Time
Time is the most familiar feature of experience and the hardest to keep hold of: the mind insists that moments pass, yet philosophy keeps asking whether the passage is in the world, in consciousness, or in a habit of speech.
Quick Facts
- Region
- Europe
- Key Figures
- Albert Einstein, Aristotle, Arthur Prior +3 more
Key Figures
Albert Einstein
Interlocutor
Theoretical physicsAlbert Einstein was, for Karl Popper, less a philosopher than a revealing specimen: a scientist whose life and work seem...
Aristotle
Originator
Peripatetic philosophyFor Al-Farabi, Aristotle is the First Teacher: the great source of disciplined inquiry, ordered argument, and the confid...
Arthur Prior
Proponent
Analytic philosophy / tense logicArthur Prior was the twentieth century’s most important defender of tense as philosophically serious rather than merely ...
Augustine of Hippo
Interpreter
Latin Christian philosophyAugustine is one of the rare philosophers whose thought cannot be separated from a life story without losing the very th...
D. H. Mellor
Successor
Analytic philosophy of timeD. H. Mellor became one of the clearest modern defenders of tenseless time and one of the most elegant opponents of the ...
J. M. E. McTaggart
Critic
British idealism / analytic metaphysicsJ. M. E. McTaggart stands as the great negative genius of the philosophy of time: a thinker who did not merely doubt our...
The Story
This narrative combines documented history with dramatized scenes for storytelling purposes.
The World That Made It
Before time became a puzzle for relativity or a riddle for contemporary metaphysics, it was already a problem for anyone who watched the world and tried to say ...
The Central Idea
The central philosophical provocation about time is simple to state and hard to endure: perhaps the past, present, and future are not three divisions in reality...
The System
To make the no-flow view intellectually serious, philosophy had to distinguish several different senses in which we talk about time. The first is ordering: one ...
Tensions & Critiques
The strongest objection to the no-flow view is not that it sounds odd, but that it seems to miss something obvious: becoming. We do not merely find ourselves lo...
Legacy & Echoes
The modern career of the philosophy of time runs through a remarkable sequence of reclassifications, and it does so against a century in which physics, logic, p...
Timeline
Aristotle writes the *Physics*
**340 BC** — In Book IV of the *Physics*, Aristotle gives his classic account of time as number of motion with respect to before and after. The formulation becomes the starting point for nearly every later philosophical argument about whether time is a feature of the world or of our way of measuring it.
Plato’s *Timaeus* frames time as a moving image of eternity
**c. 360 BCE** — In the *Timaeus*, Plato gives the cosmos a temporal order tied to celestial motion and eternal forms. The work establishes a durable contrast between temporal change and timeless being.
Augustine begins *Confessions*
**397 AD** — Augustine’s reflections on memory, expectation, and the present culminate in Book XI, where he asks how time can be understood if past and future are absent and the present is vanishing. His analysis relocates the puzzle from astronomy to consciousness.
Kepler and the new mathematical astronomy sharpen temporal measurement
**1605** — Early modern astronomy intensifies the need for precise temporal reckoning, making time a matter of calculation as well as metaphysics. The broader scientific revolution deepens the distinction between measured duration and lived passage.
Newton’s *Principia* and absolute time
**1687** — Newton’s mechanics famously treats absolute, true, and mathematical time as flowing uniformly. This picture becomes the dominant foil for later anti-flow and relational theories of time.
Einstein publishes special relativity
**1905** — Special relativity undermines the idea of an observer-independent simultaneity relation across the universe. Philosophers of time later use this to question whether there can be a single global present.
McTaggart publishes “The Unreality of Time”
**1908** — McTaggart’s essay distinguishes A-series and B-series temporal relations and argues that the A-series is contradictory, concluding that time is unreal. The paper becomes the canonical challenge to any robust metaphysics of temporal passage.
Arthur Prior develops tense logic
**1958** — Prior’s work gives formal expression to tensed language and revives interest in the irreducibility of past, present, and future. He becomes a central defender of the thought that temporal becoming is not captured by tenseless analysis alone.
Prior’s influence spreads through analytic metaphysics
**1969** — After Prior’s death, tense logic and the A-theory feed a growing literature on temporal ontology, persistence, and the logic of becoming. The subject becomes a mainstay of analytic philosophy rather than a marginal puzzle.
D. H. Mellor’s *Real Time* consolidates the tenseless view
**1998** — Mellor offers one of the clearest defenses of the B-theory, arguing that causal and temporal order suffice without objective flow. His book becomes a major reference point in late twentieth-century debates.
Philosophy and physics intensify the presentism debate
**2010** — Work on relativity, spacetime ontology, and the philosophy of perception renews the dispute over whether the present is fundamental or perspectival. The issue becomes newly prominent in both academic philosophy and public discussions of cosmology.
Contemporary accounts connect time experience to neuroscience and thermodynamics
**2020** — Recent work increasingly treats the feeling of temporal passage as linked to memory, prediction, and entropy rather than to a metaphysical flow. The ancient question persists, but it now travels through cognitive science as well as metaphysics.
Sources
- primary_textAristotle, *Physics*, Book IV
Standard translations in the Oxford Classical Texts or Loeb Classical Library.
- primary_textAugustine, *Confessions*, Book XI
Classic reflection on memory, expectation, and the present.
- primary_textMcTaggart, J. M. E. “The Unreality of Time” (1908)
Canonical statement of the A-series/B-series distinction.
- primary_textPrior, A. N. *Past, Present and Future*
Foundational text for tense logic and the defense of tense.
- scholarly_bookMellor, D. H. *Real Time*
Major defense of the tenseless B-theory.
- encyclopedia_entryStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “Time”
Comprehensive scholarly overview of the philosophy of time.
- encyclopedia_entryStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “McTaggart’s Paradox”
Detailed discussion of McTaggart’s argument and later responses.
- encyclopedia_entryInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “Time”
Accessible scholarly survey of major positions in the philosophy of time.
- scholarly_bookGrĂĽnbaum, Adolf. *Philosophical Problems of Space and Time*
Important mid-century engagement with time, relativity, and metaphysics.
- scholarly_bookHawley, Katherine. *How Things Persist*
Useful for persistence, temporal parts, and related metaphysical debates.
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