Abstract
Given Bergson’s commitment to a dynamic conception of time and an open future it seems likely that he would not have welcomed developments in physics which suggest that we live in an eternal four-dimensional block-universe. The route from Einstein’s special theory of relativity to the eternalist conception of time has been thoroughly explored — and Bergson himself explored ways of reconciling his own doctrines with Einstein’s theory. But there is more than one route from physics to the block-universe. The route I am concerned with here may be less familiar than Einstein’s, but is potentially of considerable significance since some contemporary physicists believe it may well be the physics of the future. Denis Villeneuve’s recent movie Arrival — together with the science fiction story by Ted Chiang it is based upon — provide useful points of entry into the relevant science.
Highlights
The plot of Arrival is based on a science fiction novella: Ted Chiang’s “Story of My Life.”
On Earth we have discovered both the local rules and global-constraint ways of doing physics — and discovered the local version before the global version
Our current best theory of matter is known as the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which takes the form of a quantum field theory (QFT)
Summary
The recent movie Arrival (Villeneuve 2016) is interesting for a number of reasons. In the first instance it is a “First Contact” story: a race of hitherto unknown aliens pay us a visit. Banks, assisted by physicist Ian Donnelly, succeeds in mastering both the spoken and written forms of the alien’s language — but only after overcoming numerous hurdles. She subsequently enters into a relationship with Donnelly, and a few years later the couple have a daughter, Hannah. The plot of Arrival is based on a science fiction novella: Ted Chiang’s “Story of My Life.” In the latter Chiang provides a more detailed account of the peculiarities of the aliens’ spoken and written languages. Form: the average kinetic energy less the average potential energy is as little as possible for the path of an object going from one point to another” (Feynman 2011, ch. 19)
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