from The Collected Works

Explaining the Universe with Physics
               from Conversations 

The following is the transcript of a discussion held at the Thomas More Institute on November 9, 1970. Participants in the conversation were: Eric Voegelin, Eric O'Connor, Charlotte Tansey, and Cathleen Going. This is the second of a five part discussion.

 

charlotte tansey:   You don't think there are any new spatial experiences?

eric voegelin:   You have the problem that if one tries to construct a "physical universe" out of the experience of physics, that doesn't work. One cannot construct a physical universe. I've made a study of that problem in modern physics and I have shown, in the man­ner of the Kantian aporias, that any attempt to construct the uni­verse on the basis either of Newtonian or of Einsteinian concep­tions of time and space runs into logical aporias.

eric o'connor:  Basically why?

voegelin:   One would have to go through the whole system of the conception of, say, infinite space, infinite time, a ho­mogenous medium as in Newtonian physics.^FN When you make assumptions with regard to infinite velocity of movement in that universe you must cover it somehow by a movement faster than light; you have to construct a model of how can it be experienced, and if it can be experienced by such a model, you get into the aporias. Of course, we don't experience that, in fact. There can't be any verified model of experience of the universe.

o'connor:   You can certainly get a lot of theories. Those are the so-called verified models, but Charlotte is talking about new experiences–

tansey:  –which might make a different pattern for symbols.

voegelin:   What kind of experience would that be?

tansey:    Going to the moon.

voegelin:   No–we've always had the model of going to the moon. You don't have to go there in fact.

tansey:   I mean the experience of the human size being some­how dwarfed in a new way.

voegelin:   Human size isn't dwarfed in any significant way as compared with the cosmos conceptions of ancient civilization and of the Greeks. Since they had a fairly good idea how far away the sun is from the earth, they were as "dwarfed" as we are.

o'connor:   I wonder if I have an example of a new experience. I was waiting for a bit of music on the radio to stop in order to be sure of something, and turn it off. Because I was waiting, I wasn't relaxed in the time of the music, and I suddenly realized the strain of the waiting. This was a new experience of two times for me.

voegelin:    But this is just a question of two orders of time.

o'connor:   But still that may be the kind of thing–