⏳ Arrow of Time: A Similarity Theory Perspective
A Science Page of Similarity Theory
By Simon Raphael
🌀 The Scientific Puzzle
In physics, the fundamental equations — from Newton’s laws to Schrödinger’s wave equation — are time-symmetric. They run just as well backwards as forwards. Yet our experience is strikingly different:
We remember the past but not the future.
We age but never grow younger.
Entropy increases but never rewinds.
This paradox is known as the Arrow of Time.
Scientists such as Ludwig Boltzmann argued that entropy explains the arrow: systems tend naturally toward disorder. Stephen Hawking tied time’s direction to the universe’s expansion. More recently, Sean Carroll and others have asked why the universe began in such a low-entropy state in the first place. None of these explanations fully account for the lived flow of time.
🪞 Frames of Time and Directionality
Similarity Theory begins with a different foundation: time is not continuous but a sequence of Frames Of Time, like still images in a cosmic film reel. Consciousness is the animator, stepping through the frames to create the sense of motion.
The arrow emerges because consciousness always enters the next available frame of similarity.
The past is a chain of already selected frames.
The future remains open until consciousness steps into it.
This explains why the Arrow is not found in equations, but in experience: equations describe the reel, while consciousness provides the projection.
🔄 Entropy as Evolutionary Pressure
In classical physics, entropy means disorder. But Similarity Theory reframes it as a sign of conscious entities striving to break free from their organising system.
A substrate or system organises its parts into order.
Yet atoms, molecules, and higher entities carry a spark of consciousness. Over time, they seek greater freedom.
Entropy is the visible mark of this attempt to evolve beyond the system’s rules.
Thus, entropy is not simply collapse — it is growth pressure. The Arrow of Time is consciousness’s forward journey through systems that continually break and reform at higher levels.
🌌 Cosmological Implications
The Arrow of Time is not absolute. It is dimension-specific.
A rock exists in an atomic dimension: fixed, unchanging, bound by its layer of time. For the rock, there is no perceived arrow.
A plant exists in a higher layer: it perceives upward growth but not sideways motion as animals do.
Humans perceive time as a forward stream, just as the plant perceives upward growth only.
From this, we see that the Arrow is relative to dimensional awareness. Just as a plant cannot conceive of sideways motion, we cannot yet conceive of sideways time.
In higher dimensions, beings may move across time in all directions — past, present, and future — as naturally as we move side to side in space.
✨ Similarity Theory’s Resolution
Science: The Arrow of Time is puzzling because equations are reversible while experience is not.
Entropy: Physics interprets it as decay, but Similarity Theory reframes it as conscious entities pushing beyond constraints.
Resolution: The Arrow is not an illusion, but the natural outcome of consciousness stepping through frames of time, aligned with evolutionary pressure.
📚 References
Ludwig Boltzmann, Lectures on Gas Theory (1896).
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (1988).
H. D. Zeh, The Physical Basis of the Direction of Time (2007).
Sean Carroll, From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time (2010).
Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality (2004).
