The Wheel - Part 4

In the previous blog I put forward the crazy idea that the wheel might have invented itself. In search of an answer, I asked myself the following question:

What is the essence of things?

Next, I split up the question. I discussed the possible inner reasons of human beings and animals (step 1), trees and plants (step 2), and natural elements and objects (step 3). Unfortunately, I didn’t get to the last step, about inventions and ideas (step 4). But today I am happy to present you the conclusion and at the same time my last blog about the wheel.

Step 4. The Wheel

Is it possible that an invention or idea is driven by an inner force? Is an idea something that wants to be invented and subsequently shows itself to somebody? I have no idea, but I do know that an idea doesn’t stand on its own. It is always based on one or more other ideas, already existing and floating around in universe; those are the parental thoughts. You can say an idea is ‘hanging in the air’ and looking backward, you often can see the ingredients that created the idea.

With the invention of the wheel, it is likely to have happened the same way. All the time, the idea was surrounding us, because the wheel is – as we know by now – nothing more than an ordinary circle. It is a shape we can find in, for example, the sun and the moon.

But it took a long time before the circle was recognized as such. I think that the sun and the moon weren’t looked upon for thousands or even millions of years. They just were a given. Maybe that only changed when mankind evolved into the ‘early modern man’, about 200.000 years ago. Very gradually, the sky was paid attention to. The sun and the moon came into the picture. Maybe it took thousands of years before they were worshipped as gods that control the seasons, the wheather and the crop. And again thousands of years before they were seen as a circle with geometric properties. At the same time, about 5000 years before Christ, the first practical application of the circle, the wheel, appeared on stage, with multiple possibilities such as rolling and turning.

Cause and effect. Last weekend I visited the exhibition ‘The way things go’ ¹ in art gallery KAdE in Amersfoort. There were many beautiful, moving constructions, built by artists who let their imagination run wild. Some kind of machines that show that a small cause can have many effects, like the well-known domino effect. Touching one object with a chain reaction as a result. The more unrealistic, the more humoristic it is, and the more it captures the imagination. In ‘The Page Turner’ ² it is about a cup of coffee, attached to a string, that causes a marble rolling down, a fire burning, a mouse walking, etcetera, until finally a page of a newspaper is turned. A mix of coincidents and prearranged plans, set in motion by the artist or the visitor. The exhibition was triggered by the documentary ‘Der Lauf der Dinge’ ³. Definitely worth seeing!

A similar thing seems to have been the case with the circle. When the universe was not yet a universe, there were all kinds of interacting forces. Out of these forces arose many shapes – erratic, angular, ribbed and diverging to all sides. It is beyond any comprehension, but even light and sound were not existing yet. Only the overwhelming effect of the 16-mm installation ‘Nine Types of Terrain’ ⁴ – also shown in the exhibition mentioned above – gives me that uncomfortable feeling that comes with it, to my opinion. The reality probably doesn’t even come close. The universe was moulded from one domino tile up to the next domino tile. It went on until the inevitable equilibrium was born, in which there was a place for the perfect shape: the circle. It finally resulted in the rotation of the celestial objects: the galaxies, the stars, the planets and the moons. But also: the time, the cycle of life, the thinking in circles, and not to forget: the wheel.

In the beginning of the universe, the creation of the circle seemed very unlikely. There just were too many shapes. But eventually, after endlessly moulding, bouncing, pushing and pulling, there was a fantastic result: the circle. It is following a course, repeating itself and creating the same shape over and over again. It has a rotation time, a ‘life’ if you like, and has a beginning and an ending. The creation of circles is the origin of universal time – not to be confused with the human classification of time into years, hours, minutes and seconds. The universal time is nothing more than the coherence between the enormous amount of circles that gradually emerged in universe. The coherence made it possible that an event is continuing. In other words, the time is the ‘ongoing’ or ‘lasting’ thing. And that’s precisely what I mean: it lasts and it repeats itself. Something you can’t achieve without circles. ‘No woman, no cry’, Bob Marley sung. I say: ‘No circles, no time’. As simple as that.

As a result of this, time has developed. In the beginning there was not much time (=0). Now, in our time, there is much time (=1). It shows that, in the beginning, time was imperfect, yet erratic. And that it now is more or less perfect. It also means, that we cannot look backwards beyond the moment that time originated. And it certainly implies that we can say nothing at all about the amount of years, hours, minutes and seconds that are leading back to that point. ‘At that time’, there were less circles, less coherence and, as a consequence, less time.

And from this it follows that the Big Bang could just as well not have been taken place. We think that, if you reverse the movement of the expanding universe, you will reach the point at which it was born. I’m saying that this is not possible, because we can’t look back beyond time. We can look back until the ‘discontinuity’, the condition of the universe without time. We invent theories about the beginning of the universe, but there is no other one, than the beginning of time. Because that is the point that the first circles were created. From that moment on, time began to take shape.

We are seeing everything in relation to our own time. Thanks to time we are able to estimate how long the light is travelling from the stars towards us. The furthest stars are moving away from us; they seem to be situated at the edge of the universe. However, it only tells me that those stars have less ‘time’. How dazzling true our common phrases are. The further away those stars are, the less they have in common with our time. Maybe the time of those stars is still developing, or decreasing. Possibly, we are observing some of the ‘discontinuity’ that was, or will be. It both could be true, because it is not said, that the light we see is the past or the future. The further we look, the more time is turning against us.

One thing is sure: we find ourselves on a place in universe, where circles are very prominent. After all, it is our own time and, believe me, if the circles would decrease, we already wouldn’t exist anymore. Time would overtake us, ha ha. No, our clock is ticking like a Duracell-rabbit. But in the end, on this place in the universe the circles also will be torn apart and make room for little lines, plops, griggles and blobbles. The beginning was erratic and the end will be, too. For those who want more: the phases discontinuity – time – discontinuity might be part of a larger cycle, to be referred to as some kind of ‘supertime’.

Actually, each time that something is ending and starting all over again, a new circle is created. Since the birth of time new circles keep coming. Endlessly, and as long as there are things that have a beginning and an ending, in which the ending is a new beginning. I know it sounds weird, but finally the circles were responsible for the origin of life itself. No circles, no time – no time, no life. And again, how true to life this phrase is.

With this, I answered the question about what is the essence of things. The essence of things is the way those things (human beings, animals, trees, elements, objects) are proceeding in time. I refer to the circles they are making, amid the millions of circles that, in their turn, are responsible for time itself. In other words:

The essence of things is the way things go.

Having hatched this egg, I still have to answer the question whether the wheel invented itself. As I said, the wheel logically was the result of the circle. And yet it is possible that a certain smart guy has speeded up the invention by a couple of centuries. That certainly would make it an invention. Maybe that’s the definition of an invention: something that is sooner invented than the moment it logically had to be invented. It might be obvious that there are a lot of circles around us, but I really think that the wheel should be attributed to mankind. And how highly succesful it has been: at least 7000 years, the wheel is amongst us.

But something else is going on with the wheel. The wheel does invents itself over and over again. After each rotation, a new circle has been made. Just like the circle, the wheel proves its existence by turning round. A wheel, standing still, is a ‘dead’ wheel. In this manner, you might say that the wheel invented itself and that it will keep on inventing itself as long as it will keep on turning.

But honestly, the wheel is an invention of humanity. This speech really was a search for the wheel and I have used every thought that I could think of. The theories made me explore new ideas, and it brought me a lot of things. I didn’t found evidence for my last hypothesis, about the wheel inventing itself, but I did found ways to look at the wheel. And I enjoyed it, because it stimulated me to think about myself, life and everything around it.

This was the last blog about the wheel. I had announced to write another blog, about the wheel being not invented yet, but I won’t. Only this: the moment, that people don’t know anymore, how the wheel is working, that moment is the spectre for the future of mankind. When that’s the case, humanity is beyond its culmination point. Until now, mankind is smart enough to know how the wheel should turn. We are passing its usage on to the next generation, just as we do with the fire. We don’t have to fear for the scenario as shown in the movie ‘The Day That The Earth Stood Still’, but for the day we forget about how to turn the wheel. An idea for a movie ‘The Day The Wheel Stopped Turning’? Imagine those foolish faces when confronted with a wheel. Not a single person who’s able to figure it out. ‘What am I supposed to do with this? Rubbish, that’s what it is. Throw it away.’ That would be the beginning of the end.

Corresponding cartoon: