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27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / a. Absolute time

[time is a real and unchanging backdrop to nature]

12 ideas
Stoics say time is incorporeal and self-sufficient; Epicurus says it is a property of properties of things [Epicurus]
     Full Idea: Stoics posited that time is an incorporeal which is conceived of all by itself, while Epicurus thinks that it is an accident of certain things, ...and he called in a property of properties.
     From: Epicurus (fragments/reports [c.289 BCE])
     A reaction: [Source Sextus 'Adversus Mathematicos' 10.219-227]
Does time exist on its own? Did anything precede it? Did it pre-exist the cosmos? [Seneca]
     Full Idea: Look how many questions there are on time. Does it have an existence of its own? Does anything exist prior to time, independently of it? Did it begin with the universe, or did it exist even before then?
     From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 088)
     A reaction: I'm not sure that the questions have shifted or become any clearer after two thousand years, despite Einstein and co. Note that discussions of time were not initiated by Augustine.
Newton needs intervals of time, to define velocity and acceleration [Newton, by Le Poidevin]
     Full Idea: Both Newton's First and Second Laws of motion make implicit reference to equal intervals of time. For a body is moving with constant velocity if it covers the same distance in a series of equal intervals (and similarly with acceleration).
     From: report of Isaac Newton (Principia Mathematica [1687]) by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 01 'Time'
     A reaction: [Le Poidevin spells out the acceleration point] You can see why he needs time to be real, if measured chunks of it figure in his laws.
Newton thought his laws of motion needed absolute time [Newton, by Bardon]
     Full Idea: Newton's reason for embracing absolute space, time and motion was that he thought that universal laws of motions were describable only in such terms. Because actual motions are irregular, the time of universal laws of motion cannot depend on them.
     From: report of Isaac Newton (Principia Mathematica [1687]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 3 'Replacing'
     A reaction: I'm not sure of the Einsteinian account of the laws of motion.
Time exists independently, and flows uniformly [Newton]
     Full Idea: Absolute, true, and mathematical time, in and of itself and of its own nature, without reference to anything external, flows uniformly and by another name is called duration.
     From: Isaac Newton (Principia Mathematica [1687], Def 8 Schol)
     A reaction: This invites the notorious question of, if time flows uniformly, how fast time flows. Maybe we should bite the bullet and say 'one second per second', or maybe we should say 'this fact is beyond our powers of comprehension'.
Absolute time, from its own nature, flows equably, without relation to anything external [Newton]
     Full Idea: Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably, without relation to anything external.
     From: Isaac Newton (Principia Mathematica [1687], I:Schol after defs), quoted by Craig Bourne - A Future for Presentism 5.1
     A reaction: I agree totally with this, and I don't care what any modern relativity theorists say. It think Shoemaker's argument gives wonderful support to Newton.
If space and time exist absolutely, we must assume the existence of two pointless non-entities [Kant]
     Full Idea: Those who decide in favour of the subsistence of the absolute reality of space and time must assume two eternal and infinite self-subsisting non-entities which exist (without there being anything real) only to comprehend everything real within themselves.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B056/A39)
     A reaction: This is an attack on Newton, and modern physics seems (thanks to Einstein) to agree with Kant. However the modern view strikes me as the usual confusion of epistemology and ontology. Physicists report what we can know, without speculation about how it is.
If all empirical sensation of bodies is removed, space and time are still left [Kant]
     Full Idea: If everything empirical, namely what belongs to sensation, is taken away from the empirical intuition of bodies and their changes (motion), space and time are still left.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 284)
     A reaction: This is an exercise in psychological abstraction, which doesn't sound like good evidence, though it is an interesting claim. Physicists want to hijack this debate, but I like Kant's idea.
Simultaneity can be temporal equidistance from the Big Bang [Ellis]
     Full Idea: Cosmologists have a concept of objective simultaneity, which they take to mean something like 'temporally equidistant from the Big Bang'.
     From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 6)
     A reaction: I find this very appealing, when faced with all the relativity theory that tells me there is no such thing as global simultaneity, a claim which I find deeply counterintuitive, but seems to have the science on its side. Bravo.
Relativity is as absolutist about space-time as Newton was about space [Coffa]
     Full Idea: If the theory of relativity might be thought to support an idealist construal of space and time, it is no less absolutistic about space-time than Newton's theory was about space.
     From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991])
     A reaction: [He cites Minkowski, Weyl and Cartan for this conclusion] Coffa is clearly a bit cross about philosophers who draw naive idealist and relativist conclusions from relativity.
I believe the passing of time is a fundamental fact about the world [Maudlin]
     Full Idea: I believe that it is a fundamental, irreducible fact about the spatio-temporal structure of the world that time passes.
     From: Tim Maudlin (The Metaphysics within Physics [2007], 4)
     A reaction: Worth quoting because it comes from a philosopher fully informed about, and heavily committed to, the physicist's approach to reality. One fears that physicists steeped in Einstein are all B-series Eternalists. Get a life!
Special Relativity allows an absolute past, future, elsewhere and simultaneity [Bourne]
     Full Idea: There is in special relativity a notion of 'absolute past', and of 'absolute future', and of 'absolute elsewhere', and of 'absolute simultaneity' (of events occurring at their space-time conjunction).
     From: Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 5.III)
     A reaction: [My summary of his paragraph] I am inclined to agree with Bourne that there is enough here to build some sort of notion of 'present' that will support the doctrine of Presentism.