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Eternal return (also known as "'''eternal recurrence'''") is a concept which posits that the Universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur in the exact same self-similar form an Incomprehensible And Unfathomable number of Times . The concept has roots in Ancient Egypt , and was subsequently taken up by the Pythagoreans and Stoics . With the decline of Antiquity and the spread of Christianity , the concept fell into disuse, though Friedrich Nietzsche briefly resurrected it. In addition, the philosophical concept of eternal recurrence was addressed by Arthur Schopenhauer . It is a purely Physical concept, involving no " Reincarnation ," but the return of beings in the same bodies. Time is viewed as being not Linear but Cyclical . The basic premise is that the Universe is limited in extent and contains a finite amount of Matter , while Time is viewed as being infinite. The universe has no starting or ending State , while the matter comprising it is constantly changing its state. The number of possible changes is finite, and so sooner or later the same state will recur. Physicists such as Stephen Hawking and J. Richard Gott have proposed models by which the (or a) universe could undergo Time Travel , provided the balance between mass and energy created the appropriate cosmological geometry. More philosophical concepts from physics, such as Hawking's " Arrow Of Time ," for example, discuss cosmology as proceeding up to a certain point, whereafter it undergoes a Time Reversal (which, as a consequence of T-symmetry , is thought to bring about a chaotic state due to thermodynamic Entropy ). The Oscillatory Universe model in physics could be provided as an example of how the universe cycles through the same events infinitely. DHARMIC RELIGIONS The concept of cyclical patterns is very prominent in Dharmic Religions , including Hinduism and Buddhism among others. The Wheel Of Life represents an endless cycle of birth, life, and death from which one seeks liberation. In Tantric Buddhism , a Wheel Of Time concept known as the Kalachakra expresses the idea of an endless cycle of existence and knowledge. August Thalheimer: Introduction to Dialectical Materialism from Google Cache CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY on a Fresco .]] In Ancient Egypt , the Scarab (or Dung Beetle ) was viewed as a sign of eternal renewal and reemergence of life, a reminder of the life to come. (See also " Atum " and " Ma'at .") The '' Bible '' appears to make reference to the idea of recurrence in Ecclesiastes 1:9: ''That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun.'' The ancient Mayans and Aztecs also took a cyclical view of time. In Ancient Greece , the concept of eternal return was connected with Empedocles , Zeno Of Citium , and Stoicism . RENAISSANCE The symbol of the Ouroboros , the Snake or Dragon devouring its own tail, is the alchemical symbol ''par excellence'' of eternal recurrence. The alchemist-physicians of the Renaissance and Reformation were aware of the idea of eternal recurrence; an attempt to describe eternal recurrence was made by the physician-philosopher Sir Thomas Browne in his '' Religio Medici '' of 1643 : : ''And in this sense, I say, the world was before the Creation, and at an end before it had a beginning; and thus was I dead before I was alive, though my grave be England, my dying place was Paradise, and Eve miscarried of me before she conceived of Cain''. (R.M.Part 1:59) Heinrich Heine wrote the following passage which is said to have been where Friedrich Nietzsche first encountered the idea: : ''For time is infinite, but the things in time, the concrete bodies are finite.... Now, however long a time may pass, according to the eternal laws governing the combinations of this eternal play of repetition, all configurations that have previously existed on this earth must yet meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and corrupt each other again.... And thus it will happen one day that a man will be born again, just like me, and a woman will be born, just like Mary.'' FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE The ''thought of eternal recurrence'' is central to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche . As Heidegger pointed out, Nietzsche never speaks about the reality of "eternal recurrence" itself, but about the "thought of eternal recurrence." Nietzsche conceived of the idea as a simple "hypothesis", which, like the idea of Hell in Christianity, did not need to be true in order to have real effects. The thought of eternal recurrence appears in a few parts of his works, in particular §125 and §341 of '' The Gay Science '' and then in '' Thus Spoke Zarathustra ''. It is also noted for the first time in his posthumous fragment of 1881 (11 {Link without Title} ). The experience of this thought is dated by Nietzsche himself, in the posthumous fragments, to August 1881, at Sils-Maria . In '' Ecce Homo '' (1888), he wrote that the thought of the Eternal Return was the "fundamental conception" of ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra'' Nietzsche, Ecce Homo , "Why I Write Such Good Books", "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", §1 . Several authors have pointed out other occurrences of this hypothesis in contemporary thought. Thus, the 's website) . Blanqui is mentioned by Albert Lange in his '' Geschichte Des Materialismus '' (History of Materialism), a book closely read by Nietzsche Alfred Fouillée, "Note sur Nietzsche et Lange: le "retour éternel" , in ''Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger''. An. 34. Paris 1909. T. 67, S. 519-525 . Despite his reading of Vogt, Nietzsche's conception of the eternal recurrence of all things differs from other seemingly similar hypotheses, insofar as it is intrinsically related to Zarathustra's announcement of the '' Übermensch '' and the ethical imperative of overcoming Nihilism See Martin Heidegger 's 1930s courses on Nietzsche. On a few occasions in his notebooks, Nietzsche discusses the possibility of eternal recurrence as cosmological truth, but in the works he prepared for publication it is treated as the ultimate method of affirmation. According to Nietzsche, it would require a sincere '' Amor Fati '' (Love of Fate) not simply to endure, but to ''wish for'', the eternal recurrence of all events exactly as they occurred — all the pain and joy, the embarrassment and glory. Nietzsche calls the idea "horrifying and paralyzing," and says that its burden is the "heaviest weight" ("''das schwerste Gewicht''") imaginable. The wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life: : ''What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine. As described by Nietzsche, the thought of eternal return is more than merely an intellectual concept or challenge; it is akin to a Koan , or psychological device that occupies one's entire consciousness, stimulating a transformation of consciousness known as Metanoia . In Nietzsche scholarship, the cosmological hypothesis of eternal recurrence is of extreme interest, being a crucial axiom of his philosophy. In ''''. Much effort is still expended in attempts to understand Nietzsche's notebooks' fragmentary mentions of eternal recurrence. In Carl Jung's seminar on '' Thus Spoke Zarathustra '' Jung claims that the dwarf states the idea of the Eternal Return before Zarathustra finishes his argument of the Eternal Return when the dwarf says, "'Everything straight lies,' murmured the dwarf disdainfully. 'All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle.'" The translation of Nietzsche's ''eternal return'' is from the German ''ewige Wiederkunft''. The German word ''ewige'' also means ''perpetual''. Though always translated as ''eternal'' it is worth noting this potential dual meaning. POINCARé RECURRENCE THEOREM Related to the concept of eternal return is the Poincaré Recurrence Theorem in mathematics. It states that a system having a finite amount of energy and confined to a finite spatial volume will, after a sufficiently long time, return to an arbitrarily small neighborhood of its initial state. It should be noted that "a sufficiently long time" could be much longer than the predicted lifetime of the universe (see 10^19 Seconds ). PROOFS AGAINST ETERNAL RETURN Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann has described a proof originally put forward by Georg Simmel , which refutes the claim that a finite number of states must repeat within an infinite amount of time:
It can be argued that this proof is flawed. Even if a system contains an infinite number of states as considered from the perspective of Classical Mechanics , applying Quantum Mechanics reveals that the system will repeat after an arbitrarily long time due to Discretization . (Classical mechanics is only a rough approximation to the physics that goes on at the atomic scale.) However, not all quantum-mechanical operators have Discrete Spectra . REFERENCES IN CULTURE
::''While not the original inspiration for our film Groundhog Day , was one of those confirming cosmic affirmations that we had indeed tapped into one of the great universal problems of being... P. D. Ouspensky suggests the antidote to the existential dilemma at the core of Groundhog Day : that trapped as we are on the karmic wheel of cause and effect, our only means of escape is to assume responsibility for our own destiny and find the personal meaning that imparts a purposeful vitality to life and frees us from the limitations of our contempt''.
::''Greeting! I am recalled home by One who may not be denied. In much that I came to do I have failed. Much that I have done I would undo; some little I have undone. Out of fire I came—the smoldering fire of a thing one day to be a consuming flame; in fire I go. Seek not my ashes. I am the lord of the fires! Farewell.'' — Fu-Manchu
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