Professor Chomsky Presents a Problem for Empiricists, Positivists, Materialists

[tama]

36. Also Einstein

was perplexed by the 'now' and the mystery of time. As this thread is filed under 'philosophy', lets continue in that vein. Standard scientific method is based on requirement of repeatability - or testability in more general sense - but the notion of repeatability implies certain notions about time and order of universe with it (linearity etc.), that science as a form of philosophical inquire cannot and should not be a priori limited to. The whole of each moment/quantum state is unique and not fully definable aka "mysterious"; and as unique, not repeatable (cf. no-cloning theorem of quantum physics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem).

Classical phenomena are (usually?) time irreversible aka entropic and quantum phenomena time reversible, or that's one way to define difference between classical and quantum and the main problem of putting together a decent GUT or TOE. A decent GUT or TOE does not need to depend from certain notion of time to be testable - to formulate and construct questions to be answered by nature, but it needs philosophical and conceptual clarity about it's basic premisses about time and order. It is also possible to develop theories starting from the 'now' or 'nows' of various "sizes" that can rewrite both past and future, combine that approach with classical limit and construct testable predictions e.g. about particle masses. If these predictions are not falsified by experimental data and/or are better in tune with empiricism than other theories with different premisses about time etc., then nature would be showing thumbs up for that theory and notion of time(s). But philosophically and ontologically such a theory - based on 'now' - would not be to my understanding mechanistic or final theory, but would be evolving with each moment of quantum state of universe.