The Prognosticator (Or, We Are All Pythagoreans Now)

The Prognosticator (Or, We Are All Pythagoreans Now) is Chapter 1 of Mysterium Cosmographicum.

"We all know of the special theory of relativity and the equations of Lorentz-Fitzgerald and Einstein, which link space and time because of the finite velocity of light. From this it follows that time is not absolute. Yet time is always there. It "takes time" to go from one point to another in space, even if that time depends on moving reference frames relative to the observer. There is no instantaneous jump from one point to another in space, much less "spatial ubiquity"--that is, simultaneous presence of an event or an object in two sites in space. On the contrary, one posits the notion of displacement. Consequently (and this is an hypothesis that I freely advance), if we were to adhere to quantum mechanics and its implications accepted now for decades, we would perhaps be forced to admit the notion of quantified space and its corollary, quantified time. But then, what could a quantified time and space signify, a time and space in which contiguity would be abolished? What would the pavement of the universe be if there were gaps between the paving stones, inaccessible and filled with nothing?"

-- Iannis Xenakis