Guennady P. Aksjenov. CAUSE OF TIME. (In Rus.) Moscow. Editorial URSS. 2001, 304 p.

If instead of the question “What is Time and Space?” we would ask oneself “Why time is going?” or “What make the space three-dimensional?”, that will mean not a philosophical, but a scientific discussion. This last question provokes the emergence of the notion of the natural sources of duration, direction and divisibility of time and dissimmetry and three-dimensionality of space. It regards the time-space not as a universal natural phenomenon, but as a simple natural phenomenon. This book is devoted to the cause of Time concept.

Plato was the first who asserted into philosophical and mythological forms that the world was created not in the course of time, but with time, at the same moment with matter. Aristotle made conclusion that this idea does confirm that time (as well as space) serves for a measure of the motion, but can not be identified with it. Time has its own significance, it is independent from the skies and from the motion of celestial bodies and other material changes. Time’s source is located in human soul where it is being continuously generated and divided into equal parts.

One can view Newton’s achievement as a point of culmination the development of the concept of the cause of Time. He mounted time and space, introduced by Galileo as local independent variables, to theoretical level and he straight divided an absolute motion and rest from the relative ones. Newton achieved progress by dichotomy of time and space, in which absolute time is not related with material bodies, and is not an attribute of motion. Absolutely time (space, motion, rest) belong only to these bodies, that change under the influence of some external force in different ways whereas all others bodies change under this force in one and in a similar way. We can to indicate those bodies as some bodies with its own behavior. Only such bodies possess true time, which goes “on its own nature” and not does depend on any thing external. For other things time runs relatively, so that we can only approximately measure its trace. Hence, we should regard the variable “t” in the equations of the motion as some artifact relative to all things that submit to the law of gravitation.

The postulate of absolute time was a straight reflection of Newton’s religious world outlook. He believed that a single Creator started the motion of all bodies, which now move by inertia and consequently little by little loose the quantity of their motion. But Newton left these views outside his own scientific notions and so the concept of absolute Time was not understood.

Leonard Eiler adapted this concept to an acceptable form. He considered absolute time and space as conventional notions. According to which for an overwhelming majority of cases we should assume time and space for the spread of the infinity universe as a receptacle of bodies and simultaneously for the time running in it. It was this approximate and materialistic notion that was accepted the scientific community, but was incorrectly called as Newtonian concept of substantial time and space. This notion was quite satisfactory until the discovery of the world of electromagnetic phenomena. It became too contradictory especially after the discovery of the constancy of the light velocity.

Kant was the only scientist and philosopher, who supported the side of Newton. As a matter of fact he had found the nature of that artifact, which was use in the equations of mechanics as a measure of motion. Time and space according to Kant are essential qualities of the man. This qualities exist before such any the scientific experience. We use them to measure the motion of bodies, but not view as attributes of external things. This way Kant presented both God and man as the sources of time and space. According to Kant time is an essential characteristic of man.

After a lapse of a hundred years Bergson continued the development of this idea. He asserted that the human being is an active reality of the world, that is the human cognition is not a neutral contemplation, but an active invasion into the nature. Possession of time is a characteristic feature of the animate nature. Through use and generalization of the results of experimental psychology Bergson created the concept of the intuitive time or of the concrete duration. With the help of external events, especially of the cyclic motion, we incorrectly identify time with intervals between some periodic marks. What is known as the physical time is indeed only the points of simultaneity, or just a numerical row which can summed up. In fact time is not accumulating. It passes and fades away.

Bergson followed the direction of the development of the natural sciences, especially of geology and biology, that contradicted to physical interpretation of time.

The development of spatio-temporal ideas for sciences of the Earth began with the era of Buffon. He put forward the first hypothesis about the origin of the solar system and established initial scientific notions of natural history and of age of the Earth. Buffon explained that it takes a very long period to the form the rocks from the marine shells of mollusks. We find marine shells that turn into stone everywhere in the mountains. The marine shells form the immense masses of limestone, chalk, marble and others materials.

But the idea of natural history contained a contradiction to the physical concept of time, due to elaborated notions of the succession of formation and impossibility to replace the past, the present and the future. If according to astronomy one year is not different from others, for geology it is filled with differed unique events, like for example, mountains formation or the process of sedimentation Geological year can not indeed be reduced to time-number, but it suggests the idea of time-order. In late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the works of Hutton, Lyell, Darwin and other geologists firmly established the concept of the uniformitarianism. According to which contemporary events on the surface of the Earth have run infinitely. But this reiteration created a difficulty in identification of the age of earth’s strata. Geology received help from paleontology. W. Smith asserted that same fossils are of the same ages. Thus the paleontological evolution established the basis for identification and comparison of the rocks’ age.

In the beginning paleontological phenomena seemed to be only a comfortable or an attendant sign of a geological changes. But gradually it turned out that all biological phenomena of the planet’s past played more significant role and their conformity which geological events was not a coincidence. True global ecological role of living systems was discovered by a Russian naturalist Vladimir Vernadsky. He substantiates the doctrine of the biosphere. The central element of biosphere is living matter. It is an active agent, that controls all other geological spheres and chemical environment by means of atom’s turns. Vernadsky postulated that living matter complies with the principle (1686) of Francesco Redi: Omne vivum e vivo. Hence the living matter have existed into the duration of all geological time. Consequently the notion of the biosphere have a cosmological meaning.

This book gives analysis of the crisis of physical interpretation of time and space that appeared on the border between nineteenth and twentieth century. This crisis arose from the difficulty to apply classical understanding of time to the subatomic realm and it was resolved with the theory of relativity. Despite Albert Einstein point of view that the theory of relativity overcomes Newtonian time and space, Bergson asserted that it is actually a justification of classical postulates, as it has suggested the public the idea of the single time. Indeed the theory of relativity has simply shifted the absolute time from the infinite universe to the process of the measuring of the light’s velocity. This velocity includes time as the central element, which is measured relatively to the observer but not to the source emitting light. Therefore the famous paradoxes of the time do not apply to biological objects.

This approach was included into the concept of the biosphere, that has accomplished synthesis of precise sciences and descriptive natural sciences. Vernadsky asserted the notion of the biological time and space as a fundamental basis for this synthesis, which combined with the notion of the geological eternity of the living matter. Cosmological role of life led him to creation of new concept of three strata of reality: the living matter, the inert matter and the energy, which are unified and can not be reduce to each other.

Originated out of this approach the notion of the cause of Time postulates that time in all its manifestations and space which has duration, direction and is not equal as to left and right are sign (or the property) of biota and only biota. Any other time is a trace of the biological time-space.

In the last half of a century this conclusion was quite confirmed with the development of the geochronology that has extended the age of the Earth from 1,5 – 2 to 4,5 – 5 billion years and with the development of microbiological ecology. The latter discovery new, main, fundamental biosphere on the basis of the litotrophical bacteria, that has existed all 4,5 billion years without changes, that is without any evolution and any ancestors. The bacteria is the most powerful geological force. The existence of microbiological biosphere is the perpetual present. It forms the actual surface of the planet, where absolute age of every piece of rock starts. Therefore the age of the planet simply can never be determines. Consequently the biological time is the absolute time.

The notion of the cause of Time has helped to understand that the biological process of the living cell division is the single process of the formation of the spatio-temporal properties in the world. The cell fission is a bearer of all signs of time. Indivisible cells have brought about the sense of time or the internal rhythm in living organism. Evolution of human brain has led to origination consciousness of time in man.