The Arrow of Time

The arrow of time mostly is a concept in physics, even cosmology, but its common sense meaning is good enough here – you can’t go back in time. This is even clearer in biology – something that’s dead is dead. Everything that is, is a function of time, both in the ordinary sense and almost certainly in the mathematical sense of function.

But speaking of “the arrow of time” is the same as talking about change over time, or perhaps it is better to say it includes change over time, but in one direction only. If there were no change over time, then there would be no time. Instead of going back in time (unchanging change, if there were no arrow of time), however, we’d just be stuck. Not stuck in time, either. Just stuck.

Sartre thought the one thing we know about the world is our personal existence. I’ve never seen how this is different than Descartes, who famously said, “I think, therefore I am.”

Not Sartre, not Descartes. Not Hegel.

Actually, what we know is that there is time, including the arrow of time and change over time. It is time that proves existence, too. There could not be an arrow of time, and there could not be change over time, if there was not a world outside of our senses to change. If there were no change over time, then that would be a refutation of the arrow of time, so the arrow of time is real, and change is real, and so we are real. It is the arrow of time that dictates everything; this should be clear if you accept that the arrow of time and change over time are the same things. Darwin fits in nicely with the arrow of time, and with change over time. People think Hegel fits in with change over time, or that Marx does, but they don’t. They violate the arrow of time badly. History does not reveal itself; the future does not dictate the past; and, in a normative sense, there is no reason to suppose there is a purpose to life or an end stage in history anymore than nonsensical talk about immortality or any other utopian state.

Darwin is the true dialectic – things change over time, the present is a reaction to whatever came before, and the future will be a reaction to whatever came before it. It’s all aimless, though – it’s just action and reaction. Any aim, any teleology, is our invention. But the arrow of time is real. In fact, we know that the world is real (and that Berkeley was wrong), because there is an arrow of time, and things change over time.

There’s just action and reaction – that’s what Darwin has got right. The fact that something survives and something else does not survive matters not to history; the world exists with or without this or that thing; the world exists as long as things change over time, and as long as there is the arrow of time. Darwin’s dialectic fits in best with this true dialectic, which is aimless.

There’s action and reaction; there’s mutation and survival (or not), but it’s all aimless. There’s no “reason” for evolution; things that don’t evolve just don’t exist anymore. Even Socrates, who had the most academic notion of dialectic, was weak on this point. There is no synthesis, which implies some kind of improvement. Darwin really has it right – the “s” in synthesis is for survival.

Now, because this is a Web site dedicated to political philosophy: Political ideologies and religions of the sort described in this series of essays, which is to say competing universalisms and competing hegemonies, with the possible exception of Liberalism, all are invalid because they violate the arrow of time. Why? Because there can be no utopia or immortality, which is what political ideologies and religions, e.g., competing universalisms and competing hegemonies, always promise. And why is that? Because utopia and immortality imply a steady state universe, and there can be no steady state universe because that would violate the arrow of time and change over time. People like utopia and like immortality because they don’t like suffering and they don’t like oblivion – I don’t either – but that doesn’t make utopia and immortality real.

Abraham Aamidor is the author of “Real Feature Writing” (Erlbaum, 1999) and Editor, “Real Sports Reporting” (Indiana University Press, 2003), both college-level journalism texts. He has taught journalism at Indiana University-Bloomington, Butler University, Georgia Southern University and Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. He works in daily journalism in Indianapolis.