There Is No Now

A mathematical point has no dimensions. No width, no length, no depth. It's just an abstract concept. "Now" is a mathematical point. Not only does it have no physical dimensions, it has no temporal dimensions. It doesn't exist outside of an abstract idea. It is a singularity. The present is an artificial construct that we use to capture that dimensionless instant between past and future. We don't deal well with singularities. We need things to have a size that we can grasp. We want to be able to see that event or place or concrete point where future transforms into past. Even the phrase, at this instant, has no real meaning.

There is no one who can give you a precise definition of now. We define it by what it is not. It's not the past, and it's not the future. Even the euphemisms we use to describe it don't adequately hold it. Today. We think of it as now, but when we try to nail it down, we have to subdivide it, trying to slice it into ever smaller pieces to get closer to the magical point. Morning, afternoon. Hours, minutes, seconds, even parts of seconds. We measure events in infinitesimally small fragments. A billion nanoseconds in a second. A trillion picoseconds. We measure how long it takes for an electron to travel its own length. Even in that tiniest fragment we haven't captured that very instant that what will be becomes what was.

Even time itself is an invention we use to try to grasp what we cannot reach. A ruler held up against air. A ruler that can't measure now, no matter how small the divisions. And the more we poke and prod at time, the more it evades us, even to the point of blurring the line between cause and effect. Relativity and quantum physics tell us that our concept of time is more like a rubber band than a ruler. Now can be in two places at once. It's like finding out that your yardstick with its 36 markings, is actually 37 inches long.

Now is the very definition of a singularity. Go ahead and try to point at it. I dare you.