VOLUME VI, ISSUE I & II, SPRING & FALL 2013
Abstract
This article is conceived as an intellectual patchwork of visions and notions, which are considered focal to the development of a posthuman cosmo-ontology. It wishes to experiment in its form, as well as in its contents, in line with the post-dualistic attitude of the posthuman: the “how” is the “what”. It is inspired by Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85), as well as by lived practice and quantum physics. It focalizes on the significance of the eternal recurrence in relation to the reiteration of patterns of existence and to the hypothetical memory of spacetime. It is a work in progress, aiming to spark original connections and a different set of hermeneutical possibilities. Like pieces of a philosophical puzzle, each subchapter makes full sense after reading the complete article. It is advised to approach this text with scientific joy and existential curiosity.
I had a dream. One day in 2010, I woke up with this phrase in my mind: “You will be able to unravel time”. I had never heard the word “unravel” before, so I looked it up in the dictionary to see if it held any meaning: it did. It meant: to undo, to untangle, to solve. And still, what did that phrase mean? How could you unravel time? By only focusing on the “how”, I had no answer. So I changed my focus to the “what”: what is time? Time can be perceived as a human concept, a historical guideline, a cultural framework; and still, time cannot be discerned from space. According to Einstein’s general relativity (1916), the concept of time depends on the spatial referential frame of the observer. Time should be addressed more specifically as spacetime. Before proceeding further, we should mention that spacetime is merely a convenient framework; it does not describe “what it really is”, but “what it is like”. In physics, spacetime refers to a mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum: time is added as a dimension of space . For instance, due to a principle of physics known as time dilation (Einstein 1916), astronauts in space are aging a bit more slowly than the people on earth. It is assumed that spacetime is curved (Wald 1994) ; such a curvature would be caused by the presence of matter, and would be responsible for gravity. And still… what does spacetime have to do with Nietzsche?
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