Sir Isaac Newton

The Problem With Newton’s Space and Time

NewtonIntroduction. Most scientists agree that the universe is around 13.81 billion years old. It has a starting point. Yet, it also has an endpoint. Though it is constantly expanding, that endpoint is today, right now, the current time, or the Now. This is a new definition of time and it cannot be found within your grandfather’s old pocket watch. It is the fullness of time, or the totality of time; yet, it is always finite, discrete, and derivative.

Absolute space-and-time is just a concept. It has not been proven or disproven. Introduced by Sir Isaac Newton, both space and time confound most scientific models today. The problems are so complex, there are a few professors who are leading efforts to retire space, time and infinity.

One possible conclusion about time. There is no absolute and true time. There is only one time, The Now, through which we know what we know about life. Measured in seconds, within our chart the 202 mathematically-integrated doublings of the Planck base units (a base-2 progression), Isaac Newton’s sense of space and time (absolutes) is rebuffed. Space, time, mass and energy are so intimately and totally related through light, none have an independent status.  Time does not pass independently. And, there is no empty space.

Two equations, one for Planck Time and the other for Planck Length, suggest these conclusions are closer to the truth than Newton was.

Barbour, J. B., 1982, “Relational Concepts of Space and Time,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 33: 251–274.

Rynasiewicz, R., 2000, “On the Distinction between Absolute and Relative Motion,” Philosophy of Science, 67: 70–93.
–––, 1996, “Absolute Versus Relational Space-Time: An Outmoded Debate?,” Journal of Philosophy, 93: 279–306.

The Scholium and Plenum
Nick Huggett & Carl Hoefer

Earman, J., 1986, “Why Space is Not a Substance (at Least Not to First Degree),” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 67: 225–244.
–––, 1970, “Who’s Afraid of Absolute Space?,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 48: 287–319.

Earman, J. and J. Norton, 1987, “What Price Spacetime Substantivalism: The Hole Story,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 38: 515–525.

Hoefer, C., 2000, “Kant’s Hands and Earman’s Pions: Chirality Arguments for Substantival Space,” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 14: 237–256.
–––, 1998, “Absolute Versus Relational Spacetime: For Better Or Worse, the Debate Goes on,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 49: 451–467.

Maudlin, T., 1993, “Buckets of Water and Waves of Space: Why Space-Time is Probably a Substance,” Philosophy of Science, 60: 183–203.

Zichichi, Anthony: Unity of Fundamental Interactions

The Argument, a Priori, for the Being and the Attributes of the Absolute One, and the First Cause of All Things William Honyman Gillespie