I'm presently reading a book called Other Worlds: A Portrait of Nature in Rebellion (1980) by a fellow called Paul Davies. Davies is essentially trying to describe the oft-ignored or unrealized implications of the very existence of the field of quantum physics, and attempting to do so in such a way that a layman (like me) can understand it. I'm only about 50 pages in, but he's recently introduced Einstein's theory of relativity (heard of it??), suggesting of course that time and space behave quite differently for one observer than they might for another, depending on the location and motion of each. Davies has introduced Minkowski's suggestion from 1908 that "we cease thinking about space and time altogether, and think instead about spacetime." Davies assures us that this suggestion "is not just a four dimensional monstrosity invented by mathematicians to confuse people, but a much more accurate and indeed simpler model of the real world than Newton's" (43). To demonstrate this, Davies proffers the following explanation:
[Spacetime's] significance is revealed by simple examples such as the spacetime extension of the human body. It obviously has extension in space (about six feet) and duration in time (about seventy years), so it therefore has extension in spacetime. What makes this statement more than a truism is that the two extensions, spatial and temporal, are not independent...viewed from a rocket, on Earth a man might look three feet tall and live for one hundred and forty years. . . It turns out that a change of speed acts rather like a rotation in spacetime; specifically, by altering one's velocity, one rotates one's four dimensional body away from space into time or vice versa. Thus, the Earthman's spacetime extension remains unaltered when viewed from the rocket; he merely has three feet of his bodily length twisted into seventy years of his life! (43-4)
Even though Minkowski postulated spacetime in friggin' 1908, and even though I have heard the term "spacetime" before, I have never once been prompted to consider space and time as this sort of intermingled monstrosity. In fact, this seems, to me, to be in absolute opposition to the way space and time are conceived in literary studies (at least in the "relatively" (get it?) small chunk of it I've encountered). Think, for example, of the modernists, who (generally speaking) sought to undermine temporality by overdetermining the fixed spatial image. In other words, the two have seemingly always been at odds with one another, placed in an ever-reversing binary opposition for each generation of philosophers, artists, and critics to flip or unflip according to the mood of the day. I'm interested, then, in exploring the literary ramifications of not man's physical place in the world, nor his temporal position (that is, his be-ing), but rather his spacetime dimension. I'm also fairly certain that Mr. Davies here will soon tie this stuff to Hugh Everett's theory in a way that will allow me to pursue that as well. Sounds fun, right?
As per my discussion with Mr Shawn Jasinski some time ago, perhaps I should take a closer, more critical look at The Time Traveler's Wife (which I have long loved for almost purely narrative and sentimental reasons) and see what turns up. I'm guessing that particular novel has been "beneath" the lofty radar of literary critics thus far, so it might be a good place to make a mark.
Onwards and upwards!
