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En Garde, whole no. 17, April 1946
Page 15
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page 15. DYNAMIC FATALISM By Charles R. Tanner In the December 1944 issue of "EN GARDE", I spoke at some length on "Time and the Expanding Universe". I spoke there on the now rather common idea of time as an actual dimension in a four dimensional continuum which is our cosmos. I conceived, and found that many others had, too, of our common three dimensional universe of space as the "surface" of an expanding hyper-sphere swelling out like a bubble from a central point of creation. Now, to abandon physics and enter the realm of speculative philosophy, I might say that I can imagine that same bubble expanding and growing into the future until, finally, the state of ultimate entropy is reached at some incredibly distant future, and all motion ceases in this cosmos. When all motion ceases, time necessarily comes to a stop---and that's the end of the universe and the utmost outside of our four dimensional continuum. Beyond that is "outside"---which doesn't much concern me. In that outside exists, probably, the Cause of this universe; and if that cause has sentience it's probably what we call God. Let us, for the sake of illustration, concede sentience to that Cause for the moment and call it God. Obviously that God has a viewpoint superior to ours, for he sees all time from an outside vantage point; while we are limited at any particular moment to a sort of cross sectional view of the world. Now, if this is true, then the Cause was free of the limits set by time when He, or It, created this continuum, and, therefore, the entire temporal and spatial cosmos was created "at once". "The last day of reckoning" sprang into existence as did "the first dawn of being". To God, the future is as easily perceived as the past, and as immutable. The idea, then, of an infinite series of "probability paths" extending into the future from every act becomes rather absurd unless we postulate a fifth or sixth dimension; and even then, it is necessary to conceive an infinite series of parallel but distinct continua. But this philosophy gives us two totally different viewpoints and it is from this fact that the idea of Dynamic Fatalism is derived. We have the viewpoint which we have already discussed---the viewpoint of the external sentience---and we have the viewpoint of a sentience such as you or I, immersed in the cosmos and perceiving spatially only three of the dimensions. To a being of three
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page 15. DYNAMIC FATALISM By Charles R. Tanner In the December 1944 issue of "EN GARDE", I spoke at some length on "Time and the Expanding Universe". I spoke there on the now rather common idea of time as an actual dimension in a four dimensional continuum which is our cosmos. I conceived, and found that many others had, too, of our common three dimensional universe of space as the "surface" of an expanding hyper-sphere swelling out like a bubble from a central point of creation. Now, to abandon physics and enter the realm of speculative philosophy, I might say that I can imagine that same bubble expanding and growing into the future until, finally, the state of ultimate entropy is reached at some incredibly distant future, and all motion ceases in this cosmos. When all motion ceases, time necessarily comes to a stop---and that's the end of the universe and the utmost outside of our four dimensional continuum. Beyond that is "outside"---which doesn't much concern me. In that outside exists, probably, the Cause of this universe; and if that cause has sentience it's probably what we call God. Let us, for the sake of illustration, concede sentience to that Cause for the moment and call it God. Obviously that God has a viewpoint superior to ours, for he sees all time from an outside vantage point; while we are limited at any particular moment to a sort of cross sectional view of the world. Now, if this is true, then the Cause was free of the limits set by time when He, or It, created this continuum, and, therefore, the entire temporal and spatial cosmos was created "at once". "The last day of reckoning" sprang into existence as did "the first dawn of being". To God, the future is as easily perceived as the past, and as immutable. The idea, then, of an infinite series of "probability paths" extending into the future from every act becomes rather absurd unless we postulate a fifth or sixth dimension; and even then, it is necessary to conceive an infinite series of parallel but distinct continua. But this philosophy gives us two totally different viewpoints and it is from this fact that the idea of Dynamic Fatalism is derived. We have the viewpoint which we have already discussed---the viewpoint of the external sentience---and we have the viewpoint of a sentience such as you or I, immersed in the cosmos and perceiving spatially only three of the dimensions. To a being of three
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