(i) First, there is the familiar relationship, experienced by us, between earlier and later three-dimensional states of the material universe. Most fundamentally, two material bodies move, i.e., change their positions in relation to each other. Space is the 3D relationship between the two bodies. Time is the relationship between their first and second positions. Three spatial relationships or dimensions and one temporal relationship or dimension equals one four-dimensional spacetime continuum. In some time travel scenarios, e.g., Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time, there is only this single continuum. It does not change because all change occurs within it.
(ii) In the variable reality scenario (Time Patrol), the 4D continuum can change from one state to another. Since time is the relationship between a state changed from and a state changed to and since, in this scenario, the 4D continuum changes, then there is a relationship between the states that it changes from and that it changes to and this second temporal relationship is a fifth dimension. If we acknowledge this, then we can stop asking whether "deleted" events did or did not occur. They did occur in the past of the second temporal dimension but did not occur in the past of the current timeline. Two different past tenses is not too big a demand to make on the grammar of the Temporal language.
Maybe I belabour this point but I keep rereading texts in which it remains a live issue.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
But it clarifies a flaw in the theory of Anderson's Time Patrol stories and how to rationalize it in ways that keeps this flaw from being fatal to the series.
Ad astra! Sean
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