In his book, ‘The Universe in a Nutshell’, Hawking (2001, p. 33) makes direct and dramatic visual use of the metaphor of a knot in time and a knotted fold in space-time. He suggests that an inflated Trefoil Knot is a model for time.
Figure 3.5 Dyad, two interlocked rings. (Dennis, McNair, and Kauffman, The Mereon Matrix, p. 43)
As was introduced in Figure 3.5, the Trefoil is the simplest knot; you will learn in Chapter 8 that its fundamental nature is rooted in the Golden Ratio.
While Hawking may have intended a more complex topology in his mathematical modelling, we find it significant that the surface structure of his process and geometry fundamentally matches the simplicity of the Mereon Trefoil as explored in detail in Chapters 8 and 9.
Figure 3.8 Six perspectives of the Mereon Trefoil, c. 1996.
Six images of the Matrix’s unique knot are shown in Figure 3.8. Each illustrates that a different perspective, a visual perception of Difference, is related to an observer’s Point of View. As we have all experienced, looking at a situation is very different from being involved in it. In exploring the Mereon Trefoil, we discovered insight through observing that changes in the system dynamics altered its structure. (Dennis, McNair, and Kauffman, The Mereon Matrix, p. 47)