by Paris Kaye

Created on: November 17, 2010

The very thought of time travel has captivated the human imagination for many centuries.  Who among us has not thought of traveling back through time to prevent an epic disaster, or to enhance a memorable event in our lives or to somehow erase a regrettable action that seems to haunt us?  Moreover, what about traveling to the future to enjoy life-enhancing technology, creative inventions and the miracles of futuristic medicine?  

Interestingly enough, mythologies concerning travel from the present into the future have long existed in many ancient cultures, while the concept of traveling from the present to the past is a relatively young phenomenon.

M-theorists who work toward reconciling quantum mechanics and general relativity now believe they have captured 10-spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension, opposed to the 3:1 ratio to which we are accustomed.   Some radical physicists believe they may be able to capture more than one temporal dimension, on a sub-atomic level, that may provide for the foundation of travel along the time-space continuum. (1)

Stephen Hawking argues, in a variant style of Fermi’s Paradox, that time travel will never be possible as evidenced by the absence of time travelers, though he does concede that time travel may exist in the future but will be limited to a loop or warped timeframe. (2)

Carl Sagan takes up the other side of the argument, suggesting that time travelers are present yet are either well disguised or cloaked by invisibility.  Sagan’s position, interestingly enough, arguably supported by a recent viral video that depicts a woman talking on what appeared to some as a cell phone and recorded in 1928. (3), (4)

If one contemplates time travel, then faced with an ethical dilemma of forever altering the paradigm of continuity.

The concept of Primum Movens, or First Mover, introduced to the Western world by way of both Book XII of Aristotle’s The Metaphysics and Book X of Plato’s The Law.  Aristotle posits that the structure of causality is linear and, at the beginning of that continuum, is the first mover or the one who is immovable.   (5)

After that first move, the linear structure of causality becomes exponentially more complex.  Then, multiply that number by the several hundred eons that have passed.

At this juncture in time, every person and every object, past and present, represents a paradigm of continuity.  What does that mean?

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>