Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'How Things Persist' and 'Truthmakers and Converse Barcan Formula'

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2 ideas

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 3. Parts of Time / b. Instants
Time could be discrete (like integers) or dense (rationals) or continuous (reals) [Hawley]
     Full Idea: There seem to be three possible ways for time to be fine-grained. The ordering of instants could be discrete (like the integers), dense (like the rational numbers) or continuous (like the real numbers).
     From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.5)
     A reaction: She seems to assume that time must be 'grained', but I would take the continuous view to imply that there is no grain at all (which is bad news for her version of stage theory).
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution
Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield]
     Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime.
     From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus
     A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea.