09/07/2021 The World as Myth

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"When myth incarnates in the waking world...”

The World as Myth

by Jason L. Thompson

It can be argued that the

type of literature which is
both uniquely modern and
uniquely definitive of the
modern world is science
fiction. Often
what seems
like improbable, wild
speculation turns out, after
scientific understanding
has a chance to catch up
with imagination, to be
cold hard fact. In this
regard, the names of Jules
Verne (who predicted,
amongst many other
things, the invention of
scuba gear, the nuclear
powered submarine, neon
signs, and the Eiffel tower)
and Arthur C. Clarke
(amongst whose
predictions number the
exact shape and nature of
the lowest-energy
traversible worm-hole and
the existence of water on
the Jovian moon Titan)
come first to the forefront.
But there are other places
to look in the realm of
science fiction, and
comparisons with modern
science can be most
interesting.

Robert Heinlein stated, in

his short story Elsewhen,
that "Most people think of

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time as a track that they

run on from birth to death
as inexorably
as a train
follows its rails - they feel
instinctively that time
follows a straight line, the
past lying behind, the
future lying in front. Now I
have reason to believe - to
know - that time is
analagous to a surface
rather than a line...."

The characters in this story

use this fact to travel in
time in a most peculiar
manner. By learning how
to 'step off' the line they are
on, they each
find a time
line that is discontinuous
from that of the world in
which they started. One
dies and finds a world that
is the Christian afterlife.
Another finds a strange war
on an alien world. Still
another finds a home in a
fairytale land.

This was not the only time

Heinlein presented this
picture of time. In his
novel, The Number of the
Beast, his protagonists
invent a time machine
which travels to different
time lines and results in the
characters' finding worlds
corresponding to those of
books they have read:
Barsoom, Oz, Wonderland,
the galaxy of the Lensmen,
etc.

Heinlein believed that it

was only our (that is, we
humans') limited
perceptions that prevented
us from realizing this, that
our cultural prejudices
cause us to find other ways
of defining "reality". He
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gave his fullest statement

of this in his novel The Cat
Who Walks Through
Walls.

"The World as Myth is a

subtle concept. It has
sometimes been called a
multiperson solipsism,
despite the internal illogic
of that phrase....For
many
centuries religion held
sway as the explanation of
the universe - or
multiverse. The details of
revealed religions differed
wildly but were essentially
the same: somewhere up in
the sky - or down in the
earth - or in a volcano - any
inaccessible place - there
was an old man in a
nightshirt who knew
everything and was all
powerful and created
everything and rewarded
and punished...and could
be bribed. The Almighty
God idea came under
attack because it explained
nothing; it simply pushed
all explanations one stage
farther away. In the
nineteenth century
atheistic positivism started
displacing the Almighty
God notion in that minority
of the population that
bathed regularly. Atheism
had a limited run as it, too,
explains nothing, being
merely Godism turned
upside down...The
physicists of the twentieth
century made short work of
that idea. Quantum
mechanics and
Schroedinger's cat tossed
out the clockwork world of
1890 and replaced it with a
fog of probability in which
anything could happen.
...They did indeed visit the
fairyland dreamed up by L.
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Frank Baum. And the

Wonderland invented by
the Reverend Mr. Dodgson
to please
Alice. And other
places known only to
fiction. Hilda discovered
what none of us had
noticed before because we
were inside it: the World is
Myth. We create it ouselves
and we change it
ourselves."

Heinlein's view of time is

unique (or at least very
uncommon). The world he
pictured would look just
like the physical world - the
"real" world -
in all
respects. But, to someone
who made the proper effort
of perception, the world is
many - the world is all the
worlds that are, were, and
ever would or could be. All
that can be imagined (and
all that can't) is true on
SOME timeline. And more,
these timelines of
Heinlein's affect our
physical world in small but
important ways. But this
can only be seen by those
who know where to look.

Einstein's view of time is

also unique. It was very
different from any that had
gone before (or, indeed,
after - few nonscientists
even now understand it).
To put it in simplified
layman's terminology,
Einstein said that time is
what we measure on clocks.
In other words, time is
defined by perception.
Ergo, time is relative to
who is doing the measuring
and how they are doing it.
It's different for observers
in different reference
frames. (It should be kept
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in mind here that the most

basic form of a clock is a
beam of light: time is
marked by the passage of
the peaks of its waves past
a certain point in space.

This is even what is

happening with that
mecanical device called a
clock - it is the light from
the clock's hands, reaching
our eyes, that tells us
how
the hands are moving) The
other important part of
Einstein's view of time was
that all observers, no
matter what their frame of
reference, will measure the
speed of light to be the
same. If you are standing
still you will see light
travelling at 2.998*10^8
m/s. If you are traveling at
2*10^8 m/s you will still
see light moving at
2.998*10^8 m/s. Its time
and space that must warp
and bend to allow this to
occur. The idea seems most
strange, but it's been
experimentally verified
time and again.

From these and other

principles, Einstein
developed the special and
general theories of
relativity. Just how he did
this is beyond the scope of
this
paper, but the relevant
thing is what the general
theory of relativity has to
say on the subject of black
holes and time.

Einstein's theory of general

relativity predicts that stars
of a certain mass will
eventually collapse down to
the size of a point due to
their own
gravitation.
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When this occurs nothing,

not even light, can escape
their awesome
gravitational pull (hence
the term black hole). But
Einstein's theory predicts
one other interesting thing
about them as well; they
have another "side" to
them (side here being used
in a four-dimensional
rather than a two-
dimensional sense).
Anything passing into the
black hole passes through it
and into a region of space
and time that is completely
disconnected from our
space and time. Another
universe.

"So what?" the observant

reader will be saying about
now (that is, the observant
reader who knows a thing
or two about black holes).
"Anything
passing through
a black hole will be crushed
completely, so there is no
way these other universes
can ever be observed." And
that is largely true. But the
physicist Kip Thorne found
certain solutions to
Einstein's equations that
say that there are certain
types of black holes that
don't collapse all the way to
a point but still lead to
these other universes.
These black holes can be
formed in such a way that a
human passing into one is
still alive and kicking when
he emerges on the other
side. And vice versa.
Therefore, these universes
are observable under the
right conditions.

Now, to appreciate all of

this, a little quantum
mechanics must be
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understood. Werner
Heisenberg, who many
consider to be the father of
quantum mechanics,
formulated what is now
called the Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle. This
principle states that no
energy measurement can
ever be
known exactly.
There must always be a
certain rigidly defined
amount of uncertainty in
every measurement. But
zero is an exact number
and therefore disallowed by
Heisenberg. This means
that even when observing
empty space, no possible
energy state can be seen to
be zero. This means that all
of space is filled with
"vacuum fluctuations",
virtual particles popping in
and out of existence
continuously. There are an
infinite number of such
particles covering the range
of all possible energies
(from zero to infinitely
energetic). The reason we
don't notice this in day to
day life is that it is the same
in every direction. A push
to the left is cancelled by a
push to the right and so
forth. It is only energy
differences that we notice,
things that are sort of "on
top" of this sea of infinite
energy. The existence of
this sea of energy, this
quantum foam, was
experimentally confirmed
first by Sparnaay and then
later by Lamoreaux,
following Casimir's
suggestion.

This gives an interesting

picture of space, all space,
even empty space. Look at
it at a small, microscopic
level, and you find it to be
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full of particles of energy

that are as large as the
space you are looking at
and, over time, that tend to
cancel each other's effects
out. This region of space is
also full of smaller, more
energetic particles, but
these cannot be directly
observed easily. The
smaller the particles, the
more energetic they are,
the quicker their actions
cancel each other out. Look
at an ever smaller region of
space and these smaller
energetic particles become
easier to see, the cancelling
action taking longer for a
smaller scale. All the
structure of space, time,
and matter we observe at
our scale of the universe
are built up out of this
infinite sea of energy. Our
world is, in effect, the small
differences in these
energies that didn't quite
cancel out all added up.

The important point here is

that all possible energy
states must be occupied at
all times. That means that
there are particles that are
so energetic
that they form
miniature black holes.
Since Thorne-type black
holes allow for signals to
pass from another universe
into this one, every possible
Thorne-type black hole
must exist in the quantum
foam, for each possible
universe must send a
different signal, for the
energy states of any two
universes must be different
(Heisenberg again). Keep
in mind that these signals
need be nothing other than
energy leakage from one
side to the other.

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The upshot of all this is

best expressed in the
following sorites:

1. Every Thorne-type black

hole connects to a universe
separate from this one. No
one universe may have
exactly the same energy
state as any
other, as this
would be an exact
determination of energy in
violation of Heisenberg's
principle. Therefore every
Thorne-type black hole
leads to a different universe
(a universe with a different
energy state).

2. All possible states of

energy must be occupied at
all points in space and
time. Every Thorne-type
black hole is connected to,
and therefore
has, a
different state of energy.
Therefore every possible
Thorne-type black hole
state is occupied (every
possible Thorne-type black
hole exists) at all points in
space and time. Therefore:

3. Every possible Thorne-

type black hole state is
occupied. Every possible
Thorne-type black hole
leads to a different
universe. Therefore every
energy state that
corresponds to a Thorne-
type black hole leading to a
different universe is
occupied (every possible
universe exists).

And lastly -

4. Heinlein's view of the

world is based on the

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existence of all possible

universes.

All possible universes exist.

Therefore Heinlein's view

of the world is correct.

So C.S. Lewis' wardrobe

really did lead to Narnia.
Never-never Land is past
the first star on the left and
straight on till morning.
But it must be
kept in mind
that the chance of a
macroscopic observer
(such as a person)
observing any one
particular universe in the
quantum foam is so low as
to be practically
indistinguishable from
zero. It's so small that the
odds of someone winning
the lottery every week for a
year seem quite good by
comparison.

But there are an infinite

number of other universes.
And any finite number
multiplied an infinite
number of times is itself
infinite. So these other
universes do exert an
influence on our world.
Why then is this not
observable in day to day
life? Well, because there
are an infinite number of
infinitely varied universes,
they must be mostly self
cancelling in effect. For
every effect coming out of
one, there has to be the
cancelling effect coming
out of another. But there is
nothing to say that there
are not local imbalances,
where the cancelling effects
are only observable over a
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larger area. In fact, certain

scientific principles
demand it. So how large an
effect these other universes
have on ours is impossible
to say. Perhaps quite a
large, but subtle one.
Perhaps an inobservable
one.

So maybe Heinlein's idea of

traveling to these places is
a dream that could not be
realized for a long time to
come, if ever. But the
philosophical
implications
of the World as Myth are
quite interesting. Does it
not imply that every
religion that ever was is, in
its own way, true? Does it
not imply that we are not
alone? Does it not imply
that there is far more to
reality than what is readily
apparent?

© 2000 Jason Thompson

© Lani K. Thompson All rights reserved.

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