxies, it certainly seems likely that Space-Time could have evolved. Did Space-Time suddenly appear out of NOTHINGNESS in the Big Bang? Or did Time appear at some later point? WE DO NOT KNOW AND MAY NEVER KNOW!
We have seen a terrific evolution of Physics from Newtonian to Einsteinian to the weirdness of Quantum Theory. But a major roadblock is the failure to unite relativity and Quantum Physics - these theories become incompatible at the Big Bang.
Thus it seems that the Laws of Physics - i.e. the Laws of the Universe, whatever they may be - are still evolving. I believe the human brain/mind (is there a difference?) is simply too crude to go much beyond the Math and Physics we have invented at the present time, so we must rely on our oversimplified "laws" and try to explain what we can within our limited framework of what we call Physics.
But our Physics is without question the best and most accurate method of explanation we have created. All other mental disciplines fall far short of the powerful cohesiveness and powers of prediction that unite Physicists of all cultures and ethnicities.
HOWEVER: I think physicists should pay more attention to Philosophy and see how it can improve Physics. Can we "explain" quantum theory without philosophy? I do not think so!
Nevertheless, I am convinced that we can only approach The Truth of the universe asymptotically. We will always live at a certain level of Uncertainty and will have to learn to accept that.
As for those "religious" people who announce that they KNOW The Absolute Truth - they may be good people but their minds have shut down......
Enough for now, perhaps I am becoming a Heretical Curmudgeon......I hope so.
Thanks for chiming in David. Great thoughts here!