Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Latin and the Emergence of the Space-Time Continuum

Last night I attended a layman-oriented talk by Paul Davies on quantum physics and the big bang. He mentioned that, for Einstein, time and space are not two distinct things that transcend the physical universe, but are part of it, and that they are incredibly closely linked to one another. Moreover, in some recent models of the beginning of the universe time and space were at first indistinguishable and one somehow turned into the other (if I was understanding correctly. Regarding this last point, I was happy to see today while looking in Allen and Greenough for something else that the Latin language preceded quantum physics by more than a couple of millennia!

The Ablative of Time is locative in its origin; the Accusative [of time] is the same as that of the extent of space. (AG 423, Note)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Brilliant!