Down the rabbit hole
To continue on from my preceding post to view the antinomies in the conception of quantum indeterminacy from another angle. Whereas in quantum physics, one has the non-commutativity of position and momentum of quantum entities that vitiates any attempt to mathematically control them precisely in the one-dimensional time of linear causality, thus forcing a fallback position of calculating with probability distributions, pondering the non-commutativity of time itself with movement shifts back a gear to more elementary, more originary considerations entirely outside the purview of the modern physicist's mind. The gear-shift also challenges the misconceived non-commutativity of time and energy in quantum physics.
Understandably, and by definition, the physicist's mind is trained upon physical movement, i.e. the movement of physical things that are characterized as having extension and matter, and occupying a place in space. All three of these essential properties of physical entities can be and have been mathematized since the 17th century as measurable size, mass, and position in a vector space, respectively, and as such enter into equations as algebraic variables that can be determined by solving the equations in order, ultimately, to precalculate their movement, or rather their (loco)motion. For it turns out that a specific kind of physical movement, viz. motion, or change of place, is most amenable to mathematization. Whereas Aristotle investigated four kinds of physical change (μεταβολή, change-over): of what (progeneration), how (quality), how much (quantity), and where (locomotion), the former three can be conceptually reduced to change of position in a vector space, and thus grasped mathematically. Hence, for example, in modern science, specifically chemistry, qualitative change of physical entities, i.e. chemical reactions, is conceived as the reconfiguration of material molecules in space.
This is all a consequence of modern physics' having disappeared down the rabbit hole of mathematization of the phenomena, whereby the phenomena are substituted by algebraic symbols that can be deployed and solved for real numbers in equations.
Because physical entities with a view toward predicting, i.e. precalculating, their movement have precedence, the conception of time that gains sway, and seems natural, is that it is itself counted off physical movement and in particular off physical motion, in the first place, the motion of celestial bodies. Time is thus conceived as a circular linearity causally linking physical events. For, without a cause-effect nexus, there would be no way to predict, pre-calculate, effectively control the motion. Causality and linear time are more or less synonymous, similar to how, in general relativity, space-time curvature is synonymous with gravitation. Giving precedence to physical movement dictates a conformable conception of linear time in which causality becomes mathematically calculable.
It could nevertheless, even at this late stage, give the rare, intellectually unsettled physicist pause for thought to consider that it is questionable whether the first quantum entity — apparently experimentally 'discovered' by Einstein in 1905, viz. the photon, lacking as it does mass, extension and determinate position — is a proper physical entity at all. Strictly speaking, the photon is immaterial, pure motion.
Turning the tables
My claim, however, is that the phenomena of time and movement do not commute, with the consequence that giving precedence to the phenomenon of time affects also the pertinent kinds of movement that come into consideration. To the dyed-in-the-wool physicist's dismay, there are kinds of movement that are not physical at all, but rather pre-physical, immaterial. Consider, for instance, a change of mind or a change of heart or a change of mood. None of these kinds of movement is predictable, masterable, let alone mathematizable. Nevertheless, modern science is bent upon bringing also these kinds of movement into the grasp of calculability, preferably by reducing them conceptually to physical movements of matter but, if not, at least quantifying all aspects of them. This is the dogma of modern science that scientists complacently accept; it holds sway throughout the scientific world, i.e. throughout the scientific mind.
Violence is done to the phenomenon of mental movement when the attempt is made to reduce it ('lead back' conceptually) to ostensibly underlying material processes in the brain, as neuroscience attempts to do. It is then inevitable that free will is declared to be an illusion. Likewise, violence is done to the phenomenon of interplay as the kind of movement through which we humans sociate with each other when the attempt is undertaken to linearize it temporally under some kind of reciprocal causality.
Once the phenomenon of time is give precedence over movement, the former shows itself phenomenally as an interleaved unity of three familiar, 'empty', immaterial, temporal dimensions which we humans inhabit as long as we live. The kinds of movement enabled by the openness of three-dimensional time are not constricted to any kind of sequential linearity, but are unconstrained and free, even to the extent of seeming unruly and chaotic. Nevertheless, that is what our situation is as mortals exposed to and belonging to three-dimensional time. Within this temporal openness encompassing all kinds of movement, it is foolhardy to set out with a program to master all kinds of movement. By fixating on physical movement from the outset with the Greeks, to the neglect of other kinds of movement, Western science put itself on an historical trajectory that is aptly described as the unbridled will to power over all kinds of movement, under which those kinds of movement that are not physical suffer and even become invisible, since modern mathematized physics approaches the phenomena only quantitatively. They end up as variables, i.e. algebraic symbols, in equations and pseudo-equations, and that only for the sake of precalculating motion. Truth itself becomes degraded to the correctness of empirical predictions. Theorizing degenerates into constructing hypothetical models waiting for experimental verification. Foundational questions are shunned and eschewed. The truth of elementary phenomena themselves is no longer sought, and therefore does not come to any conceptual understanding. Philosophers and scientists no longer know what it means to conceptualize elementary phenomena.
Einstein, a loyal physicist to the end, was most upset by the apparently empirical discovery of quantum indeterminacy and its corollary of the breakdown of efficient causality, but it is only physics' narrow-minded conception of time in the first place that results in such a dilemma, which Einstein proposed to resolve by postulating as yet hidden causal variables. From a conception of three-dimensional time, by contrast, indeterminacy is the phenomenal truth for most kinds of movement, with the linear causality of physical motion being a limited exception.
One could be forgiven for thinking that it is time to turn the tables and give precedence to time over movement, perhaps initially just as a Gedankenexperiment. Due to their essential, phenomenal non-commutativity, the commuting of linear time with movement ends up surprisingly as three-dimensional rather than one-dimensional time, with a concomitant loss of control. Other kinds of (non-physical) movement come into view to be understood rather than explained. From the viewpoint of modern science, that is a calamity. For others it amounts to the liberation of time from its constricted linearity to a three-dimensional temporal openness. In such a three-dimensional time we are then confronted with other phenomena to be thought through that remain invisible in the older paradigm. These include our mental freedom and other quandaries about how we mutually estimate who we are in dealing with our shared temporally three-dimensional, mortal freedom.
Further reading: Quantum indeterminacy a thorough misconception.
On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo (4.7, 4.8) De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.
