Does the past exist?

[Universal Mind]

If the past does exist, then would it therefore be part of the present? If the past does not exist, then why do we speak of it objectively? We don't speak of the Tooth Fairy objectively because she does not exist. If the past doesn't exist, then it has no reality and it would be absurd to speak of it as though it has any reality. In such a case, criminals could argue that the court is talking about something that isn't real. If it does exist (present tense word), wouldn't that very possibly make time travel possible because the past is part of the present?

[kramari]

I thinks that past exists at least in our minds. Everyday you think about past events so it's a part of the present. That's my opinion.

[bradybaker]

Very interesting question. I would say that the present is a product of the past. It's pure physics. If you know the intial velocity of a particle, and all of the forces acting upon it in one instant of time, you can successfully predict where the particle will be located in the next instant. Apply that on a large scale and theoretically (obviously it is impossible to possilby measure and acoount for all forces and particles) you can predict each successive and preceding instant of the universe from the one that you are stuck in. Did that make any sense at all? I fried my brain trying to write it... So, the past does not exist in the sense that the previous instant is gone, never to return, but it does exist in the sense that it is required for the present to take place.

[dreamwalker007]

I actually have a very interesting theory on time but it's pretty hard to explain over the internet . I'll try anyway. It goes something like this. All points in time can be represented in 2 dimensions. There are infinate alternate realities represented by a line parallel to each other on a plane. Any specific point in time would be the point you want on any of the realities going on a line perpendicular to the line of the reality (if that makes sense). So I think that "time travel" would just be going to an alternate dimension that hasn't gotten to your point in time yet or one that has been there before. If you could make heads or tales of that, good for you . It would be easier if I knew how to post a diagram on here. So, by my theory, the answer is yes, the past does exist. So does the future at any given time.

[Universal Mind]

Very interesting responses. Bradybaker, I think your answer might be the best I have ever come across. Most people just say it's an interesting question and don't have an answer, but you said something that really makes sense. The past exists in the sense that it is a metaphysical reality that the present is based on. So it does exist, but not in the way the present does. You should win a prize for that answer. Dreamwalker, I agree with your theory that "time travel" would just amount to going to a parallel dimension. I have heard many physicists on Art Bell Coast to Coast make that point (not that that proves anything). If you were not around in 1850, and you go back to "1850," you are not in the real 1850 because it didn't involve you. I had a dream in 1989 that I went back in time to 1982 (when I was ten) in my ten year old form and talked to my parents. I came to the realization that the situation I was in never happened in 1982 so I couldn't possibly be in the real 1982. That meant that I was trapped in some other dimension where I would never see anybody from my dimension again, only imitations of them. It ended up being one of the freakiest nightmares I have ever had. Kramari, good point. I think the fact that we remember the past would be evidence that it has some kind of reality.

[LucidDreamGod]

yes, because all the things that happen in the past make up the future

[AirRick101]

Only to the person who thinks he has one... Yes, past is real. But a paradox surrounds this. The only way for the past to exist to us is as a memory, or as a thought. According to the present moment, the past or future is only a mere thought, as good as any other image or impression we have in our minds.

[Roller]

I think the answer is that the past did exist. The whole question of "does the past exist" is a paradox in itself. Basically the question is really asking "is the past the present" because something does not exist if it is not in the present. How do you know your computer mouse exists? You can touch it and feel it, and it is in the present. If it was not there in the present moment it then would not exist. Ergh ... if you get what I am saying. Did the past exist? Yes, of course, otherwise there would be no present. Does the past exist now? No, because for something to exist it must be in the present. A paradox.

[dream-scape]

All we really have is the present moment. There here and now. Sure we can think about the past and about the future, but we think about them from the present moment. Some of you by now may have already formed an idea about what I am going to say then on whether or not the past exists. You are anticipating the future, but at this very moment, right now, and right now, there is only the here and now in reality. That being said, the here and how did not come out of nowhere and it is not going to anywhere. It wasn't made out of nothing, and it won't fade away into nothing either. Some practical examples: - There was a rain cloud overhead this morning. Now it is gone. Where did it go? Was it ever really there? The very nature of this question stems from my need to see the cloud frozen in moment of time as a rain cloud overhead. Because of this, I have the illusion that it came and went. But really it did not come from nothing and return to nothing. Really it is still there, in the dew, in the rain on the farmer's crops (hey what would philosophy be without an agricultural metaphor), in the ground, in the river, etc. Really the cloud never left, and looking deep enough, we can see this. Each moment is a continuation of the preceding moment. So then when we talk about past moments, we are really talking about frozen moments. Moments that we are holding onto. So do they exist? Frozen moments only exist in our minds. However, the current moment - the only moment in reality - contains all previous moments. Nothing comes from nowhere and nothing returns to nowhere. While I realize that my answer is one carrying some Buddhist tones in it, even science will tell you this as a few people have pointed out in the thread so far.

[evolo]

However, the current moment - the only moment in reality - contains all previous moments.[/b] How can this moment contain all previous moments. That is saying all of time (past, present, future) is this one moment, the moment we are in right now. I have to disagree. The moment we are in right now is the only moment that exists. As soon as it is over, another moment replaces it, while the previous one ceases to exist and turns into a memory. This happens for infinity. This leads me to my thinkin: This moment will become a memory. Memories do not exist as they are not part of the current moment, they are only thoughts (In some cases documented but nevertheless, non-existent). If a moment becomes a memory, and memories cease to exist, then this current moment we are living in ceases to exist. I'm just trying to figure out what the hell it is.

[bradybaker]

Memories are simply a poor record of previous instants, not the continued existence of them.

[dream-scape]

Originally posted by evolo How can this moment contain all previous moments... I have to disagree. The moment we are in right now is the only moment that exists. As soon as it is over, another moment replaces it, while the previous one ceases to exist ... How can it not? Without your father and your father's father and his father and on, how could you be? You couldn't be. All of your ancestors are a part of you. You contain a part of them. The subtle reality of this can be applied to everything. True that the only "moment" is the here and now; however, one moment does not just replace another. One moment does not just die and another is not just born. Science itself will tell us that something cannot just be created out of nothing or destroyed to nothing. Think of an ocean to help illustrate this. If we only think on the surface, and only see the waves, then we will think that waves cease being and new waves are born. But if we look a little deeper, we will see that each wave is really a continuation of all previous waves. And within each wave really is contained all other waves. The subtle reality of the wave is water. Old waves have returned to the water and new waves have come from the water. The here and now is a continuation of all previous moments. How could it not be? Out of nothing, something cannot be born.

[bradybaker]

Originally posted by dream-scape Science itself will tell us that something cannot just be created out of nothing or destroyed to nothing. That's technically not true...but that's a whole other topic.

[dream-scape]

Originally posted by bradybaker+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bradybaker)</div> <!--QuoteBegin-dream&#045;scape Science itself will tell us that something cannot just be created out of nothing or destroyed to nothing. That's technically not true...but that's a whole other topic.[/b] Do scientists still not believe that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed? I have not heard of this fundamental law being stricken out, but I don't hear new things about science all that much. But if it has, perhaps you could inform me how something can come out of nothing? Surely something has to be helping to make it. Something can't just appear free from the universe. No doubt some things do appear to just come from nowhere, but that's really not the case if you look closer. Even hypothetically supposing something did come from nothing, it could not make itself. If it is nothing, it can do nothing and be nothing by itself. If it can make itself, then it is something and had to come from something. Hypothetically, if it came from nothing, something had to help it, because as nothing, it would have to remain as nothing, unless something interfered. And so it really didn't come from nothing; it had the help of something.

[Belisarius]

The problem is in how you pose the question. You ask the question,"Does the past exist objectively in the present?" That's a question noone is qualified to answer. Something exists objectively, but we are in no position to say what does and does not exist. From our own perspective the past exists only in memory, and the future only exists in our imagination.

[bradybaker]

Originally posted by dream-scape Do scientists still not believe that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed? I have not heard of this fundamental law being stricken out, but I don't hear new things about science all that much. But if it has, perhaps you could inform me how something can come out of nothing? Surely something has to be helping to make it. Something can't just appear free from the universe. No doubt some things do appear to just come from nowhere, but that's really not the case if you look closer. Even hypothetically supposing something did come from nothing, it could not make itself. If it is nothing, it can do nothing and be nothing by itself. If it can make itself, then it is something and had to come from something. Hypothetically, if it came from nothing, something had to help it, because as nothing, it would have to remain as nothing, unless something interfered. And so it really didn't come from nothing; it had the help of something. It happens all the time, its an observable, measurable process. They're called virtual particles. The pop into existence from nothing (usually with their anti-matter counterpart) and after a brief stay they annhialate each other and vanish back into nothingness. It's one of the many quirks of quantum mechanics. It's technically possible for entire molecules to pop into existence spontaneously, heck even a horse or a fish could appear on your lap right now. But the odds are astronomically against. Just like the odds of you walking through (not breaking through, but physically passing through) a solid brick wall (exceptionally improbable but possible, Google 'quantum tunneling') There are hypotheses that the entire universe is actually a virtual particle. Cool stuff.

[AirRick101]

The present moment is unmeasurable, eternal, and timeless. But by "moment" at lot of us have a tendency to restrict this with timelength boundaries, like a few seconds. But truthfully, the moment is any plane in which our awareness is able to access. Which is why the "end of time" is not very much a reality, because there is ultimately no time. We only believe in a history because we learned about it, through mouth or textbook. I agree that memories are poor recollections of the history. The memories will always be the past from our own eyes, and remember our experience. Not THE experience.

[dream-scape]

Originally posted by bradybaker It happens all the time, its an observable, measurable process. They're called virtual particles. The pop into existence from nothing (usually with their anti-matter counterpart) and after a brief stay they annhialate each other and vanish back into nothingness. That seems like a pretty weak argument to me. Granted, they may appear to just "pop" into existence from nothing, but that doesn't mean they've come from nothing. How could that even be measured to say it has come from nothing? You'd have to restrict yourself to a restricted area of space, and then you might say "it has not come from anything in this area of space," but that does not equate to nothing.

[bradybaker]

Originally posted by dream-scape That seems like a pretty weak argument to me. Well I didn't think it up, go talk to the most prominant quantum physisists in the world. Or go read a book called "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene. It neatly sums up the major ideas of relativity, quantum mechanics and string theory, a great, easy read. Keep in mind that many aspects of these theories are very counter-intuitive.

[dream-scape]

well keep in mind that virtual particles were invented so that quantum processes could be talked about in terms of a Feynman diagram, which is a shorthand representation of a probability calculation for a process. Particles in intermediate stages of a process can never be observed; however, in a Feynman diagram intermediate stages are draw, so the term "virtual particles" was invented to describe the unobservable particles during the intermediate stages. I've gone and done some reading, and from what I can tell, even though some scientists talk about these virtual particles as if they really are there, in reality they are only part of a mathematical probability calculation. And I also gather that there really is no sense to argue if they are there or not, because they can never be observed (it is in an intermediate stage they are said to occur). And in any case, whether they really occur (which can not be known) or occur only as part of a calculation, they occur at the intermediate stage of some process. Without the process, they would not occur. So they still actually come from something - the process. From what I gather, no process, no virtual particle.

[bradybaker]

From what I understand, they are observable, but I could be wrong. Thanks for the research.

[Roller]

Originally posted by bradybaker From what I understand, they are observable, but I could be wrong. Thanks for the research. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they have observed it.. where did I read abut it.. ah here we are: Particles can come into being and be gone again in as little as 0.000000000000000000000001 of a second (10 to the neg 24 seconds). Arghhh... I can't find where in the book it talks about the discovery of quarks... I'm damn sure it has been measured, thought wiht no evidence to back it up, I can't say much, although I do know that physicists have calculated the amount of matter required to hold the whole universe together, and have com up very short. They think that 99% of the matter in the universe we can't see, and is called "dark matter", so maybe quarks are simply atoms switching between dark and true matter? I don't know, I'm not really an expert, and even the experts know so little about it all.

[FaatFaat]

As far as my own experience goes, no, the past does not exist. Although it did happen.

[ElijahJones]

If as brady suggests each moment is only one moment in the trajetory of a dynamical system then the past is gone. Since the chances of ever returning to the exact configuration of the universe when I began writing this post is beyond reckoning. The past exists in our mind because we draw useful inferences from experience, which is stored in neural pathways in the brain. It is a survival thing and probably a few more things also. Remember we do forget things too, so in that sense we must be very powerful beings in the past if by remembering we keep alive and by forgetting we destroy. As far as the Laplacian determinism view of the universe, there is also a rather recent recognition of something called deterministic chaos in which a deterministic system begins exhibiting apparent random behavior because the presence of a strange attractor. So in one of these chaotic dynamical systems you can never predict what comes next unless you know precisely the equations that govern the system and every constant and where the system was at one point in the past. The Uncertainty Principle says that we can never know both momentum and position precisely at the same time. Thus we cannot answer the question of whether the universe is deterministic or truly random. We may be observing deterministic chaos. In case you have not studied it a system in chaos will eventually visit every point in the space, just not in a predictable manner. Therefore it will fill out the probability distribution if given enough time. Certainly any finite discrete distribution will eventually be traversed by a chaotic system. So if we wait long enough and the univese does not collapse in upon itself we may see the Who Reunion Tour come around again. Regards, EJ