Augustine to Leibnitz: St Augustine presents the culmination of Greek Philosophy’s analysis of time. In Book Eleven of the Confessions, Augustine wrestles with the problem of time and has what amounts to a dialog with his God, saying “For thou madest that very tine itself and periods could not pass by before thou madest the whole temporal procession. But if there was no time before heaven and hearth, how, then, can it be asked, “What wast thou doing then?” For there was no “then” when there was not time.” He went on to say “ “There was no time, therefore, when thou hadst not made anything, because thou hadst made time itself.” Unlike the earlier philosophers (and the Neo-Platonist Plotinus), Augustine was not looking at time en vacuo but rather time within a First Philosophy, in his case the existence of g!d.
As far as his independent analysis of time it is my impression (and that of Bertrand Russell and several other real philosophers) Augustine presents a relational picture of time. Time is that which determines the relationships between things, much like location (think of inside and outside and above and below). Time is not like a fluid in which all things float or like a box in which all things are contained. It is a field of all the relations of "before" and "after" of events. Time is a relation of temporal things. It came into being with temporal things. One cannot speak of it except as elapsing between them.
Augustine considers the possibility that time can be identified with movement, particularly with the movements of the stars or the sun. He rejects this idea for the reason that it is not logically impossible for the sun to change its speed. So time cannot be defined as movement to measure duration. Rather, we rely on our awareness of duration to estimate duration of motion or rest. Even if all external motion on the part of objects in our surroundings were to cease, we would still be aware of the duration of the state of rest that followed.
Augustine is very cautious to avoid inferring from this that the past and future are somehow real; however he admits we can and do speak of the past and the future as being present to the mind in memory and expectation.So, even though it seems the passing of time leaves no room for the reality of duration, it may exist "in the mind". In its awareness of passing time, the mind is "stretched out" (distentio ) between an expectation of what is to come and a memory of what has passed. He says "Time it seems to me is nothing else than extension, though I do not know extension of what: probably of the mind itself".
But notice, it is not subjective illusion (as Plato and Plotinus earlier, and later Kant suggested). Whereas Plato and Plotinus saw a world beyond, “the world of forms”, as a timeless, eternal, and unchanging reality, St Augustine substituted g!d (I have changed my capitalization scheme after re-reading some linear versions of Confessions, if deus sufficed for the real founding father --philosophically at least -- of the Church -- which he did capitalize) in his four-fold characterization of aion, “the Eternal” per Plato as:
1) It has no beginning or end, no past or future
2) It is, and is in the present,
3) It is unchanging
4) It has life.
So, in my opinion, St Augustine stands firmly astride the great “subjective/objective” and “real/illusion” and “presentism/eternalism” rifts in the philosophy of time. In terms of the physics, time is accepted as real and relational. In terms of the metaphysics, the world of the physics exists as some extension of an eternal beyond. Admittedly, I am reading him in a very personal manner.
Similarly
Johannes Philoponus,
Abu Al Kindis,
Saadia (Goan) ben Yousef,
Ibn al-Haytham, and
al-Ghazali – all early Abrahamic philosophers argued vehemently against the eternalism and the eternity of the universe of the Platonic/Plotinus school. They used his two logical arguments against an infinite past, the first being the "
argument from the impossibility of the existence of an actual infinite", which states:
"An actual infinite cannot exist."
"An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite."
"∴ An infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist."
The second argument, the "
argument from the impossibility of completing an actual infinite by successive addition", states:
"An actual infinite cannot be completed by successive addition."
"The temporal series of past events has been completed by successive addition."
"∴ The temporal series of past events cannot be an actual infinite."
Both arguments were adopted by later Christian philosophers and theologians, and the second argument in particular became more famous after it was adopted by
Immanuel Kant in his thesis of the first
antinomy concerning time; which he adopted not as a comment about the physics (the Universe as it physically exists), but as a general comment “questions as to the limits of time and space are meaningless”.
Descartes,
Spinoza,
Hume and Kant added notable metaphysical and philosophical tricks about time. However, they did not really get past the basic Heraclitus/Plato and Augustine/Plotinus conflicts of “subjective/objective” and “real/illusion” and “presentism/eternalism”. Which, as you should have gathered, I believe the former in each dyad answered adequately, perhaps perfectly for their time.
It was at about this point that Newton and Leibnitz came along to invent the Calculus and Natural Philosophy—physics as a separate discipline. Newton enshrined absolute time and space as the very flesh and bones of the Universe (remember my previous definition). But, being a good and believing deist (often called “the Last Alchemist”), Newton himself never did state that the physical Universe was “all there is” (an interpretation of the Continental Natural Philosophers and most of his English followers). This is really, really hard to prove, but Newton probably did not believe in a Newtonian Universe (one existing only in space and time), but held a view similar to St Augustine’s—that g!d exists beyond these limitations and this universe.
One reason I feel so strongly about this is that the “Newton-Leibnitz” debate (actually argued by correspondence by
Samuel Clarke) entirely rests on Newton’s Principia, and no other source. The debate, once published by Clarke, Desmaieaux, and Kohler (in English, French and German) became de facto the gospel of the “Hermit of Cambridge”. Leibnitz’ little remembered comments on time fall directly in line with Heraclitus and Augustine—time is a relational reality.
Next post will detail the Newtonian Universe and it's impact on the development of our notions of time from the time of Newton to Einstein.
