This seems compatible with R. Buckminster Fuller’s claim (section 301.00 in ‘Synergetics’ from 1975 / 1979):
Universe is the comprehensive, historically synchronous, integral-aggregate system embracing all the separate integral-aggregate systems of all men’s consciously apprehended and communicated (to self or others) nonsimultaneous, nonidentical, but always complementary and only partially overlapping, macro-micro, always-and- everywhere, omnitransforming, physical and metaphysical, weighable and unweighable event sequences. Universe is a dynamically synchronous scenario that is unitarily nonconceptual as of any one moment, yet as an aggregate of finites is sum-totally finite.
I suggest the key words here are nonsimultaneous and partially overlapping. Universe is big enough that local now (I see a star) is not everywhere now (that star burned out a billion years ago in local time). Block Universe may be the universe considered from outside Time, and Fuller’s partially overlapping universe may be the universe considered from within while understanding there are plenty of nows to go around.
If ever things needed rewriting, it was Fuller’s later works. That he said useful things in them was at odds with the frankly cranklike writing style. Whole books written in that style.
This seems compatible with R. Buckminster Fuller’s claim (section 301.00 in ‘Synergetics’ from 1975 / 1979):
I suggest the key words here are nonsimultaneous and partially overlapping. Universe is big enough that local now (I see a star) is not everywhere now (that star burned out a billion years ago in local time). Block Universe may be the universe considered from outside Time, and Fuller’s partially overlapping universe may be the universe considered from within while understanding there are plenty of nows to go around.
If ever things needed rewriting, it was Fuller’s later works. That he said useful things in them was at odds with the frankly cranklike writing style. Whole books written in that style.