Log24

Swarthmore physics honors thesis, 136 pp., 2007–

Abstract:

"Quantum mechanics, which has no completely accepted interpretation but many seemingly strange physical results, has been interpreted in a number of bizarre and fascinating ways over the years. The two interpretations examined in this paper, [Aage] Bohr and [Ole] Ulfbeck's 'Genuine Fortuitousness' and Stuckey, Silberstein, and Cifone's 'Relational Blockworld,' seem to be two such strange interpretations; Genuine Fortuitousness posits that causality is not fundamental to the universe, and Relational Blockworld suggests that time does not act as we perceive it to act. In this paper, I analyze these two interpretations…."

Footnote 55, page 114:
 

"Thus far, I have been speaking in fairly abstract terms, which can sometimes be unhelpful on the issue of explaining anything about the structure of space-time. I want to pause for a moment to suggest a new potential view of the blockworld within a 'genuinely fortuitous' universe in more visual terms. Instead of the 'static spacetime jewel' of blockworld that is often invoked by eternalists to help their readers conceptualize of what a blockworld would 'look like' from the outside, now imagine that a picture on a slide is being projected onto the surface of this space-time jewel."

Interpolated figure from Log24:      Cf. August 5, 2009.

From the perspective of one inside the jewel, one might ask 'Why is this section blue while this section is black?,' and from within the jewel, one could not formulate an answer since one could not see the entire picture projected on the jewel; however, from outside the jewel, an observer (some analogue of Newton's God, perhaps, looking down on his 'sensorium' from the 5th dimension) could easily see the pattern and understand that all of the 'genuinely fortuitous' events inside the space-time jewel are, in fact, completely determined by the pattern in the projector."

— "Genuine Fortuitousness, Relational Blockworld, Realism, and Time" (pdf), by Daniel J. Peterson, Honors Thesis, Swarthmore College, December 13, 2007