A New Theory of Time, Life and Memory, Part 1
We explore a new concept of time as a physical feature of the universe, a key element of what is called the Assembly Theory. In the process we look at what we know and don’t know about the nature of life and how it emerged.
Sara Imari Walker is one of the leading researchers working on the cutting edge of the origins of life and life outside our planet. She is an astrobiologist, theoretical physicist, and deputy director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University. She, with chemistry professor Lee Cronin, is proposing a new concept of time which she believes is necessary to explain the origin and history of life. In her view, time is physical — an intrinsic property of all there is.
But, in this new concept called “assembly theory,” it is more than time that is physical:
“Thus, in assembly theory, time is essentially the same thing as information, memory, causation and selection. They are all made physical because we assume they are features of the objects described in the theory, not the laws of how these objects behave.”
This is remarkable. If true, it would fundamentally change our idea of nature as quantum physics did a hundred years ago. We used to think of things like light, heat, and magnetism as some kind of invisible force, something that…
