John Brodix Merryman Jr.
3 min readJan 10, 2021

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So what of this distinction between the world and our knowledge of it?

Quite simply our minds can only contemplate the static, or it does become, "fuzzy." Like leaving the shutter on a camera open too long.

Then we assign some absolute clarity to this static view, such as dimensionless points in time, or space.

A dimensionless point in time would be like the shutter speed set at zero. Without even the motion of light, there is nothing, not just that we can't perceive it, as atomic activities cease. Absolute zero.

While a dimensionless point in space is an oxymoron, being a multiple of zero. Also nothing.

Spatial dimensions are a mapping device, like longitude, latitude and altitude. If all physical properties are removed from space, it still has the non-physical qualities of equilibrium and infinity.

Equilibrium is implicit in Special Relativity, as the frame with the longest ruler and fastest clock would be closest to the equilibrium of the vacuum. The unmoving void of absolute zero.

Without the definition of form, space is unbound. Infinite.

So space would be the absolute and the infinite.

I think a large part of the problem with how we conceive reality is that as these mobile organisms, necessitiating this sequential process of perception, as a function of having to navigate, then evolving cultures and civilization out of narrative exchange, we think of time as the point of the present, moving past to future. Which physics codifies as measures of duration.

The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is the present, as the events come and go.

There can be 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.

So energy is "conserved," because it is the present, not some dimensionless point between past and future.

As an effect and measure of action, time is similar to temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

As process,energy goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.

In terms of a wave, the energy drives it, while the fluctuations rise and fall.

The wave, as energy, radiates outward, toward infinity, while the fluctuations settle back to equilibrium. Both entropic, yet conceptually opposite. Absolute and infinite.

Galaxies are energy radiating out, as form coalesces in.

Nodes drawing inward, as networks radiate outward. Organisms synchronize their clocks, as ecosystems harmonize their various actions.

As these mobile organisms, it is our digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, while the central nervous system sorts and orders the patterns precipitating out. Thus this intellectual tendency to see reality in terms of information. Which does seem abstract, because it is just forms emergent from the energy. Seemingly focused on some ideal centerpoint, be it God, TOE, or just the bottom line. Which then seems "fuzzy," as the thermodynamic feedback loops keep bubbling under the surface of our sterilized attention.

Information is real, in the same way temperature is real. Don't put your hand on a hot stove. The energy is also real.

Consciousness goes past to future, as perceptions, emotions and thoughts rise and fall, future to past. Lives go birth to death, while life moves onto the next generation, shedding the old.

As Emerson said, "We are but thickened light."

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John Brodix Merryman Jr.
John Brodix Merryman Jr.

Written by John Brodix Merryman Jr.

Having an affair with life. It's complicated.

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