A recent book by Emily Thomas, a historian of philosophy, looks at four different theories about the reality and significance of time advanced by philosophers in Britain in the seventeenth century.
Her breakdown is this: there was a "void theory," "idealism," "absolutism," and "relationalism."
The terms are pretty close to self-explanatory, but I'll spell it out anyway.
The void theory: there is no time.
Idealism: time is real, and consists of mind-dependent relations.
The remaining two may each come under the broader folder "realism," in that they both hold that time is real and it is not mind dependent. But they are importantly different from one another.
Absolutism: time is independent of the actions of material bodies -- that is, time could be passing even if every object were staying still.
Relationalism: time is real, independent of mind, but dependent on the actions of material bodies.
The Absolutist view seems odd, at least in hindsight from the 21st century. Does it seem so bizarre because we have come to take relativity for granted, it has become our educated and even not-so-educated common sense? Or is it more that an Absolutist view of Time arises out of theological debates that no longer concern much even the pious amongst us?
Just putting this out there. At this moment in time, I have nothing more profound to say about it.
I think that absolutism does not seem odd, but represents common sense. If we stop and remember Einstein's discovery of relativity, then we know that absolutism is not true. But relativity does not affect our daily lives. When I woke up this morning, every object in my house had been still since last night (any tossing and turning I did aside), yet the clock showed eight hours later. OK, its electronic digits changed every minute, but we can put that aside too, because time would have advanced even if I didn't own a clock. This reminds me of the question whether a tree falling in the forest makes a sound even if no one hears it. Of course it does. And of course time passes even if everything remains still. It's common sense.
ReplyDeleteI disagree only ... completely. I suspect that "common sense" in the 17th century was relational and somewhat offended by the new-fangled absolutism of Newton. I also always think of "common sense" as the voice of a grumpy old man.
ReplyDeleteIn the 17th century, after all, a clock was a mechanical contraption with lots of moving parts on the inside designed to keep the hands moving on the outside. It would not have occurred to anyone to think of it as an image of time passing despite stillness. It was an image of the movements in the heavens (or the movement of the earth, extrapolated to the heavens) , and THAT was the movement of matter that must long have been the great visual surrogate of time itself.
Tossing and turning in bed? An irregular activity, unrelated to the smoothness with which common sense understands the flow of time. But the beat of the heart, the circulation of the blood? THOSE seem of the essence.
I think of "common sense" as a dishonest term of political propaganda. Bills introduced in Congress sometimes have "common sense" in their titles. An example was the Common Sense Product Liability and Legal Reform Act of 1995, which did not become law. Like all tort reform bills, it was designed to make it more difficult for accident victims to recover and to recover as much money. This bill would have benefited manufacturers of defective products and the manufacturers' liability insurers, at the expense of accident victims. It would have done this by overriding state laws, and it was supported, of course, by hypocritical advocates of states' rights and opponents of big government. Whatever you think of it, it was hardly common sense.
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