Tuning in to the Universe

Warm wind, Floridian streets, evening light, we are listening to a song on the radio. Note by note, each word following another, initially our attention is focused sequentially on the music. What would it look like if suddenly our attention could become larger, taking a step back from the unfolding of time. Our focus moves to encompass the entire radio song, receiving it all at once - we hear its entirety: its rhythm, meaning, impression, and emotional impact.

This tuning in and out of the unfolding, metaphorically the note by note versus the all-at-once perspective, is one of my favorite mind experiments to try understanding how things relate to one another. In physics for example, theories provide very little motivation to why we should be looking at, or studying the universe with the point of view of our familiar time evolution. Instead, a timeless vantage can be conceptually clearer in cosmology and theory of relativity, leading to what philosophers and physicists call a block universe.

Every event—past, present and future—co‑exists inside a single four‑dimensional spacetime manifold. Your birth, tomorrow’s breakfast and the Sun’s red‑giant phase are all equally real, just located at different temporal coordinates, much the way Paris and Auckland are equally real but spatially distant. The indexical “now” then works like “here”: it singles out our location in the block rather than marking an ontologically privileged slice.

"The distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." (Albert Einstein's Letter of Condolence to the family of Michele Besso)

Only too often this block universe can sound like every thing and every event in the universe is already chosen, happening all at once. And if that’s the case, our human condition is becoming increasingly confusing. But is a block universe necessarily static? Or can real change and unfolding coexist within an atemporal structure?

The Block Universe: Eternity All at Once

At its core, the block universe (or eternalism) views all events—past, present, and future—as equally existent. Rather than envisioning time as a flowing river, eternalism posits a completed four-dimensional fabric known as spacetime. Physics give us compelling incentives for this picture. Einstein’s theory of relativity, for instance, challenges the idea of a universal now, as simultaneity depends on the observer’s frame of reference. Thus, an eternalist view emerges naturally from the theory, positioning past and future as structurally coexistent with our present.

Does Eternalism Entail Static Reality?

A common intuition protests against eternalism precisely because it appears to reduce the dynamic changing flow of life into a static, frozen picture. How can a frozen universe host change? Yet we can be more creative than that, and try to understand the bigger picture without making it a frozen piece. Philosopher and physicist Emily Adlam uses the analogy of the Sudoku puzzle for the universe. All numbers and their positions are fixed by strict logical constraints, yet these constraints express profound relationships. Thus, an all-at-once universe does not deprive us of causal choices, rather it speaks about a form of internal determinism that fixes the consistency of the universe. The laws of physics are what shape and constrain the universe’s deep structure, the entire block, similar to the way the rules of a logical or mathematical structure fix the relationships between its components. Change, causation, agency, becomes internal features of the block.

If one had a special kinesthesis sense of how sounds relate to image, the shape associated with the all-at-once song might relate to insights on the fixed compositional rules behind the rhythm and harmony of the song.

Real Change Within Eternalism

In a dynamic approach to the block universe philosopher Tim Maudlin incorporates real change in eternalism through directed ordering rather than an external notion of "flow". Maudlin’s “proper time” revival argues that the temporal passage of time is real and encoded in the causal structure, not an illusion. The causal structure of spacetime inherently contains an intrinsic, directed ordering: event A can causally influence event B, but not vice versa. Similarly, at the Science and Philosophy Institute, we have been developing ideas around the nature of time distinguishing, the concept of causation made apparent in its passage, and an internal ordering relaying the deeper constraints and fundamental laws that organize the atemporal block universe.

Atemporal Determinism and the Laws of Physics

The crux of a "non-static eternalism" lies in distinguishing between temporal determinism and atemporal determinism:

• Temporal Determinism: The idea that events strictly follow one another sequentially through time.
• Atemporal (Structural) Determinism: Events coexist logically and structurally, determined collectively by fundamental laws, but not unfolding along an external temporal process.

Our universe might be eternally complete, with each event logically "placed" by the laws of physics. This does not eliminate causation, change, or even free will. It embeds them within a deeper structural logic. Understanding of the universe involves grasping the deep relationships that define the essence, and maybe even function, of each element within it. The Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno anticipated something resembling this vision of connectedness, causation, and determinism,

"He is bound who holds the reason of the universe, or at least the nature of the particular thing he must bind—its disposition, its inclination, its manner, its use, its end." (De vinculis in genere)

Giordano Bruno is a rare seeker and thinker that I hope to share with you in a next blog, in the meantime, let’s return to the song on the radio.