“There isn’t just one dimension of time, there are two. One whole dimension of time and another of space have until now gone entirely unnoticed by us.”
-Dr. Itzhak Bars, Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Time, as we know it, is one dimensional. It exists as a linear line and contributes a single dimension to our conscious experience of four dimensions. Now a radical new theory currently being crafted by Dr. Itzhak Bars, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southern California, suggests that time might have two dimensions rather than the one we are so (un)familiar with.
If this theory should prove true then it could instigate the basis for the greatest rethinking of our understanding of time since Einstein’s theory of relativity. And as such have profound implications for our shared understanding of our place within time. So how might we begin to comprehend and navigate the transition into multi-dimensional time?
Shifts In The Dimensions of Time
The 1884 novella Flatland, A Romance of Many Dimensions represented a concise understanding of what it might mean to transcend spacial dimensions and was authored by Edwin A. Abbott under the pseudonym “A. Square”. As a masterpiece of science and mathematical fiction it entertained its readers with a romance in four interdependent dimensions of space (as illustrated by Abbott in Flatlands original title page above); Pointland of no dimensions, Lineland of one dimension, Flatland of two dimensions, and Spaceland of three dimensions.
This post is an endeavour to use Abbott’s 1884 conceptual model of multidimensional space to explore the potential attributes and implications of a multidimensional time. Or put differently, if Point Land, Line Land, Flat Land, and Space Land each had differing spacetime what might those temporalities look like?
Time as it existed prior to human measurement is arguably the time of Pointland, a non-dimensional entity free from humanly reasoned division, duration, and meaning. This time “just is”. This is the time of fundamental Physics, the Universe, stars, and our own ultimate single point of reference — the Sun.
Time “as we know it” currently resides within the of territories of Lineland. Our clocks are visualised through straight lines (clock hands) that reference lines (divisions of time) within circular lines (clock face). These lines act as references to the certainty of unitary values and absolute continuity. The Arrow of Time exists upon a linear line, and time is has no known or accessible contours or topology other than its entropy driven march forward.
Should our understanding of time transcend into the two dimensional planes of Flatland it’s absolute values would immediately become relative values. Just as a line from Lineland can become a square, triangle, circle or any two dimensional shape -time in Flatland would take on complex symbolic form far beyond its constituent parts. Time’s existence upon a dimensional plane, rather than a linear line, opens up distinctly new temporal behaviours and possibilities, many of which breach the laws of time we are currently imprisoned by. This is the territory of time that I am currently attempting to explore and uncover through the collaborative research project Sense of Time.
Far beyond the two dimensional planes of Flatland we might find the three dimensional temporal structures of Spaceland. Having only just begun to consider the implications of two dimensional time, let alone its actuality, we might have to park the consideration of three dimensional temporality for another time. However, in-order to contextualise the notions of multi-dimensional time we should begin with a simple, yet profound, question;
Do we ‘know’ the time or do we ‘feel’ the time?
Recognition by Feeling
Flatland’s explicit narrative was a satire upon the hierarchy of Victorian culture, but the fictions implicit meaning concerned the examination of spacial dimensions — and particularly the direct complications involved in transcending up dimensions. A square of two dimensional Flatland, by example, would have no ability to perceive the depth, angles and shade present within three dimensional Spaceland. The counter this impasse Abbott introduced attributes of perception such as the Art of Hearing, the Art of Feeling, and the Art of Sight Recognition and associated each attribute with the “class” of each dimension.
These same notions may be as relevant today as they were in 1884. Indeed as Banesh Hoffman describes in the 1952 introduction to Flatland “remains as spry as ever, a timeless classic of perennial fascination that seems to have been written for today. Like all great art, it defies the tyrant Time”. As modern humans we are ultimately governed by our feelings. We might know the time through our extensions of self materialised as watches and clocks, but we primarily continue to feel the time through both our intuition and alignment to natural rhythms. Despite our rapid progress and increasingly artificial environments we humans, as interdependent organisms, still remain part of nature rather than entirely decoupled from it. And so it remains completely feasible that we might understand time through what Abbott termed Recognition by Feeling.
Recognition by Inference
I should be clear that the premise of an alternative dimension of time that might be accessed or understood through feeling is not true to Dr. Itzhak Bars hypothesis of temporal duality introduced at the beginning of this post. Dr. Bars research looks to identify a second dimension of time in the micro world of particle physics that is “just so small that we don’t see it”.
In-order to traverse the gap between the unperceivably small (particle physics) and the unperceivably quantifiable (feelings) we might return to another critical speculation of Flatland, that of knowledge inference; the steps of reasoning taken when moving from premises to logical consequences.
What can we infer of time in addition to, or as a direct replacement of, measuring of time?
This is the very question is that I find THE MOST compelling in my own ongoing research and development into time and temporality. It captures the emotional urgency of Aaron Stewart-Ahn’s critical essay On Interstellar, love, time and the limitless prison of our Cosmos (also reflected in Like Stories of Old’s video essay Interstellar’s Hidden Meaning Behind Love and Time).
So let me infer, by both reasoning and logic, that a second dimension of time might not only be found within the precise study of the vibrations of the tiniest particles in the universe. Times hidden dimension might be hiding in plain sight, it might reside within an entity of little concern for science; the vibrations of Love.
Love is a feeling, love is one of the strongest feelings we experience as humans, love is the primary conduit for the reproduction of our species. And yet we generally consider love to be a frivolous matter of no objective value to science other than the objective study of its neurological and behavioural implications. This might well be because love describes what is valued (held dear to us), rather than what is valuable (able to be quantified).
Have we become more terrified of intimacy than interstellar travel?
-Aaron Stewart-Ahn
Capitalism and economics has led us into a world in which all that is considered of ‘value’ is all that is able to be ‘valued’ in order to become ‘valuable’ (able to be valued). Love is a unique phenomenon that we capable of observing, of pursuing, of occupying, yet which we have no means of assigning a unitary value to. As such love, alongside gravity, “is one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space”.
Love, when perceived as Limbic Resonance extending our individual nervous systems far beyond our self-contained bodies, is the Va (the space between things which isn’t empty) that connects events to matter. And so, in-order to transcend time we might first need to transcend the sentimentality we have now become so accustomed to attach to love.
