Saturday, November 17, 2012

A Pratchett definition of Time

So I know we have passed our discussion of time, but I have been doing some personal reading (which normally doesn't result in good outcomes), and one book I read was Terry Pratchett's book Thief of Time. This fantasy book takes place on the Discworld, which is a world that floats on the back of 4 elephants which rest on the back of a giant turtle. The plot revolves around a few monks and the granddaughter of the anthropomorphic personification of death who try and stop these beings who are trying to stop time in order to make the universe more orderly. The plot was delightfully comic and absurd, and laced with philosophical points, such as the idea that wisdom can be found in any situation, and one should never challenge an seemingly innocent old man to a fight unless you want to risk your life.

However, when they discussed the nature of time, Pratchett created a whole philosophical theory of how time works. Pratchett argues that time the force that makes the smallest of particles move from one position, to the next position. In order to do this, the novel claims that the world is destroyed every exact moment, and then recreated in order to create the next. To try to make this more comprehensible, in order to progress from one instant to the next, the world must be destroyed then recreated with the particles in a different position which reflects the movement. Pratchett displays this idea in a humorous and engaging manner, which makes me want to share this fictional construction of time.

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