Author: Wolfram Schommers

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 9812796576

Space and time are probably the most important elements in physics. Within the memory of man, all essential things are represented within the frame of space-time pictures. This is obviously the most basic information. What can we say about space and time? It is normally assumed that the space is a container filled with matter and that the time is just that which we measure with our clocks. However, there are some reasons to take another standpoint and to consider this container-conception as unrealistic, as prejudice so to say. Already the philosopher Immanuel Kant pointed on this serious problem. In this monograph, the author discusses the so-called projection theory. In contrast to the container-conception (reality is embedded in space and time), within projection theory the physical reality is projected onto space and time and quantum processes are of particular relevance. Like Whitehead and Bergson, the author argues for the primacy of process. One of the most interesting results is that projection theory automatically leads to a new aspect for the notion OC timeOCO. Here we have not only the time of conventional physics, which is exclusively treated as an external parameter, but we obtain within projection theory a system-specific time. Just this system-specific time might be of fundamental importance in the future description of physical systems. For example, the self-assembly of nano-systems could lead to predictions that are even not thinkable within usual physics. Also in connection with cosmology the projection principle must inevitably lead to fundamentally new statements."