Everyone knows that the future is open. There are alternative futures which are all
equally capable of becoming the present. There are different paths
to different futures. The path to the future resembles a street
which continually splits up and branches off; for every possibility
there is another branch.
The definition of the future is its potentiality, i.e. its non-factualness and
indetermination.
|
Why is the future unknown?
The answer is very simple. Something does not (yet) exist cannot be known - period! We cannot possess documents from something potential, since documents testify to factualness. There are always immeasurably many alternatives for what the future will look like. We cannot possess any documents from one special one of these alternatives since another alternative could just as easily occur. |
|
The following experiment shows that the future is indeed open.
A photon X impacts on a half-silvered mirror. There its path is split up into two possibilities: the path to the future A and the path to the future B. Does the photon have a choice between the two paths or is its path determined by regularities?
One recognises the future’s openness if one places two half-silvered mirrors
A and B in X’s path.
This leads to an interference pattern from the superimposition of both rays. Thus
both paths (to future A as well as future B) are open until a choice is made between
them.
The interference pattern more specifically occurs precisely when the choice between
the two paths has not been decided, i.e. when both paths were chosen. The interference
pattern comes about because there is a choice between the two paths. It is itself
the reflection of precisely this choice, i.e. the superimposition of both
possibilities.
From the potentiality of the future I conclude directly the actuality of the
instantaneous present and its special status:
The instantaneous present is an extraordinary time because in it alone the
transition from potential to actual occurs.
But physicists deny the physical reality of current development.
Why then? Because it has not yet been quantified and recorded in formulas?
But that was true of gravity before Newton as well.
Because it can only be measured with our senses and not with our measuring instruments?
But measuring instruments are only an extension of our senses, of data
which we gain with our senses.
Evolution has awarded us extremely precise measuring instruments with
our senses. Current development is amenable to subjective perception.
But its lack of reality does not follow from this. Colours too can be
perceived. But their lack of reality does not follow from this. In actual
fact, we can distinguish different colours because light possesses different
wavelengths.
It is precisely the same with our subjective perception of objective current
development. This is not as precise as a measurement, however it provides
unambiguous results on the structure of that development.
But we do not measure anything except the present. The present is
“omnipresent.” All empiric data are measured in the
present. It is empirical matter itself. We cannot base ourselves on
something outside of it. As such it is poorly capable of being made
objective, i.e. observable from the “outside.”
The last thing that a fish notices is the water in which it swims.
Physicists teach the apparentness of development, and they are also believed,
although everyone can convince himself of the opposite with his own eyes.
The reason for this is the basically false interpretation of the theory of
relativity, namely
Minkowski’s four-dimensional space-time
from which the factual existence of the future is falsely derived.
|
|