_Charles Proteus Steinmetz_
The problem of religion--that is, of the relations of man with the
supernatural, with God and immortality, with the soul, our personality
or the ego, and its existence or nonexistence after death--is the
greatest and deepest which ever confronted mankind. In the present state
of human knowledge, science can give no definite and final conclusions
on these subjects, because of the limitations inherent in science.
We must realize that all our knowledge and information and the entire
structure of science are ultimately derived from the perceptions of our
senses and thereby limited in the same manner and to the same extent as
our sense perceptions and our intellect are limited. The success or
failure of scientific achievement largely depends on the extent to which
we can abstract--that is, make our observations and conclusions
independent of the limitations of the human mind. But there are
limitations inherent in the human mind beyond which our intellect cannot
reach, and therefore science does not and cannot show us the world as it
actually is, with its true facts and laws, but only as it appears to us
within the inherent limitations of the human mind.
The greatest limitation of the human mind is that all its perceptions
are finite, and our intellect cannot grasp the conception of infinity.
The same limitation therefore applies to the world as it appears to our
reasoning intellect, and in the world of science there is no infinity,
and conceptions such as God and the immortality of the ego are beyond
the realm of empirical science. Science deals only with finite events in
finite time and space, and the farther we pass onward in space or time,
the more uncertain becomes the scientific reasoning, until, in trying to
approach the infinite, we are lost in the fog of unreasonable
contradiction, "beyond science"--that is, "transcendental".
Thus, we may never know and understand the infinite, whether in nature,
in the ultimate deductions from the laws of nature in time and in space,
or beyond nature, on such transcendental conceptions as God and
immortality. But we may approach these subjects as far as the
limitations of our mind permit, reach the border line beyond which we
cannot go, and so derive some understanding of how far these subjects
may appear nonexisting or unreasonable, merely because they are beyond
the limitations of our intellect.
There appear to me two promising directions of approach--first, from the
complex of thought and research, which in physics has culminated in the
theory of relativity; and, second, in a study of the gaps found in the
structure of empirical science and what they may teach us.
All events of nature occur in space and in time. Whatever we perceive,
whatever record we receive through our senses, always is attached to,
and contained in, space and time. But are space and time real existing
things? Have they an absolute reality outside of our mind, as a part or
framework of nature, as entities--that is, things that are? Or are they
merely a conception of the human mind, a form given by the character of
our mind to the events of nature--that is, to the hypothetical cause of
our sense perceptions? Kant, the greatest and most critical of all
philosophers, in his _Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der Reinen
Vernunft)_, concludes that space and time have no absolute existence,
but are categories--that is, forms in which the human mind conceives his
relation to nature. The same idea is expressed by the poet-philosopher
Goethe in his dramatic autobiography _Faust_ (in the second part), when
he refers to the "Mütter," to the marriage of Achilles and Helena
"outside of all time." It is found in ancient time. So Revelation speaks
of "there should be time no longer" (hoti chronos ouketi
estai).
The work of the great mathematicians of the nineteenth century--Gauss,
Riemann, Lobatschefsky, Bolyai--offered further evidence that space is
not an empirical deduction from nature, but a conception of the mind, by
showing that various forms of space can be conceived, differing from one
another and from the form in which the mind has cast the events of
nature (the "Euclidean" space). Finally, physical science, in the theory
of relativity, has deduced the same conclusions: space and time do not
exist in nature by themselves, as empty space and empty time, but their
existence is only due to things and events as they occur in nature. They
are relative in the relation between us and the events of nature, so
much so that they are not fixed and invariable in their properties, but
depend upon the observer and the conditions of observation.
We can get an idea of how utterly our perception of nature depends on
the particular form of our time conception by picturing to ourselves how
nature would look if our time perception were 100,000 times faster, or
100,000 times slower.
In the first case, with our sense perceptions 100,000 times faster, all
events in nature would appear to us 100,000 times slower. This would
then be a stationary and immovable world. The only motion which we could
see with our eyes would be that of the cannon ball, which would crawl
slowly along, at less than a snail's pace. The express train going at
sixty miles per hour would appear to stand still, and deliberate
experiment be required to discover its motion. By noting its position on
the track, and noting it again after a period of time as long as five
minutes appears to us now, we should find its position changed by three
inches. It would be a dangerous world, as there would be many
objects--not distinguishable to the senses from other harmless
objects--contact with which would be dangerous, even fatal; and one and
the same object (as the express train) might sometimes be harmless (when
at rest), sometimes dangerous (when in motion), without our senses being
able to see any difference.
On the other hand, with our sense perceptions 100,000 times slower, all
events in nature would appear to us to occur 100,000 times faster. There
would be little rest in nature, and we should see plants, and even
stones, move. We should observe, in a period of time not longer than a
minute or two appear to us now, a plant start from seed, grow up,
flower, bring fruit, and die. Sun and moon would be luminous bands
traversing the sky; day and night alternate seconds of light and
darkness. Much of nature, all moving things, would be invisible to us.
If I moved my arm, it would disappear, to reappear again when I held it
still. It would be a usual occurrence to have somebody suddenly appear
and just as suddenly disappear from our midst, or to see only a part of
a body. The vanishing and the appearance of objects would be common
occurrences in nature; and we should speak of "vanishing" and
"appearing," instead of "moving" and "stopping." Collisions, usually
harmless, with invisible objects would be common occurrences.
As seen, nature and its laws would appear to us very different from what
we find them now, with our present time perception.
Thus philosophy, mathematics, and physical science agree that space and
time cannot be entities, but are conceptions of the human mind in its
relation to nature. But what does this mean, and what conclusions follow
from it?
The space of our conception is three-dimensional--that is, extended in
three directions. For instance, the north-south direction, the east-west
direction, and the up-down direction. Any place or "point" in space thus
is located, relative to some other point, by giving its three distances
from the latter, in three (arbitrarily chosen) directions.
Time has only one dimension--that is, extends in one direction only,
from the past to the future--and a moment or "point" in time thus is
located, with reference to another point in time, by one time distance.
But there is a fundamental difference between our space conception and
our time conception, in that we can pass through time only in one
direction, from the past to the future, while we can pass through space
in any direction, from north to south, as well as from south to
north--that is, time is irreversible, flows uniformly in one direction,
while space is reversible, can be traversed in any direction. This means
that when we enter a thing in space, as a house, we can approach it,
pass through it, leave it, come back to it, and the thing therefore
appears permanent to us, and we know, even when we have left the house
and do not see it any more, that it still exists, and that we can go
back to it again and enter it. Not so with time. On approaching a thing
in time, an event such as a human life, it extends from a point in
time--birth--over a length of time--the life--to an end point in
time--death--just as the house in space extends from a point in
space--say the north wall--over a length of space--its extent--to an end
point in space--say the south wall. But when we pass beyond the end
point of an event in time--the death of a life--we cannot go back to the
event any more; the event has ceased, ended, the life is extinct.
But let us imagine that the same irreversibility applied to the
conception of space--that is, that we could move through space only from
north to south, and not in the opposite direction. Then a thing in
space, as a house, would not exist for us until we approached it. When
we were approaching it, it would first appear indistinctly, and more and
more distinctly the nearer we approached it, just as an event in time
does not exist until we reach the point of its beginning, but may appear
in anticipation, in time perspective, when we approach it, the more
distinctly, the closer we approach it, until we reach the threshold of
the time span covered by the event, and the event begins to exist, the
life is born. So to us, if we could move only from north to south, the
house would begin to exist only when we reached its north door. That
point would be the "birth" of the house. Passing through the span of
space covered by the house--this would for us be its existence, its
"life," and when we stepped out of the south door the house would cease
to exist for us, we could never enter it and turn back to it again--that
is, it would be dead and extinct, just as the life when we pass beyond
its end point in time. Thus birth and death, appearance and extinction
of an event in time, as our life, are the same as the beginning and end
point of a thing in space, like a house. But the house appears to us to
exist permanently, whether we are in it, within the length between
beginning and end point, or not; while the event in time, our life,
appears to us to exist only during the length of time when we are
between its beginning and its end point in time, and before and after it
does not exist for us, because we cannot go back to it or ahead into it.
But assume time were reversible, like space--that is, we could go
through it in any direction. There would then be no such thing as birth
or origin, and death or extinction, but our life would exist
permanently, as a part or span of time, just as the house exists as a
part or section of space, and the question of immortality, of extinction
or nonextinction by death, would then be meaningless. We should not
exist outside of the span of time covered by our life, just as we do not
exist outside of the part of space covered by our body in space, and to
reach an event, as our life, we should have to go to the part of space
and to the part of time where it occurs; but there would be no more
extinction of the life by going beyond its length in time as there is
extinction of a house by going outside of its door, and everything, like
a human being, would have four extensions or dimensions--three
extensions in space and one in time.[9]
If space and time, and therefore the characteristics of space and time,
are not real things or entities, but conceptions of the human mind, then
those transcendental questions, as that of immortality after death and
existence before birth, are not problems of fact in nature or outside of
nature, but are meaningless, just as the question whether a house exists
for an observer outside of the space covered by it. In other words, the
questions of birth and death, of extinction or immortality, are merely
the incidental results of the peculiarity of our conceptions of time,
the peculiarity that the time of our conceptions is irreversible, flows
continuously at a uniform rate in the same direction from the past to
the future.
But if time has no reality, is not an existing entity, then these
transcendental problems resulting from our time conception, of
extinction or immortality, have no real existence, but are really
phenomena of the human mind, and cease to exist if we go beyond the
limitations of our mind, beyond our peculiar time conception.
It is interesting to realize that the modern development of science, in
the relativity theory, has proved not only that time is not real, but a
conception, but also has proved that the time of our conception does not
flow uniformly at constant rate from past to future, but that the rate
of the flow of time varies with the conditions; the rate of time flow of
an event slows down with the motion relative to the event.
But the conception of a reversal of the flow of time is no more
illogical than the conception of a change of the rate of the flow of
time. It is inconceivable, because it is beyond the limitations of our
mind.
Thus we see that the questions of life and death, of extinction and
immortality, are not absolute problems, but merely the result of the
limitations of our mind in its conception of time, and have no existence
outside of us.
After all, to some extent we conceive time as reversible, in the
conception of historical time. In history we go back in time at our
will, and traverse with the mind's eye the times of the past, and we
then find that death and extinction do not exist in history, but the
events of history, the lives of those who made history, exist just as
much outside of the span of time of their physiological life--that is,
are immortal in historical time. They may fade and become more
indistinct with the distance in time, just as things in space become
more indistinct with the distance in space, but they can be brought back
to full clearness and distinction by again approaching the things and
events, the former moving through space, the latter moving through the
historical time--that is, by looking up and studying the history of the
time.