An idea to consider is how we experience time, versus its cause.
As mobile organisms, our conscious experience is a sequence of perceptions, required to navigate. Consequently we view time as the point of the present moving past to future. Physics codifies it as measures of duration.
Stepping back just a little and it's evident that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is the present, as the events rise and fall.
There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
Energy is "conserved," because it is the present, not some dimensionless point between past and future. It creates time, as well as temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.
Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but we don't refer to them as dimensions of space, because they are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, not the sequence of perception.
As present and process, energy goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.
Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall.
In a factory, the product goes start to finish, future to past, while the production line points the other way, consuming material and expelling product, past to future.
As lives go birth to death, while life moves onto the next generation, shedding the old.
Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it definition go future to past.
Though it is the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, "feeding the flame," while the central nervous system sorts the information, signals from the noise.
Therefore the intellectual tendency to describe reality in terms of order and chaos, rather then energy and the forms expressed.
So the question is how to predict the future, when the information is patterns quickly receding into the past, like crested waves?
First and foremost, we have to decide why we want to know the future.
For one thing, we are tactile, linear, goal oriented organisms, but the larger reality is cyclical, circular, reciprocal and feedback generated, so more of a good thing is not always better. It's more a game of rock, paper, scissors, than winner take all.
There are two essential dynamics; synchronization and harmonization. One is centripetal, while the other is centrifugal. One is the basis for organisms and the other is the basis for ecosystems.
If we are trying to simply relate to the larger world, harmonization is the way to go, but if we are trying to direct and control some aspect of it, we need to synchronize a range of activities into one larger function. Which if we are successful, but not very careful, can spiral far beyond where we might have intended.
Consider that space is described as three dimensional, but this is a mapping device, the xyz coordinate system, like longitude, latitude and altitude.
The essential qualities of space are infinity and equilibrium. Which is implicit in Special Relativity, as the frame with the longest ruler and fastest clock is closest to the equilibrium of the vacuum. The unmoving void of absolute zero.
Remembering what fills space is this energy and the forms manifest, the energy radiates out toward infinity, while the forms coalesce in, toward equilbrium. Consequently the cosmic convection cycles we call galaxies.
So again, before reaching for the stars, make sure the context will back you up, or it will eat you up.
For some, that may be worth the price.
Though while the bull is power, the matador is art.
