Two Times?

Great have been the liberties taken with Time, which, until recently, man considered invulnerable. Earliest metaphysical concepts held Time as an invariable quantity which Newton expressed as a flow from past to future. Smart, however, was Newton not to base any of his laws on this.

First to make any strong assault was Germany's Hermann Minkowski (1864-1909), who stated that Time is a dimension. Following him came Germany's Albert Einstein with his relativity laws. England's Arthur Stanley Eddington in The Nature of the Physical World told man that his reckoning of Time was misleading ; that the age of man could not be accurately determined by the time given by the Astronomer Royal. Two individuals, he said, one firmly rooted to the earth, the other skipping from planet to planet, would not age at the same rate. While the static man was passing through 70 years of the Astronomer Royal's time the other, provided he traveled sufficiently fast, would, during the same period, have need for only 365 dinners, luncheons, breakfasts, the same number of eight-hour rest periods, and would to all appearances age but one year.

Thus physicists delving into regions forbidden to most individuals have brought back new concepts. Latest concept, announced last week: Time is not a one-way flow, running from past to future, but a two-way quantity running in both directions.

This theory was advanced by Dr. Gilbert Newton Lewis, University of California's famed chemist and physicist. For this and other work he was presented in Manhattan last week with the annual gold medal of the Society of Arts & Sciences and will, it was predicted, receive the 1930 Nobel Prize.

Dr. Lewis said that without contradicting any fundamental physical or chemical laws Time could be considered as moving from future to past as well as in the more accepted path. Almost inseparable from Time is Causality (cause & effect).

If Time is to be made symmetrical (two-directional), Causality must also become symmetrical; thus effect may precede cause.

The Lewis reasoning: "In the dawn of civilization every happening was accounted for by analogies to human purpose and its later fulfillment. Thus Cause and Effect were regarded as a generalized purpose and fulfillment, purpose always coming first. Many of our scientific ideas, such as force and energy, are relics of that age. . . .

"From these sciences [chemistry, physics] we cannot banish one-way Time without also banishing one-way Causality. If we think of the present as pushed into existence by the past, we must, in equal measure, think of it as pulled into existence by the future. Causality, thus rendered symmetrical, gains rather than loses significance."

In support of Two-Way Time Dr. Lewis suggested that a motion picture of the universe could as well be run backward as forward, would defy no laws. Accepting two-way Causality it is possible to conceive that events which will happen tomorrow might have influenced Caesar to cross the Rubicon.

Further supporting evidence suggested was the fact that the famed second law of thermodynamics (which states that man's universe is gradually running down as its energy is dissipated, will eventually be lifeless and inert) has come to be frowned upon. It has been brought out (by Dr.

Robert A. Million, receiver of last year's Arts & Sciences medal) that the earth is constantly being reactivated, perpetuated with cosmic rays. Thus considering the earth as a physio-chemical system which has assumed a definite arrangement it is reasonable to conclude that eventually the same arrangement current today will repeat itself. In years too vast in number to be expressed, Washington may be expected again to lead a ragged army, Christ to be crucified, President Hoover to pitch the season's first baseball.

Old theories held that as light energy went out it was dissipated in space, the diffusion being so complete that any reversal of Time would be ludicrous. The Quantum Theory brought out that light is not dissipated but deposits whole energy from one atom on another atom. This, said Dr. Lewis, is a process symmetrical with past and future.

Proceeding through the whole of physics he stated that the concept of one-way Time and one-way Causality has been called to the support of theories which have since broken down. Only theories which have depended on a symmetrical Time have stood.

The concept that Time is not a one-directional quantity was touched upon by Playwright John Balderston in Berkeley

Square, now running in Manhattan. Says one character: "Suppose you are in a boat sailing down a winding stream. You watch the banks as they pass you. You went by a grove of maple trees upstream. But you can't see them now, so you saw them in the past, didn't you? You're watching a field of clover now. It's before your eyes at this moment, in the present. But you don't know yet what's around the bend in the stream there ahead of you . . . you can't see them until the future. . . . But I'm in the sky above you in a plane. I can see all at once the trees . . . the field of clover and what's waiting for you, around the bend ahead! . . So the past, present and future of the man in the boat are all one to the man in the plane. Doesn't that show how all Time must really be one? Real Time ... is nothing but an idea of the mind. . . ."

Interesting will be comments on this revolutionary theory which will doubtless come from Albert Einstein. The Lewis theory, if accepted, will upset Einstein's principle of relativity which is based on an active past pushing events into a passive future, takes no account of a reversal of the process.

Dr. Lewis, 54, was ill in Berkeley, Calif., where he heads the College of Chemistry at the University of California; was unable to read his paper before the Society in New York, to receive his medal in person. Able to receive his was Dr. James Mc-Keen Cattell of Science Press, who was granted another annual gold medal, for distinguished work in psychology.

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