Time and Space – A Process Perspective

That which we call “space-time” is not what was originally meant as “space”. True “space” is the emptiness in which space-time sits and expands. True “space”’ is better described as the “Void”, an emptiness of infinite extent and duration.  The process that we call “time” is any segment or division of the infinite duration of the Void, also called “Eternity”.

   

Space-time is a multi-dimensional “fabric” that expands and contracts, heats and cools, and is rich with zero-point energy. I picture it like undetectable jelly that puckers around mass. 

Whether a single universe or a multiverse, all that exists within the Void is finite and has no effect on the size or duration of the Void. The Void also has no effect on existence, but as a primal balance, there must always be both. Neither had a beginning, but space-time seems to expand and contract becoming more and less complex and organized in what appears to be and endless cycle. Because existence is limited, it can expand indefinitely without affecting the size of the Void. Its limits are within itself.

Scientists have described space-time as simultaneously containing all time and space. The future, past and present all exist and can possibly be reached, thus generating the sci-fi concept of time travel. The concept often skips the fact that in addition to travelling in time you would have to travel in space, because everything moves around. However, this assumes that all times have places to go. Process philosophy, the philosophy of organism, sees all time and space (existence) as an entity nexus of lesser entities all permuting at once. Science is correct in that all time and space exists now. There is only Now. The past exists only as influence, the future only as possibility.

All space exists in the present. There is no space to go to in the past or future. They only exist as factors in the configuration of the present. The past influences the probabilities of future possibilities being realized in the present instant’s configuration. I like to call the smallest division of Eternity the “instant”, being defined as the rate at which existence permutes from one organization (or pattern) to another. Some permutations create expansion, others contraction. Some increase complexity and some reduce it.

The effects of the process of time vary with speed and gravity, time itself does not. The instant is unchanging in duration but the divisions of Eternity that we call time are relative and largely arbitrary. Reality reorganizes without beginning or end. 

There is no static state of being. Everything is constantly in the process of becoming, everything but the Void changing and evolving