Recently, Jim Logajan posted:

Jay Maynard wrote:
On 2008-01-12, Jim Logajan wrote:
IMHO no one with a grasp of logic and a clear understanding of the
concept of causality would postulate a "beginning" to time. It would
either be pointlessly self-referential or require the postulation of
some sort of meta-time in which causality (something to support
"before" and "after" concepts) was still applicable. But that would
then beg the question of postulating a beginning to the "meta-time".

_A Brief History of Time_ suggests otherwise, in chapter 9.

I've never read that book, but here is a lecture of his that deals
directly with the question:

"The Beginning of Time"
http://www.hawking.org.uk/pdf/bot.pdf

As I (mis?)understand it, it postulates what I would label a
meta-time (in this case Hawking labels it "imaginary time") that is
basically a closed curve onto which "real time" is mapped such that
"real time" has a "beginning" and "ending" points on the imaginary
time and space surface.

By the way, the book by Huw Price that I mention discusses Hawking's
views in "Brief History" and Price doesn't agree with Hawking. It
appears that Hawking has changed his view of "time" on at least one
occasion.

I think that at this point, the thread is going astray of the notion that
science is somehow concerned with questions about these issues; these are
philosophical matters that sometimes present an opportunity to be tested
by science. However, having read "A Brief History of Time", I'd point out
that Hawking presents more than one scenario regarding the linearity of
time and paradigms for a "beginning" and "end", and it seems to me that
this is an untestable question at this point in time.

Another book that covers some of these issues is John D. Barrow's "The
Book of Nothing", which I found to be quite enlightening about nothing.
;-) A very worthwhile read for those interested in grasping such
questions as these or even just gaining knowledge about the origins of
math and how the concept of the zero (and lack thereof) shaped human
culture and development.

To steer this back to the earlier issue, science is an effort to
understand the nature of things in order to provide working tools.
Engineering takes those tools and creates those things that support our
society and by extension our economy. So, a president that has no
understanding of science, or worse, can't tell the difference between
science and religion will only do further harm to this country than the
current anti-intellectual and his faithful followers have done. Any
candidate that claims that they can maintain anti-scientific beliefs (such
as they're not being a primate), yet can turn the downward trend in this
country around is simply lying to us.

Neil