Further, how can there be any 'before' and 'after' without the existence of time? Or how can there be any time without the existence of motion? If, then, time is the number of motion or itself a kind of motion, it follows that, if there is always time, motion must also be eternal. But so far as time is concerned we see that all with one exception are in agreement in saying that it is uncreated: in fact, it is just this that enables Democritus to show that all things cannot have had a becoming: for time, he says, is uncreated. Plato alone asserts the creation of time, saying that it had a becoming together with the universe, the universe according to him having had a becoming. Now since time cannot exist and is unthinkable apart from the moment, and the moment a kind of middle-point, uniting as it does in itself both a beginning and an end, a beginning of future time and an end of past time, it follows that there must always be time: for the extremity of the last period of time that we take must be found in some moment, since time contains no point of contact for us except the moment. Therefore, since the moment is both a beginning and an end, there must always be time on both sides of it. But if this is true of time, it is evident that it must also be true of motion, time being a kind of affection of motion.
Therefore, since the moment is both a beginning and an end, there must always be time on both sides of it.
This bothers me. Time count begins when something changes. A void with no space-time has no time. Time starts at the mark of a change. "Universe and no-time" don't go together.So if the universe changes from "no-time" to "time", that in of itself is a temporal process, making it necessary that "no-time" is actually time. So time never begins. — Kuro
I voted no, I'm suspicious of this line:
Therefore, since the moment is both a beginning and an end, there must always be time on both sides of it. — fdrake
Further, how can there be any 'before' and 'after' without the existence of time? Or how can there be any time without the existence of motion? If, then, time is the number of motion or itself a kind of motion, it follows that, if there is always time, motion must also be eterna
I agree with this. I also challenge the claim that motion defines time. It does not. Motion makes time measurable, but it does not define it. Time exists outside of motion. — god must be atheist
What if there is more to the universe than there appears to be? What if there is more than one universe?Obviously, time had a beginning. If not, the universe would be in the chaotic, fleeting state of chaos, accelerating away towards infinity. — EugeneW
In other words things change relative to each other. The relationship between one change and another is time.This argument fails if time is assume to go forward only. If it goes up and down, as before the unidirectional inflation, spawning the real from the virtual, time can have a beginning. As it must have a beginning. If this weren't the case, we would observe chaos only. — EugeneW
In other words things change relative to each other. The relationship between one change and another is time. — Harry Hindu
Do you think Aristotle's argument is sound or valid? Why or why not? — Kuro
I have never assumed that time was anything much more than a human construct to help us make sense of and order our version of 'reality'. Notions of cause and eternity similarly are ideas we use to explain things and to some extent map onto terrestrial events as we view them. — Tom Storm
The interval of real numbers (1,2) has 'no number on the right', as it does not contain its least upper bound ( 2 ), you'd need to look 'outside of it' (in the real numbers themselves) to get that. — fdrake
Time count begins when something changes. A void with no space-time has no time. Time starts at the mark of a change. "Universe and no-time" don't go together. — L'éléphant
I also challenge the claim that motion defines time. It does not. Motion makes time measurable, but it does not define it. Time exists outside of motion. — god must be atheist
Time cannot exist without change. — Harry Hindu
In other words things change relative to each other. The relationship between one change and another is time. — Harry Hindu
(Harmonization) Quoted in David Bolotin's "Approach to Aristotle’s Physics".Whoever inquires into Aristotle’s sciences, peruses his books, and takes pains with them will not miss the many modes of concealment, blinding and complicating in his approach, despite his apparent intention to explain and clarify.
Do you think Aristotle's argument is sound or valid? — Kuro
Do you think Aristotle's argument is sound or valid? Why or why not? — Kuro
time cannot exist and is unthinkable apart from the moment, and the moment a kind of middle-point, uniting as it does in itself both a beginning and an end
....it follows that there must always be time: for the extremity of the last period of time that we take must be found in some moment, since time contains no point of contact for us except the moment. Therefore, since the moment is both a beginning and an end, there must always be time on both sides of it.
Let me point out first that the arguments of 180booze should not be taken to seriously. — EugeneW
We can't blame him though. — EugeneW
Let it be that time is constituted by collective motions of particles. Let is also be that time can be understood in terms of before-and-after processes but that time itself is not one of those processes. And let it be that time is an affect of motion - that motion is what makes time what we understand it to be. It seems to me that EugeneW, 180 Proof and Aristotle are not so far apart after all — Cuthbert
To think and to be is the same.
But it's doubtful whether it is coherent to talk about time itself having or not having a beginning or end in time. — Cuthbert
'Time' is a metric of asymmetric change (i.e. physical transformations) ... — 180 Proof
No asymmetric changes, no measurable time. — 180 Proof
No asymmetric changes, no measurable time. — 180 Proof
It is the height of human hubris and folly to think that what is, was, and will be are limited by what we can think or comprehend or can give an account of. — Fooloso4
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