We remember the past, experience the present, and anticipate the future. Our perception of reality is only as good as our memory of the past. If we don’t remember the past, we will continue to make the same mistakes. The scientific method puts this concept into practice. If we perform the same experiment, we should consistently expect the same results.
How do we know who we are except in community with other people? When we allow our identity to be formed only by those who we consider similar to ourselves, our identity is impoverished by the lack of awareness, knowledge, and wisdom that comes with a lack of diversity in our social relationships.
In Einstein’s cosmology, energy is a factor of time and mass. Experience is defined by the three dimensions of space: width, height, and depth. Time adds a fourth dimension, where change can be observed by comparing past, present, and future states of matter. Matter itself is found in three different states, depending on the amount of energy embodied by its elementary particles: solid, liquid, and gas. Atoms are composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons.
There is a pattern of triads that are found in the many characteristics that we observe in the natural world. It is difficult to imagine that such order might be random, but we have yet to come to any sort of agreement about what might account for this unity in diversity.