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Full Idea
Chrysippus says most clearly that no time is wholly present; for since the divisibility of continuous things is infinite, time as a whole is also subject to infinite divisibility by this method of division.
Gist of Idea
Time is continous and infinitely divisible, so there cannot be a wholly present time
Source
report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42
Book Ref
'The Stoics Reader', ed/tr. Inwood,B/Gerson,L.P. [Hackett 2008], p.88
A Reaction
But what is his reason for thinking that time is a continuous thing? There is a minimum time in quantum mechanics (the Planck Time), but do these quantum intervals overlap? Compare Idea 20819.
Related Ideas
Idea 20818 The present does not exist, so our immediate experience is actually part past and part future [Chrysippus, by Plutarch]
Idea 20819 The past and the future subsist, but only the present exists [Chrysippus, by Plutarch]
| 22957 | We can't tell whether the changing present moment is one thing, or a succession of things [Aristotle] |
| 22966 | The present moment is a link (of past to future), and also a limit (of past and of future) [Aristotle] |
| 20818 | The present does not exist, so our immediate experience is actually part past and part future [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| 20821 | Time is continous and infinitely divisible, so there cannot be a wholly present time [Chrysippus, by Stobaeus] |
| 22742 | Socrates either dies when he exists (before his death) or when he doesn't (after his death) [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22751 | If the present is just the limit of the past or the future, it can't exist because they don't exist [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22891 | We could be aware of time if senses briefly vibrated, extending their experience of movement [Russell, by Bardon] |
| 17552 | In relativity the length of the 'present moment' is relative to distance from the observer [Heisenberg] |
| 18401 | The pure present moment is too brief to be experienced [Armstrong] |
| 12690 | The present is the collapse of the light wavefront from the Big Bang [Ellis] |
| 22942 | If time is infinitely divisible, then the present must be infinitely short [Le Poidevin] |
| 22990 | The moving spotlight says entities can have properties of being present, past or future [Baron/Miller] |
| 22997 | The present moment is a matter of existence, not of acquiring a property [Baron/Miller] |