A Rational Cosmology: Time as a Dimension

Essay XX

This is Essay XX of Mr. Stolyarov's series, "A Rational Cosmology," which seeks to present objective, absolute, rationally grounded views of terms such as universe, matter, volume, space, time, motion, sound, light, forces, fields, and even the higher-order concepts of life, consciousness, and volition. See the index of all the essays in "A Rational Cosmology" here.

Since it is impossible for any event to change the past, no entity can have the same age at a given instant in time as it did at some other temporal instant. Since the process of change is, by definition, one of change taking place, rather than annihilating the fact that it had taken place, the latter of which is impossible, any measurement pertaining to change must be positive.

Since the sum total of all changes (including mutually antagonistic changes) that have ever occurred can only accumulate, time, the quality of entities that renders change possible must, too, possess positive increments and constantly accumulate in its magnitude within every entity.

Though the three spatial dimensions have the ability to increase or decrease in their magnitude within any given entity, the fourth dimension, time, can only increase in its magnitude.

The reason why time is, too, a dimension, though not a spatial one, is the impossibility of relating any two real entities without describing some involvement of the quality, "time."

Even if we consider two spheres frozen at some set distance apart, we must still make mention of the fact that the two spheres are in such a position simultaneously, recognizing that the spheres' relationship was not merely a part of each sphere's bygone history, nor is it only possible as the spheres accumulate age (i.e. in the future).

We merely admit that there is some dimension (time) which is mentally held constant for the purposes of the present examination, as we are only observing the relationship of the spheres in one particular moment, as we had, in "The Euclidean Line", observed the relationship of real, three-dimensional boxes in only one dimension.