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Full Idea
Time is not change … but time is not without change, for without any change (or any noticeable change) in our minds, time does not seem to pass.
Gist of Idea
Time is not change, but requires change in our minds to be noticed
Source
Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218b19)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'Physics', ed/tr. Waterfield,Robin [OUP 1996], p.104
A Reaction
Aristotle has spotted what seems to be a key problem in understanding time, which is disentangling what occurs in nature from what occurs in our consciousness. The extreme views (naïve realism about time, or the view that it is imaginary) both seem wrong.
| 314 | Heavenly movements gave us the idea of time, and caused us to inquire about the heavens [Plato] |
| 5103 | Time is not change, but requires change in our minds to be noticed [Aristotle] |
| 5698 | We can only sense time by means of movement, or its absence [Lucretius] |
| 5978 | I know what time is, until someone asks me to explain it [Augustine] |
| 2101 | If everything in the universe happened a year earlier, there would be no discernible difference [Leibniz] |
| 5535 | That times cannot be simultaneous is synthetic, so it is known by intuition, not analysis [Kant] |
| 5560 | The three modes of time are persistence, succession and simultaneity [Kant] |
| 8591 | There could be no time if nothing changed [McTaggart] |
| 21581 | We never experience times, but only succession of events [Russell] |
| 22993 | For abstractionists past times might still exist, althought their objects don't [Baron/Miller] |
| 23001 | The error theory of time's passage says it is either a misdescription or a false inference [Baron/Miller] |