WONDERLAND OF TIME

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 June 1930, Page 11

WONDERLAND OF TIME

STARTLING THEORY FROM U.S.A. LONDON, April 20. Surprise has been caused among physicists and mathematicians this week-end by reports of a new timetheory developed by an American scientist, Dr. Gilbert Lewis, of California.

A physical chemist of international reputation, Dr. Lewis received last week the gold riiedal of the Society of Arts and Sciences in New York. At a dinner to celebrate the occasion, reported in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, he set forth the suggestion that time was symmetrical, flowing in two directions, rather than one. Yesterday, said Dr. Lewis, could not be considered to precede to-day in any absolute sense. It has been suggested that this theory is an amendment of the Einstein theory, but it was stated yesterday by Professor Wiliam Wilson, F.R.S., Carlisle Professor of Physics in the University of London, a leading authority upon relativity, that the Einstein hypotheses, were in no way involved. “There seems,” said Professor Wilson to the Sunday Tinies, “to be some confusion in the statements of Dr. Lewis’s views between time in the sense of the physicist and time in the sense used l>y human beings every day. I have seen a suggestion made, as if developed from Dr. Lewis’s views, that to-morrow can somehow be yesterday. This to me suggests sheer insanity, and Dr. Lewis, so far as I know, is quite sane.

A QUESTION OF TERMS “It is, of course, true that in the science of physics, where the human element is ruled out, events are so connected that the putting of ‘before’ instead of ‘after’ in our account of them has little importance. In physics to be earier or later has not the importance that it has for us. But in human life, ‘before’ and ‘after’ have very great importance, and it is merely misleading to treat the physicist’s time and human, time as if they were one. Yesterday and to-morrow are, of course, purely human terms with which the physicist has no concern. “While the time of the physicist is not the same as Bergson’s time, or ordinary everyday time, it runs upon somewhat parallel lines. It may help understanding if I mention the similar position of temperature, which in ordinary life means warmth or hotness, but for the physicist means something rather different which is still connected, none the less with' ‘human’ temperature. There is both in time and in temperature, a rough parallelism between the two processes, but if physical terms are equated with ‘human’ terms, all kinds of quite artificial difficulties are created especially in relation to causality. “Dr. Lewis is reported as suggesting that events now occurring are among the factors which decided Caesar nearly 2,000 years ago to cross the Rubicon. There seems to me very little in this.

“Nor do I see any reason to follow his hypothesis that the universe might in due course return to its present condition in the same way that a pack of cards, shuffled indefinitely, might return to its original order.. The supposition is purely speculative. It is very unlikely that the conditions of the world will repeat themselves exactly, and so far we have nothing to convince us of any general periodicity. . “As to the hopes presented by this theory that the universe may be proved not to be running down to a lifeless and changeless end, more interest would perhaps have been aroused twenty or thirty years ago, when it was being asserted with confidence that the world was so running down, than at the present time when we all speak with far less assurance on the matter. It is not considered by any means sure now that the energy of the universe is being ultimately exhausted, so that it may not need any ‘reversal” of the time-process to secure the universe continued life. “I should not like to dismiss Dr. Lewis’s hypotheses without examination in some scientific form, but the reports so far received do not, in my opinion, represent any valuable new theory. But then, you would hardly expect such a theory to be set forth with any fullness in an after-dinner speech, and it is possible that Dr. Lewis was developing its more fanciful and amusing side, as suitable to the occasion.”