Talk:Eternalism (philosophy of time)

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Could do with some discussion of Julian Barbours theories, and relation to multiverses. Note that there is a logical independence between the claims:

All moments of time exist on the same footing
Time is a space-like dimension, and there is a single unambiguous past and present for each moment

within it. Barbour accepts the first but not the second. This in turn illustrates a shade of difference between older (eg paremidean) philosophical eternalism (1) and block theory (1 & 2). 18:07, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Could you expand on what you mean by the 'same footing'? I had a glance at Barbour's wiki page but it didn't seem to describe any coherent mechanism for time. He seems to deny change exists yet he claims there are different 'nows' that we experience. How could that possible be? LegendLength (talk) 04:46, 15 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are right, of course, about the lack of coherence. I am afraid the relationship between reality and the conceptual apparatus we use to describe it (such as maths) is lost on many people. As a result, they develop strong intuitions that this cannot be it, but why exactly not, and what should come in its stead never really becomes clear. The infiltration of academia with pseudoscholarship is deplorable and will only feed the growing public opinion that all academics are like that. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:28A0:D644:B4C5:415C (talk) 16:58, 11 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also, these illustrations fall short of their intentions. Could be replaced Leodiamondwiki (talk) 04:55, 6 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Translations

Greek

eternalism: (ο) αιωνισμός [masculine noun]
block universe: Σύμπαν στατικού τετραδιάστατου χωροχρόνου

Wikipedia has a mistake (in physics the difference is of core importance)

Universe: the name of our own universe
universe: any spatiotemporal-like connectome of mathematically procedural (mechanistic) interactions

Physics doesn't have the same criteria with literature. Some Wikipedia users don't know it. Modern science accepts both rigorous observational empiricism and mathematical foundational descriptions. Hard or strong empiricists deviate from mainstream science and claim that mere rigorous empiricism is enough to mathematically describe the ontological mechanisms of substantiality, thus the universe for them is identical/tautological to the Universe and vice versa. They don’t care about the field of study: "foundations of substantiality" like David Deutsch’s constructor theory and Max Tegmark’s struogony (the term mathematical universe hypothesis is very general; mathematical structures are more specific).

Objection section

I suspect at least the last paragraph (about Amrit Sorli and Davide Fiscaletti view) to refer to pseudoscience. Can a expert have a look at it and correct if necessary? 2001:660:5301:17:FCD4:C219:374E:E481 (talk) 07:25, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I am afraid philosophers have nothing of substance to contribute these days. Serious scientists have been ignoring them for decades now, despite philosophers' dire threats that they will live to regret this outrage. Meanwhile, philosophers live in their own echo chamber where there opinions have become very, very difficult to distinguish from crackpot ramblings. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:28A0:D644:B4C5:415C (talk) 16:54, 11 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Origin of theory

Who first postulated this theory this theory? Cleverfellow (talk) 02:55, 17 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

“In Fiction”

The “In Fiction” section refers to “a clause of eternalism” and “the rules of eternalism” when referring to things that, as far as I can see, do not form a necessary part of eternalism, and are referenced as if there were some “eternalism” text that lays them out.

Is it that these fictional works have their own things that they call “eternalism”, of which they say these are clauses or rules? Or are Wikipedians just getting over-excited talking about things they like?

Either way, we possibly do not need what looks suspiciously like the old “in popular culture” section.

90.242.137.43 (talk) 16:35, 4 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Add mention of Arrival (2016)?

I'm thinking that the movie Arrival might belong in the section on popular culture, as the movie is well known for featuring extraterrestrial beings that "remember" the future and enable the protagonist to do the same. They omit chronology in their linguistic rules and conceptualize time in an arguably eternalist perspective. Further, the structure of the film signals that the past and future are on equal grounds, given the non-chronological interpolation of scenes and ambiguity about the order of events. Quesoteric (talk) 09:30, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]