It's also nonsense, I think, simply because at the time of Homer it is widely understood that nearly every Greek region had a calendar that had twelve periods for the year. They generally differed in naming of the months, and in when the year started, but they were otherwise broadly consistent. Further, there are too many other occasions in the Odyssey that refer to a year for it mean anything other than what we might recognise as a year. The more obvious conclusion is that the author has simply misinterpreted Homer's verse. First, even using the interpretation the author wants to use, if the fourth year came and seasons started again then surely our year lasted only three of theirs (such that in the fourth it was repeating the first in terms of seasons). But a simpler explanation is that the mention of seasons was indicating what part of the fourth year was being referred to.
Depends upon the nature of the time travel, whether you are genuinely interacting with your own timeline or simply interacting with a parallel world that diverges from the one you know at the point you kill "Adam". If you are genuinely interacting with your own timeline then you will seemingly create a temporal paradox, something that all time-travellers must seek to avoid, but also one of the reasons some think time travel an impossibility: how would the universe be so careless as to allow that which could create such paradoxes. If it is the latter, I.e. a parallel world, then no paradox, and no issue.
He also proves that space travel does not exist. An illusion of time travel that matches the illusion of space travel is all we're looking for here.
From memory I'm fairly certain that he does not mention anything about space travel in the book I referenced Spacetime is mentioned Another book? confused with another author? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I'm currently reading Dan Brown's latest entry: Origin. Have either of you read it? Any spoilers? I'm enjoying it so far. ☺
Of course not. You referred to a single person. The story of Adam is a parable, not a history lesson. There was no first man. Humans evolved from proto-primates as a community - not just one man, but tribes of them. Having a single progenitor of the species would extinct the species within a handful of generations from in-breeding.
I got a few dozen chapters into it. I really liked the first and second book, but this one was too tedious to keep me. It took - what? - 10 chapters spread out over 20 - for the guy to sneak into the theatre hall - that's about 30 feet per chapter. " Chapter 12: "Here I am sneaking!" Chapter 13: cut to some other scene. Chapter 14: "Sneaky sneak! Oh what will happen when I reach the end of my sneak!! The suspense! " Chapter 15: some other scene Chapter 6: "30 more feet of sneakin' !" I found it lazy and insulting. That's how you drag out a book when you've got a sure thing. [ EDIT ] Sorry. This is completely off-topic. Withdrawing.
I see where you're going but how do you actually explain it? Given, for argument's sake, that we do have time travel, I am still a person of free will. As you said, I can (present tense). I walk up to my grandmother with a weapon, and - what? the universe drops a piano on me? Blows a tire on the cab on the way there? It is not zero when I am standing there in front of my gm with a weapon. It is the same probability as if I were to walk up to her today time travel or not - with a weapon. My travel into the past means that the probability (calculated at some future date) obviously did not take into account the possibility of traveling into the past and killing my grandmother. But "did" is a past tense verb. I have traveled into the past, and am now (present tense) standing in front of my grandmother. Does the universe somehow know I'm about to create a paradox? For the traditional type of time travel to not create paradoxen* would require a person to not have free will. * There are some time travel solutions that do not create paradoxen, without invoking supernatural intervention.
Good points. I had thought much the same when posting on it, but there is enough ambiguity in that quote from the Odyssey to allow the author a possible point. Profound piffle. I myself am a 'presentist' not a 'block spacetime' advocate. In neither case would it make sense to say time doesn't exist. Notwithstanding an idiosyncratic definition that has to deal with the fact clocks tick.
Lol@Michael. I'm getting the gist after a few more chapters. The butler DID NOT do it. ☺ But are you sure Michael345? ☺
Whatever happened, happened. If you got that far, before. If you didn't, you aren't - something else happened. It would just require that a person not be omnipotent. Just spitballing the logic, here.
I am sure because he himself was killed off before he even got included Dan thought when he conceived the book "I have to many characters" Pop goes the butler Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Sure, but that philosophy is borne of the assumption that the past will always be the past, and is forever immutable. The premise of Time travel throws away that very idea. The past can once again become someone's present - and all the free-will that comes with it. I know. It's a tough nut to crack, but I believe the devil is in the details, particularly when it comes to time travel devices.
In the respect you mention them, the carpenter, engineers and pilots are all pragamatists. They use the foundations of physics, but they don't explore (except by trial and error) past their leaky boundaries to find novelty. (I'm going to get a lot of flak for that, I know. It's not meant to be a generalized statement. I'm contrasting practical experimentation with theoretical experimentation, to-wit:) Well, except, y'know, science. It's the science that gives those disciplines advances in their technologies, by theorizing how materials behave, and then finding ways to manipulate them beyond chisels, drill presses and machine shops.
Is that necessarily so? Suppose you could travel back in time, but only in an extra dimension and only as an exterior observer. Your presence would not be noticed and you would be unable to affect any physical change in the "experiential event" at that time. Actually that is the only way how you would continue to exist in your present time-line, an unbroken loop, (circular), not a straight line (back and forth).