How Will Time End?
In speaking of the end of time, I am referring to the end of space-time, and its associated laws. The question is a serious one, but I wish it to be considered imaginatively, such as whether the end of time suggests 'nothingness' for eternity. Thinking about this, inevitably, raises the issue of linearity of time versus cyclical perspectives of time.
How this question is answered depends on worldviews and associated understanding of origins and causality? For example, the Judaeo- Christian picture puts humanity and the world at the centre, with the grand narrative of the end of the world as the ultimate. In contrast, the scientific 'big bang' theory suggests a birth of the universe and a potential 'death' at some point.
In trying to answer the question, I am not sure that it is possible for time to end. That is partly because I am inclined towards a cyclical picture of the universe and see the idea of 'nothingness' before or after the existence of life in the universe as rather dubious. As for speculation about the idea of the end of time, it may be one of the tangents of metaphysics. Perhaps, it is something of which Wittgenstein would advise 'silence' as it is possibly unknowable from the human perspective. What do you think about how time will end, and is it possible to speculate or predict what may happen on the basis of science and the limits of epistemology?
How this question is answered depends on worldviews and associated understanding of origins and causality? For example, the Judaeo- Christian picture puts humanity and the world at the centre, with the grand narrative of the end of the world as the ultimate. In contrast, the scientific 'big bang' theory suggests a birth of the universe and a potential 'death' at some point.
In trying to answer the question, I am not sure that it is possible for time to end. That is partly because I am inclined towards a cyclical picture of the universe and see the idea of 'nothingness' before or after the existence of life in the universe as rather dubious. As for speculation about the idea of the end of time, it may be one of the tangents of metaphysics. Perhaps, it is something of which Wittgenstein would advise 'silence' as it is possibly unknowable from the human perspective. What do you think about how time will end, and is it possible to speculate or predict what may happen on the basis of science and the limits of epistemology?
Comments (53)
When the universe endssparse photons left
that are so far apart that they could not 'see' one another
The last black holes will whisper to the void,
Their Hawking radiations fading song
A requiem for galaxies long dead,
For stars that danced and planets that once bloomed;
Yet in that darkness sleeps infinite seed,
The quantum foam of possibility,
Where virtual particles embrace and part
Like thoughts within the cosmic mind unborn.
The vacuum teems with spectral symmetries,
Mathematics ghosts that never sleep,
Platonic forms in timeless hibernation
Awaiting their next chance to manifest.
In this great pause between the cosmic acts,
The stage is empty but the script remains,
Written in the grammar of pure space,
In laws that transcend any single world.
Perhaps some deeper rhythm pulses here
In realms where time itself dissolves to now,
Where every ending holds beginnings heart,
And death is just geometry in flux.
The constants and the forces hibernate
Like winter seeds beneath dimensional frost,
Until conditions ripen once again
For space and time to blossom into form.
See how the void begins to ripple now
With fluctuations in the quantum deep,
As virtual becomes the actual,
And possibility ignites to mass.
The eternal math starts singing once again,
Its abstractions clothing themselves in fire,
As from the ashes of our universe,
Another cosmos learns to read its lines.
('Stillness', like 'Nothing', cannot be; the quantum vacuum is always up to something.)
Nothing suggests "nothingness for eternity" like "death" does. The "death of the universe" is an anthropomorphism.
:up: :up:
How will time end?
Will it?
I see time-space-matter-motion as aspects or points of view that are all the case now that there is more than one thing. Many things in existence, means, time-space-matter-motion, to be crude about it. Where there is one of these, there must be the others. There is no time without matter in motion through space. And there is no motion without some matter moving through space over time. And there is motion. And there are things in motion.
So the question of the end of time is also will motion and the things that move stop moving or cease to be things?
Quoting PoeticUniverse
As one of Kants antinomies, we essentially cant rationalize the before time or end of time. We cant conceive no time with our minds and not be generating the time it takes to conceive of anything; even nothingness forever is compounded for ever after simply nothing.
I just think that all means we cant talk about the end of time without sounding like a poet or a mystic.
Many, it seems, would rather stay silent in the face of the non-rational. Maybe prudent, when trying to avoid sounding like a fool, or a poet, or a mystic.
What if it will take forever for time to end?
Is that a rational question?
Personally, if I could be so foolish as to sound like a failed mystic and a failed philosopher, for a moment, (and I certainly could), lets see if I can speak of eternity. I see eternity as both the wrapping around before the beginning and the end of time, at the edge of time, just as eternity runs through every instant.
Or, put another way, Now, is as good as the very end of time. Now is the pinnacle, end result of all history that has gone before right now. And also, now is the beginning of time. Right now, is the instantaneous moment upon which all that we call the future will rest.
Now, is all time, eternal. (Time is actually more like the construct, a watch. A measuring stick.) All that actually exists is Now. So there is no end or beginning of time, because now is always the end and beginning of time. The real raw material we have to deal with is eternity, which resists capturing with words, until we call it a moment in time and construct enough duration to wonder about the past and future ends.
See, a failed mystic and/or bad philosopher. Darn those antinomies.
But if you are talking about whether the universe will eventually break apart and will it simply fail one day to support any forms of existence besides a pile of rubble? Maybe.
That wont be the end of measurable change and motion and time, just the end of anything that could take measure or identify some form to measure any such motion. Like stillness, but for forever. Maybe.
But I agree, I think it makes sense that physically there is a cycle. Like Empedocles - things come together and break apart in an endless cycle between love and strife (he was definitely a cult leader). Or Aristotle - Generation and corruption. Or the eastern thinkers conceptions of eternity. Or Christianity, where an eternal God made space and time for us to visit eternity, in due time.
I have to say I dont know what it means to say the end of time.
Great poetry, as always. What your writing suggests is that there is inherent order amidst the universe, as opposed to randomness. Also, the idea of the 'void' suggests more than 'nothingness', involving a creative process, or manifestation.
The analogy between the death of the universe and the human experience of death is an interesting one. The question is whether: death=nothingness=unconsciousness? The idea of 'nirvana' is important here because it involves 'a burning out', like a candle, but it may also involve some kind of merging with the transcendent, after cycles of existence. But, whether it is 'the ultimate end' is another issue in the context of the greatest cycles of evolutionary twists and turns.
The thread title and the OP refer to different concepts. The end of time and the end of spacetime can only be determinable by very different sets of conditions.
Time ends with the end of the last relational intelligence; spacetime ends after the last formulation of a mathematical model of a relativistic continuum.
Why not? Time is only one dimension we experience, it doesn't mean that anything outside of the reality of our experience wouldn't allow for a timeless existence.
I think this is the fallacy of how we think about our own mortality. Rather than thinking about what happens after death, think about what happened before you birth, where were you? We view the time before out own experience of life as nothing special (in most religions), but there are tons of narratives dedicated to where we go when we die.
The same goes for the universe. We only argue in terms of what we can perceive, experience and define; we think about these things inside of the definitions that allow us to think.
This is why we struggle with what came before the big bang, because it cannot be defined within the conditions of what allows us to think about it. So it becomes a cognitive paradox for us that we cannot solve. The same goes for what happens after time ends. We cannot, by our very function within time, think about what that would be.
Best way I would argue would be to think of it like the block universe theory. That the past is a form of solidified spacetime in which time is a direction just as much as space. Like an axis in which events change in space, but it doesn't move. If possible to walk along this axis you would see space change in its 3 dimensions, but you can only walk back and forth along this axis, like scrolling though a video.
That the future is an undetermined probability function that ends up in a defined state when the present comes in contact with it. Entropy causing the collapse into a state which is defined in relation to everything else in the universe and directly adds to that past block of time axis.
We only experience the collapsing state so we experience time as we do based on this thin edge between possible states and the past solid block of a time axis.
And we can view this past block as a timeless entity. And it may be that its this that exists when time ends, the block ends, it becomes, within a higher existence, a "blob" of spacetime, solid, unmoving.
Like a fuse, burning from one state to another, from high energy to low in a violent present, and then its just the end state, still, unmoving. Maybe the ash blows away, degrades into another state within a higher dimensional existence, part of some other definition of time that is not how we define time, but still moving as a larger entity.
No one knows because this is far beyond the limits of current scientific knowledge. But I think the block time theory, especially if combining it with the quantum physics of the collapsing probabilites, have a lot of logical merit. And it makes a lot of sense when thinking of how time actually functions in general relativity, bending and shifting, but always going forward along its axis.
From my point of view, this is the right way to think about it. Assuming there is no way, even in theory, to determine what happens at the end of time and space, or even if there is an end at all, then the whole question is metaphysics. There is no empirical answer. There is no truth or falsity to any of our speculations.
OK, imagination and the long good-bye
The Last Chance Saloon
Entropy is always the winner in the end,
When theres no more energy left to lend;
Meanwhile, we stabilize, in natures ways,
Rearranging resources temporarily.
Prelude
Going beyond our very old obsession so vast,
Of how it all began, back in the distant past,
Yet retaining our search for meaning, from that,
We now turn to how will it all end, this and that,
Whether becoming collapsed, expended, or flat.
Is there is some deep meaning in all that?
Yes, for it is there in that future distance,
Well find or not the end of our persistence,
Whether or not we are at all forever resistant,
Whether all that was and what was did and done
Will be of any long-lasting benefit to anyone
Of what destiny awaits, if there ever was one.
Endings are important to us, of what were about,
Because we believe that how things turn out
Implies what the beginnings ultimately meant,
Of what or not is our place in the firmament.
Which sparked my interest since I am or was a mathematician. I can model the far future in an imaginative way by considering the passage of spacetime as a series of cause/effect steps, say at Planck time rhythm.
Suppose each step is a function operating on the previous effect and all this takes place in some enormous but closed environment. And suppose each function "contracts", brings things a tad closer together. Then, under certain mathematical assumptions, as time moves ever forward, if at each step there is a thing that does not change (a "fixed point"), and these things converge to a specific thing (call it "alpha") as time marches on, the entire structure of spacetime contracts to that singular alpha.
This may conflict with entropy, since objects seem to be moving apart, but maybe not.
Which means no "end" to spacetime, but eventually all is taken to the vicinity of alpha.
Teilhard De Chardin calls alpha the "Omega Point", towards which everything moves.
Here, the distant future is ruled by the lonely photon in deep cold, where (other) particles have long since decayed and black holes have evaporated.
The universe doesn't end as such, but keeps fading away, entropy ever converging on zero or whatever background energy / quantum foam.
Now that got me off on a Planck-scale research trip, I must say. Fascinating idea to be sure, but, if spacetime structure contracts to a single point, for which descriptions of events is complete insofar as there wouldnt be any more events to describe, wouldnt that suffice as the end of spacetime?
Granted, only for this particular model, which gets us back to the notion of ending spacetime just is the ending of models representing it. I mean .there was a beginning of spacetime, 1908 or thereabouts, so its ending shouldnt be all that inconceivable, right?
(Can you hear it? In the background? The whispers? That here, is a perfect example of philosophy getting in the way of science? (Sigh))
I was thinking the same thing. From a Taoist perspective, time ends when naming ends.
The end of space, or the end of time does not quite make sense. One imagines the clock stopping, but in order for the clock to stop, time must continue while it stands still. So time might have stopped between my typing my first word and my second word of this post for a quintillion centuries, but since nothing happened, it makes no difference - the world - like a paused video, carries on just as before when play is continued. There is no room for experience at the end of time; it does not happen, and it not happening is what it is.
Time is a more of a concept then a physical concrete thing. Its like a river without beginning or end or perhaps a river that flows in a circle like a clock. The question is, long after minds that perceive time have ceased to be in the universe whether time is still flowing ? Well thats like asking if a tree falls in the woods and theres no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?
If there's ever a heat death of the universe, time would stop for all practical purposes because nothing would happen. Nothing would change.
Are you saying time only exists if linearity exists ?
No. The idea is that time and change are the same thing. Carlo Rovelli's view.
I disagree with that view. A system can be in standstill and time will still elapse.
How would you know time elapsed?
It would just take spacetime closer and closer to alpha without ever reaching the point of completion. The component of time would shrink, but not collapse.
Just doodling with a theorem of mine in Banach space. Pay no heed.
Well thats like asking if a tree falls In the woods does it make a sound if theres no one to hear it and the answer is it does even if theres no observers to hear the sound.
If time is a concept and the environment was frozen and in standstill it would still elapse with no discernible changes happening. Time is like an invisible clock that ticks even if there was no change in the environment.
I havent the slightest clue regarding Banach space, but I recognize the common version of Zenos Paradox when I see it.
Happy doodling.
There'd be motion of sorts (undecayable photons) and perhaps simmering micro-chaos (quantum mechanics).
A question that sometimes comes up, is whether this situation could make something else come about, say, could the expansion separate particles and anti-particles from the background micro-chaos, so they don't cancel back into the background microcosm? Or, it's all just idle speculation and conjecture. :)
Probably so. I'm not sure what you said, but, probably so.
It is supposed that that is what happened during inflation.
We can estimate what happens as the universe expands unto the final silent dark after the stars have gone but first:
As an ambitious species of nurture and nature
We now and have always pointed toward the future,
For, of the three forms of the chimpanzee:
The common chimp, the bonobo, and us, we
Are the only chimp who went beyond the trees
And more importantly, ever out of Africa freed,
By that exodus, which laid down, indeed,
From that experience, the urge and the need
To move on, exploring, ever planting another seed.
The horizons on Earth sufficed us through time
For many millennia but now the horizons climes
Have broadened, through cosmology and physics,
And so they can well inform us of our prospects.
The future matters to us for very basic reasons:
We wish to offset our mortality, our pleasins,
To know if humanitys works for every season
Will be remembered or lostall for nothing, even.
The Final, Silent Dark Marches On
Time hurls a million waves of its displacements
At us, yet we are still herethe replacements.
Time, ever gray with age, hurls its changes then,
Gainst existences rock, time and time again,
The entropic seas denuding the sands,
Yet energy is preserved via natures wands.
Reminiscence had weathered but could neer wither,
For, in the mists of time, yesteryear yet appeared,
Since, without future, past is all theyd have.
Would the prospect of a Big Crunch bring on mania,
In an ever more confining claustrophobia?
Seems a better thought, somehow, though no picnic,
But more pleasing if the universe were to be cyclic,
Although then all would still be really crushed,
And forever lost, gone headlong into the rush.
We expect cycles, for all the days and seasons
Embedded this in our ancestors, into our reasons,
Since at least the periodic supplies some rhythm,
A patternthe rolling hills of lives onward driven.
As for cyclic, endless repetitions, they too
Would seem to revolt more of us than just a few;
As too perhaps would some infinite abyss of time,
Which both grant us neither reason nor rhyme.
Does the drama go on forever, or does it end?
What do the visions of the future portend?
Doesnt it all have some purpose meant
A goodly end that all of it to us might it present?
Is our higher mammal time certainly
But of such a short parentheses within eternity?
Its only a finite time then, which too tends
To horrify so many, as the universe ends,
Such as told by Robert Frost, a name of chill:
In heat or in cold, known as fire or ice, still.
That's what I was thinking. There is time because stuff happens, things change. In the unimaginably extremely distant future, there will come a final moment when nothing more happens and time will have stopped. Alles kaput. So...
If you have something that must be done, then you should get at it pretty damn quick--given the great inconvenience of having lists of unfinished things to do just when nothing more can possibly be done ever again.
Should we not believe in God since nothing lasts?
Well, if nothing lasts then of what our purpose past?
[i]Is a purpose really required, so constructive,
Or would that really be quite restrictive?[/i]
No realm could really be special or sent,
Its becoming being of some specific intent,
For all has arrived as a causeless non-precedent.
[i]Is there anything wrong with the freedom to be,
Anywhere, any how, or any time during eternity?
Should we rail against the law of entropy
The heat death of thermodynamic energy,
The second of its final laws, you see,
Because it would destroy all of history?[/i]
There are so many ways for disorder to be
Than any one ordered state specifically.
Would even a heaven on Earth become a misery
If as it might, contain no more novelty?
Must there be an end to our revelry?
[i]Cant we at least hibernate eternally?
Wont all matter too last eternally?
Will Shakespeares works live on, paternally?[/i]
Is this not a Wagnerian struggle for eternity?
Science Can Settle Whether a Last Day
Is Ever Going to Come this Way
Only a decade or so ago, with consternation,
We discovered the universes acceleration,
Its expansion even increasing, onto a thin disaster,
The galaxies getting further away ever faster
Then one last snapshot taken, for all to remember.
The accelerating expansion of the universes rafters
Means that the universe will cool even ever faster;
So, any rare forms of the futures life prolongers
Will have to keep themselves ever more cooler,
Think more slowly, and hibernate ever longer.
One day even the protons will fade away,
Leaving but dark matter, electrons, and positrons.
Part of the reason why I have not written more in the thread which I created is because I do see the 'end' of time as problematic. It would require stepping outside of the space-time level of existence, which would require going beyond physicality.
One significant aspect is the concept of time's arrow in this. There is the possibility of its reversability; this has been explored by some writers, including the novelist Martin Amis. However, the idea of the reversability of time remains a thought experiment, as does the idea of time ending.
I explained why the spacetime cannot have an end in that thread as well, here.
Somehow, I missed your post, but it makes an important point about the unknown. What came before the 'big bang' or after any 'end' remains unknown. That is why it is hard to know for certain whether linearity of time is part of larger cycles or cycles as part of a linear plan. I am inclined to the picture of the cyclical but certainty of this may stretch beyond the limits of human epistemology.
The Waves of the Ancient Swells
Of Times Eroding Swells
Swept Ever On
As Time, now hoary with age,
Yet hurled forth its ashen change,
The charge ever san, pale and colorless,
That force born to summon decay, so endless,
Gainst Natures Universe, every day.
Time and time again, Time fed all upon,
In its bloodless, white, and waxen way,
But our everlasting rose would not fade,
Its luster even brightening by the day,
Ever unsuccumbing to the sickly, peakèd
State draining drawn Earths life away.
Entropic seas yet denude the mountains,
Yet our enduring flower never-endingly
Has cast Deathly Time aside, as now,
Ceaselessly somehow thriving on
Toward that which is the near imperishable,
As beautys flame eer inextinguishable,
Forever celebrated as immutable,
Gaining a seemingly perpetual permanence
From the undying love of this glorious dance.
Yet, everything was moving apart, cooling off,
The big slowdown not really so very far off;
Ultimately, even the black holes of late
And the lightless planets would dissipate.
The primordial soup once so rich and hearty
Was now a thin gruel that couldnt serve the party.
One day, every particle will be moving away
From every other particle, so much out of the way
That they wont even be able to see one another;
Thus, for all intents motion will have ceased forever.
I like the way in which you personify or anthromorphise time, especially as all forms of existence are dependent upon it. Time may be a dimension, or an illusory phenomenon, because it is matter or nature which changes. Yet, without it, nothing in the material sense, could exist.
Of course, time could appear to have ceased to exist but may remain dormant. In that respect, it may be one, if not primary, archetype, of all forms of existence.
There is no time before time began, or after time ends, by definition. It's not that it's unknown, it's that there can be no such thing; these are limits to being such that 'before' and 'after' do not apply. There is nothing to know or not know.
Of course if you take a God's eye view - the view from eternity - then you can say "Before Abraham was, I am." That is, all times are present to God, and all places are here; the whole universe of spacetime is in His hand. But this is poetic talk that no one understands.
Seems inapt for discussion other than as a relation between objects. I don't think, for instance, imagination engages time other than as a relation to the world going on outside the mind imagining whatever..
Our spurt of life followed by an infinite stretch
Of dark equilibrium was but the briefest sketch
A warm and fuzzy stage, so interestingly active,
Whose time relatively was but infinitesimive.
Yet we were there in all our glory,
For whenever else could we have been?
In the future, uncounted societies of
Overlapping minds accumulate, with love,
In island redoubts, their preserved data burning
With a vital remembrance, in which, returning,
The past is the present and future, they all reliving
The data, even animating it, and ever altering.
Without any new enrichments, the present and future
Reprise the past in this retreat from external nature.
Their candles would have been near invisible to us
They enduring by diminishing so as not to exhaust.
They made few new memories, a kind of blind sight,
For whatever realities had ever existed out of sight
Of their own mental structures were now fractured,
And thus not so different from those manufactured.
The Penultimate Part of the Final Dark
An Escalating One-Way Trip
From a Fluke to Oblivion
The majority of the energy
Of the universe is dark today,
Although everything else passes
Through it in every way.
Its everywhere,
Having a component
That repels its own state,
Which cause the expansion of
The universe to much accelerate.
Dark Energy Matters: The Escalation
Were on a one way trip from a quantum fluke,
That maximal energy within old Plancks nook,
Heading toward the oblivion of sparse expansion
All that we ever loved and knew going to extinction.
They sent message of early warnings to some,
In those castles of illusion, yes, many a one
That they would face the decay, not so far away,
Of the heavy particlesthe proton pause, one day.
No self-assembled granularity can endure
Forever but must return to the substructure,
And so the lives must all transition, it seems,
From heavier to much lighter regimes
Although this too would not be permanent
All destined to be swallowed by the firmament.
We have often asked why some space exists,
Why it permits the countless to briefly persist
On Mother Earth, nourished under Father Sky
All of those finite sparks that light and die.
There were those who endlessly debated
Whether to live in their virtuals unabated
Or to press forwards and outwards, in delirium,
To seek out new localities in the mysterium,
But the pauses of the heavy particles continued,
And so there was nowhere to go for the retinued.
Yep, it could be a circular thing. But I think it's impossible to find evidence for it that may corroborate the theory - hence leaving us in the same place.
It was much simpler once, in those days of old
When we thought that universes didnt go cold,
But that they expanded and then collapsed,
Still destroying all, yet ever giving more to last.
And well before that, once upon a storied time,
We simply made it all up, with tales and rhyme,
In place of any physical observations,
Such as through revealing experimentations.
The past was now a reef of dead accumulation,
A graveyard of various useless information,
Which despite its splendorous beauty
Could not provide for a novel futurity.
The last one of us, born of the sparkness,
Kept a window to the outer darkness
She looked out from a once brightly
Colored and sparkling inner reality
Into the dark abyss
There was nothing out there,
All being so lonely and bare
No more singing of lifes song,
For now everything was gone.
The Final Epilog
There could not have been any specific time,
One that was privileged over any other chime,
Nor any special place, nor any certain form
Arising out of the necessarily causeless realm.
Even the locally specific dates and places past
Of the events novel memoirs couldnt last,
They being writ on water, with no meaning vast,
Disappearing in significance so very fast,
Since its only the universals that last.
The protons were now gone from the show,
Having decayed so very long ago
Into positronsever canceling the electrons,
And emitting the fleeing light of photons,
There being of course an equal amount
Of protons and electrons in the count.
And of course along with all the protons
Went all of the atomic elementsthe end,
All of their forms becoming myth and legend,
As they were still dreamt in night dreams,
Those forms that we once had, so it seemed.
She, as many of a luckily adaptable kind,
Had long since lightened and lighted her mind,
With the dwindling electrons and precious photons
That beginning light of ancient times growing wan.
Ours had been the first line in the universe,
One that had become sentient, with proto-man first,
The rest of the Cosmos being but a colossal waste,
A foreboding, harsh, and very dangerous place.
She was now the only one left,
Having outlived all of the rest.
The universe was near crumbling away,
Having run out of space, time, and all its sway.
She was dispersing, melting, into the vacuum, lone,
But she held on for another thousand years, alone,
And then she too was gone,
Being the last of the hominids song,
Of all that was sapient: the Magnificat,
The composition of Earths sweet plot,
The greatest symphony that was ever sown,
It now having faded into the unknown.
From near nothingness our forms became,
And into the same must go our remains.
If the unknown be such, though its otherwise;
But if its yet called unknown then the reply
Is still for sure that were free to be, anywise.
If youve shed a tear reading here
For both the far and the near and dear
It wont make their graves green again,
But its possible that life could begin again
Be of Good Cheer-the sullen Month will die,
And a young Moon requite us by and by:
Look how the Old one meagre, bent, and wan
With Age and Fast, is fainting from the Sky!
(Omar)
This is an interesting questionable area, whether time is a concept in the mind, or an independent aspect of existence. Time is about the experience of past, present and future, with 'now' being central as Eckhart Tolle argues. There is also the experience of 'time's arrow'. This is based on observation by human observers, but it is also based on changes in nature, including ageing and decay. These are a phenomenal aspect of the human mind, in relation to change, but it may be a grave mistake to reduce these to the human mind completely.
My point was to stress the place where we find the existence of time. And it is not any where in the world, or indeed any physical or material objects which is called time. But time exists in our perception when we notice the changes in the world which happens in regular manner e.g. the Sun sets and rises, the change of seasons, births and deaths of people ... etc.
The Eternal Return
Behind the Veil, being that which eer thrives,
The Eternal IS has ever been alive,
For that which hath no onset cannot die,
Nor a point from which to impart its Why.
Some time it needed to learn Everything for,
And now well knows how these bubbles to pour,
Of existence, in some like universe,
As those that wrote your poem and mine, every verse.
So, as thus, thou lives on yesters credit line
In nowheres midst, now in this life of thine,
As of its bowl your cup of brew was mixed
Into the state of being thats called mine.
Yet worry you that this Cosmos is the last,
That the likes of us will become the past,
Space wondering whither whence we went
After the last of us her life has spent?
The Eternal Saki has thus formed
Trillions of baubles like ours, and will form,
Forevermorethe comings and passings
Of which it ever emits to immerse
Of those universal bubbles blown and burst.
So fear not that a debit close your
Account and mine, knowing the like no more;
The Eternal Cycle from its pot has pourd
Zillions of bubbles like ours, and will pour.
Our fruits are of a universal seed
As the yield of All possibility treed,
And siblings elsewhere in the entropic sea
Will also be born of such probability.
When You and I behind the cloak are past
But the long while the next universe shall last,
Which of ones approach and departure the All grasps
As might the seas self heed a pebble cast.
I do realise that you were not trying to be reductive in a minimising or reductive way. The argument which you develop is similar to ideas developed by Michael Frayn in 'The Human Touch', which looks at the significance of human consciousness in the cosmos. It looks at phenomenological aspects of time and space. It also goes on to suggest that there is a linguistic aspect of this, with the human grasp of concepts; including space and time.
In a way, it could be argued that time ends for each individual when life ends. Death involves the question of existence outside of space and time. Its possibility is plausible in a idealist perspective, especially in esoteric spiritual ones.
The concept of eternity and the idea I'd eternal recurrence are interesting in relation to the question of how will time end? It is a perspective in a number of philosophies, significant notably in Nietzsche's ideas. I understand that he took the idea literally initially. This involved repeated births and deaths, with only small changes. Later, he saw the the concept of eternal recurrence as being symbolic mainly.
The idea of eternity, like infinity, conveys the way in which time and space are beyond human measurements. It is hard to know where anything starts and ends definitively. We don't know what happened before the Big Bang and about past and future universes. There is no reason to suggest that they are impossible. Starting and ending are not absolutes necessarily.
I tend to agree with your cyclical reading of the universe, so theoretically the only points where time would "end" would be in the infinite singularity between the formation of realities. Like how the covers of a book mark its beginning and end, but the row of books stretches on into the distance.
I have been thinking hard on the topic i.e. existence outside of space and time. Wouldn't it be a contradiction? Existence outside space and time would be non-existence or unperceived existence. Would it be meaningful object in ontological and logical sense?
I have thought about how time began in my world. There was no such thing called time in my own world when I was a child. Time didn't exist at all in my world. It was only when I went to school, I had to learn how to read time because teacher kept on teaching us how to read time.
When I learnt how to tell time from the watches and clocks, I knew keeping time was important in daily life and survival because everyone was moving and doing things around the time table. That is how time began to emerge in my little world from my reflection.
Now I have been inclined to believe time doesn't exist. Time is one of the worldly contract between folks that has been in force for thousands of years which started by a some bloke who were powerful in the ancient time somewhere.
The world might decided to call it off, and start new time system from tomorrow starting year 0, if they wanted to by another some powerful bloke who has power to do so. There are numerous different timing systems in use by different countries even now e.g Chinese Lunar calendar, Japanese royal family based calendar ... etc.
Esoterically and spiritually of course even gods and after life and heaven and hell all exist. But it is another realm of thoughts or world if you like. In philosophical analysis, not sure if they are thought of valid existence.
Not denying the existence of time reading system such as the western solar based 12 month 365 days a year 24 hr in a day what have you, as some sort of civil contract. Of course they do exist, and we use them in daily life. But time itself as some sort of being or existence is a daft illusion propelled by SF or the silly physicists.