The Encompassing Present

Abstract

The article continues the research on the phenomenon of the present time in the work of K.F. von Weizsäcker “The Construction of Physics”. Weizsäcker considers the phenomenon of time based on its phenomenological and specific quantum mechanical description. This work deals to a greater extent with the last aspect of the description of time. Based on a scrupulous analysis of mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics (QM), Weizsäcker states that time is such a paradoxical structure, which escapes clear definitions, that it can be “expressed only in the form of negations”. He is led to this conclusion by the analysis of time as a real parameter which reduces to point time, that is, when we begin to consider zero-time intervals. The general formalism of QM forces us to aban­don such ideas. Considering that all the concepts of QM relate to the concept of probability, and the concept of fact with the concept of double probability p (a, b), Weizsäcker makes a far-reaching conclusion: some act of the present (a), “fact”, turns out to be only a possibility in the future of some class of events (b) that document this fact. In this kind of process, one can see how “the future af­fects the past”. Experiments have been conducted to confirm this phenomenon. We are talking about experiments with a “quantum eraser”. Within this approach,  events are considered as reversible, which can be eliminated under certain condi­tions. Based on the phenomenological understanding, Weizsäcker formulates the concept of “the encompassing present”, which already includes the past, the present, and the future. From here, he formulates his main conclusion that a genuine event exists only in the all-encompassing present