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Full Idea
The now is a link of time, for it links together past and future time, and is a limit of time, since it is a beginning of one and an end of the other.
Gist of Idea
The present moment is a link (of past to future), and also a limit (of past and of future)
Source
Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 222a10)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'Physics Books III and IV', ed/tr. Hussey,Edward [OUP 1983], p.49
A Reaction
It is not clear how a limit (such as the boundary between two overlapping bits of paper) can also be a 'link'. He noticed the problem in Idea 22958.
Related Idea
Idea 22958 Nows can't be linked together, any more than points on a line [Aristotle]
| 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] |