Wednesday, 7 March 2007

A New and Radical Theory of Existence


Dark deeds abound: Hamilton's life was threatened yesterday by a sinister intelligence living behind the wall of the Muted Slughorn. Perhaps it was his dangerous new theory of existence as a vector that tickled the creature so. Hamilton postulated that existence - currently measured only by duration in Time - should also be considered Spatially. People lament that their lives are short, their days numbered. 'My existence stops at 6'1",' rejoins Hamilton, waving an errant tentacle at the empty space above his head, 'and yet it is not a cause for complaint.' Dogtooth paced out his days on this earth, never to stand taller than 5'9" - was he to be followed by a funeral procession all his life, mourning the inches that might have been? A pleasant equilibrium is seen in the respective lives of men and women: on average, women live longer; men, on average, have a greater physical volume. We have not done the sums, but we feel confident that, all things considered, men and women enjoy the same quantity of existence. That fateful sandwich cannot be regarded so morbidly when one considers that, in her short life, Mama Cass existed in more places at any one time than her more slender contemporaries. It is clear that the only achievable way of extending one's life is to give oneself heartily to fatty foods. Mankind can only travel forward in time, turning what would otherwise be a scalar existence into a vector measurement. It is obvious that, were we to travel back in time to our conception, we would never have existed.

Unfortunately, the vector factor must be Time. It is, however, very pleasing to consider our spatial activity as a vector. I conjecture, for example, that if my existence was a spatial vector, I could travel ten yards from one tree to another tree, then back to the first tree retracing my steps, and claim never to have made the journey. I don't know much about physics, but...

1 comment:

Hamilton said...

You miss the most striking part of my argument: people who drive very fast tend to die earlier because their acceleration causes them to gain in mass. Also, you got my hight wrong.