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7:41

(In »Intensities and phenomena in a relationalist universe«)

The correlationists do not seem to understand that stability as a property is independent of all requirements for necessity. Oddly enough Zoroaster realises this difference already in ancient Iran about 1,700 years B.C. when he formulates the concept of haurvatat, a state that contains a kind of sacred perfection and at the same time is constantly in motion and dynamic; haurvatat may well be regarded as a synonym for the syntheist idea of the infinite now. Zoroaster’s genius lies in that he places holiness in the mutable and not in the immutable, which is in total contrast to Platonism and the Abrahamic religions. What brings Zoroaster and the relationalist physicists together is that they all maintain that relatively stable states can arise more or less regularly in an otherwise completely contingent universe. The symmetry that is so passionately desired – from Kant to Einstein, both within philosophy and within physics – is actually the opposite of contingency. Symmetry is eternalist and contingency is mobilist.