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Full Idea
When we say 'it is day' or 'it is the games', one thing after another is always coming into existence. …There are Olympic Games, both in the sense that they may occur and that they are actually occurring.
Gist of Idea
A day, or the games, has one thing after another, actually and potentially occurring
Source
Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 206a22)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'The Basic Works of Aristotle', ed/tr. McKeon,Richard [Modern Library Classics 2001], p.265
A Reaction
This is, according the Pasnau, the origin of the scholastic concept of an 'entia successiva'. I haven't seen much discussion of this in modern metaphysics, but in what sense does a day exist?
| 16691 | A day, or the games, has one thing after another, actually and potentially occurring [Aristotle] |
| 16696 | Successive things reduce to permanent things [Bonaventura] |
| 16698 | Days exist, and yet they seem to be made up of parts which don't exist [Burley] |
| 16690 | Unlike permanent things, successive things cannot exist all at once [Burley] |
| 16695 | Successive entities are in flux, flowing in existence, with different parts at different times [Oresme] |
| 16703 | God could make a successive thing so that previous parts cease to exist [Albert of Saxony] |
| 16699 | Successive entities just need parts to succeed one another, without their existence [Albert of Saxony] |
| 16700 | In order to speak about time and successive entities, the 'present' must be enlarged [Wycliff] |
| 16701 | To be successive a thing needs parts, which must therefore be lodged outside that instant [Wycliff] |
| 16694 | Typical successive things are time and motion [Pasnau] |