"...Temporal, alone among languages, had the grammatical structure to handle chronokinesis." (p. 68)
If someone could tell us the tenses of Temporal, then that would solve all our problems in discussing time travel. We have past, present and future tenses but obviously need more.
We are told that Patrol agents:
experience a timeline;
delete that timeline;
then claim that the events of that timeline never happened.
The statement that they experience the timeline contradicts their subsequent claim that the events of that timeline never happened.
What I say is that:
(i) the events of the deleted timeline never happened in the current timeline;
(ii) the deleted timeline did exist but no longer exists in the second temporal dimension;
(iii) therefore, the deleted timeline is still perceived to exist by any observer for whom the second temporal dimension is one of his spatial dimensions;
(iv) the deleted timeline simply exists and does not cease to exist from the point-of-view of its own inhabitants.
In (i), I say that the deleted events never happened;
in (ii), I say that the deleted timeline did exist but no longer exists;
in (iii), I say that the deleted timeline is still perceived to exist;
in (iv), I say that it exists -
- but these statements are not contradictory because each of the four numbered statements expresses a different perspective. My terminology is limited to two tenses, past and present, whereas the situation that we are discussing involves more than two temporal directions. In Temporal, each of the four numbered statements would have a different tense.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
It does make me wonder WHAT or HOW a sentence written in Temporal would LOOK like and HOW you would write and read it? Would Roman letters still be used? Or a completely different alphabet? It's a pity Anderson never gave us any words or phrases from Temporal.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We are told that timecycles have post-Arabic numerals.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And that brings up another point: we are so used to Indo/Arabic numbers that it's extremely difficult to imagine us using numbers looking DIFFERENT from them.
Altho I would expect non-human intelligent races to have worked out their own number systems. Some as clumsy and awkward to use as Roman numbers, and others as easy and simple as Indo/Arabic.
Even if never explicitly SAID, I suspect Indo/Arabic became the standard interstellar system of numbers used by many races during the eras of the Polesotechnic League and the Terran Empire.
Ad astra! Sean
Any given set of symbols is inherently rather arbitrary -- it's more or less useful depending on how widespread it is.
The use of -positional- numerical systems, OTOH, with a symbol for "zero" (and the concept) represents a genuine technological innovation of great significance, as much as say the stirrup or the windmill.
Sprague de Camp brings this out in his LEST DARKNESS FALL, where a time-displaced man from the 20th century introduces our number system (and the double-entry bookkeeping it makes possible) to 6th-century Italian bankers. Once the banker realizes how much faster, easier, cheaper (and more checkable) the new system is, he's willing to pay well for it.
And, in theory at least, any of us could do that: introduce Arabic numerals to a society still using Roman ones.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: De Camp's LEST DARKNESS FALL is yet another book I should reread!
I think double entry bookkeeping was invented around AD 1300 in Italy. And it was probably not a coincidence t that was also about the time Indo/Arabic numbers started becoming widely known in Europe.
Paul: And Polesotechnic League merchants and factors must have taught Indo/Arabic numbers to many races which had not yet invented a similar system of numbers. Their practice was to hire local staff after all, which required training them in such things.
Ad astra! Sean
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