A Critique of the Theory of Cyclic Time.

The theory of cyclic time - the idea that the time dimension can be described as a circle (what, in terms of the General Theory of Relativity, is termed a 'closed time-like curve', or CTC), and should not be depicted as a straight line - was advocated in the West in the Modern Era by Giambattista Vico (Giovanni Battista Vico, 1668-1744), whose philosophy of time inspired the structure of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (sic; 1939), and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), whose 'Superman' (Übermensch) is marked, inter alia, by his ability to cope with the idea of eternal recurrence.

This idea found its first advocates in the West in the Stoics, and their founder Zeno of Citium (c.336-265 BCE), although it should be noted that Nietzsche employed an argument he derived from the pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximander of Miletus (c.610-546 BCE) in his Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen (Philosophy in the Tragic [Ancient] Age of the Greeks; 1873) to justify the idea of eternal recurrence.

The main locus of the idea, however, is to be found in the East, where the concept of Samsara features prominently in the religions of Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism, along with their associated philosophies, and is linked to transmigration of souls (aka metempsychosis or reincarnation) and karma.

In Hinduism, Samsara entails the life, death and rebirth of many bodies and personalities associated with a single Ātman, or 'soul', which is seen as part of the universal Being, Brahman, and one with it. The concept of Brahman is central to the Hindu philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, which advocates a form of idealistic monism.

Hinduism divides Samsara into four ages, or Yugas, beginning with the Krita, or Satya, Yuga, the Golden Age, followed by the Treta Yuga, the Silver Age, the Dvapara Yuga, the Bronze Age, and the Kali Yuga, the Iron Age, the first Age having ideal human conditions, but each subsequent Age have less and less ideal ones, until the Kali (named after the goddess Kali) Age concludes with the worst. The first of these is supposed to have lasted 1,728,000 years, the next 1,296,000 years, the third 864,000 years, and the last 432,000 years - a total of 4,320,000 years (1,080,000 × 4 years). Each Yuga Cycle is then repeated endlessly, giving Samsara a quasi-circumference of 4,320,000 years, quasi-diameter of 1,375,098.708 years and a quasi-radius of 687,549.354 years.

This is all clearly nonsense. We know the Earth, and the Solar System, is at least 4.54 billion years old. The Universe is about 13.8 billion years old.

Furthermore, where is the starting point in any cyclic time? Why does it have to be a mythical 'Golden Age'? Why couldn't it have started in the Kali Yuga, instead? Why does a cyclic time have to run from the past through the present to the future? What is to stop it from running backwards, or counter-clockwise, from future, through present, back into the past?

The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that the amount of entropy - a measure of chaos or disorder - in a closed thermodynamic system increases with time, and the amount of energy available to perform useful work in that system reduces over time, as it becomes evenly distributed throughout the system (the system reaches 'thermodynamic equilibrium', or 'heat death'). The Second Law thus supplies what is known as the 'arrow of time'.

It is clear, therefore, that time had a beginning, in the 'Big Bang' (misnamed, because it was in fact, extremely small), is linear, not cyclic, is uni-directional - and must be linear in order to be uni-directional.  

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