john philips opens up the question by taking one of the classical physics positions called presentism, and i am sympathetic to it. he might founder on the one key question, when is "now" or what is "now"? that's the question, isn't it? the other approaches include the notion that the worldline of a particlce carries the past, or the marks of the past, the encounters with other forces/particles in the past, in the full trajectory it traces. it carried the past, like the documents of langlois. of course the documents had to have been archived, and someone might have had a fever when they put it in the archive, messing up the picture so to speak.
the alternative version of the universe, which i personally favor, is called the block universe, where time continually expands outward with space, which both are curved of course by the effects of gravity. the block is always expanding (at least since the big band) which is all we can know. i love the limit it imposes on time, always approaching a future without ever arriving there. i agree that the past is always being carried into ever expanding spacetime. what else could it do? some might call this eternalism, as if the block were always there.
i don't know what happens on the quantum level when we get down to the elementary particles or bits, like strings.
ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
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It is contradictory to reply to Ken's, question by stating ' Nothing ' and then refer to documents including oral texts. Oral texts are quixotically ' the past in the present.' So it is impossible for the past to be gone for ever as psychoanalytical clinicians/ historians well know.
OAA
Let those who believe in majority rule ensure its practice in the centre in Nigeria come 2023.
Sent from my Galaxy
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From: Yahaya Danjuma <yahaya.danjuma@gmail.com>
Date: 22/08/2021 13:30 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Critiquing Muhammed, the Founder ofIslam: Between Intellectual Exploration and Blasphemy
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (yahaya.danjuma@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info On Aug 22, 2021, at 04:01, Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
you historians here on the list, what do you find in the past?ken
Nothing. The past no longer exists. It cannot be visited, much less can we go there to find things.
To know what the past was we can only study the remains of the past in the present, which is the only time we can know.
That is why Langlois and Seignobos, when they famously wrote "pas de documents, pas d'histoire", defined documents as the remains of the past in the present.
N.B. that the phrase does not define documents as only written documents, but as any remains of the past in the present, including artifacts and oral traditions.
But the past is how the present came to be. To understand the present we must know the past.
Anyway, read my book, if you'll pardon the cliché. There's more about this there.
John Edward Philips
International Society, College of Humanities, Hirosaki University
"Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto." -Terentius Afer
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