- St. Augustine's Theory of Time
St. Augustine, the Christian philosopher, had original ideas about time. First of all, he believed that time is not infinite. Time, he said, was created by God, in addition, it is absolutely impossible to create something infinite.
And Augustine believed that time actually exists only in our minds and depends only on how we interpret it. We can say that something lasts long or not too long, but Augustine argued that there is no real way to objectively assess this.
When something remains in the past, it no longer has any properties of being, because now it does not exist. And when we say that something "took too much time" - this is because we remember this "something" in this way.
And since we measure time, based only on how we remember it, hence, it should exist only in our memory. As for the future, it does not exist yet, therefore it is impossible to measure it. There is only the present, so the only logical conclusion is that the concept of time lives exclusively in our head.
- Topology of time
What does time look like? If you try to imagine it yourself, do you imagine it as a straight line that never ends? Or maybe you will think of something like a clock, the arrows of which describe the circle around the circle every day and every year?
Obviously, there is no right answer, but there are some intriguing ideas related to this.
Aristotle believed that time can not exist as a line. At least, he does not have a beginning or an end, despite the fact that there must be a time when everything started. And if you imagine the moment when it all began, you will have to mark the point up to this point. And if the world ceases to exist - then there will be another point, after this moment.
And still it is absolutely not clear, how many there can be lines of time. Can this be just one time line forward, or are there many lines, parallel to each other, or vice versa? Can time be a single line divided into many segments? Could it be that moments in the flow of time exist completely independently of each other? There is a mass of opinions about all this. And not a single answer.
- Plausible Present
The idea of a "believable present" is trying to answer the question of how long this present lasts. The usual answer associated with this sounds like "now", but it is not very informative.
Let's say when we reach the middle of a sentence during a conversation, does this mean that we have already finished the beginning of the sentence, and it is left in the past? And the conversation itself - is it in the present tense? Or is only part of the conversation in the present, and some of it already in the past?
E. R. Clay and William James expressed the idea of a "believable present" - this is a period of time that we feel like the present. According to Clay and James, this moment lasts only a few seconds and can not last longer than a minute, and this is the amount of time that we are consciously aware of.
But even in this framework, there is much to argue.
Theoretically, all of the above can be associated with a person's short-term memory - the better this memory, the longer the present. Still there is an opinion that all this is only a matter of instant perception. And once you rely on your short-term memory - such a moment can no longer be a part of the present. That is, the problem arises of the "believable present", and something like the "extended present" that occurs immediately after the "believable present" has disappeared.
In fact, the present should not have any duration at all, because if it exists, part of the present is immediately in the past, and a part in the future, and a contradiction arises. A "believable present" tries to explain the present as a certain long time interval, and this is highly debatable.
Time does not exist
Also there is an opinion that time does not exist at all. This is what the philosopher McTaggart (J.M. E. McTaggart) claimed at the beginning of the last century. According to McTaggart, two approaches are possible when considering time.
The first approach is called A-Theory.
It says that time has a certain order and continuously flows, that things are organized in it the way we see them. And that events move from the past to the present, and then to the future.
B-Theory, by contrast, argues that the adoption of time frames and time itself is an illusion, and there is no way to make sure that all events in the world occur in a strictly defined order.
This version of "time" is supported only by our memories, and in our memory, as a rule, individual events are fixed, and we recall them as separate "temporary pockets", and not as a continuous stream.
Given this theory, it can be proved that time does not exist, because in order for time to exist, a continuous change in events, peace and circumstances is required. B-theory by definition does not refer to the flow of time, and there is no talk of changes there either. Thus, time does not exist.
However, if A-Theory is correct, then the statement that there is no time seems too hasty. For example, take the day when you turned 21 years old. On the one hand, this day was once in the future. On the other hand, the same day will be once in the past. But one and the same moment can not be both in the past, in the present and in the future. That's why McTaggart says that A-Theory is contradictory, and therefore impossible, as time itself.
Chronos, Kronos and Time
Even before the attempts of Greek philosophers to explain time, time had a mythological explanation.
Before the beginning of time there were only the original gods - Chronos and Ananke. Chronos was the god of time, and was partly a man, partly a lion and partly a bull.
Ananke was a serpent, wrapped around the egg of the world, and a symbol of eternity. More Chronos in Greco-Roman mythology are often depicted standing in the zodiac circle, there he is portrayed as a man, and this man can be both young and old.
Chronos was the father of the Titans, and he is often confused with Kronos, who was also associated with the times. It was Kronos who was overthrown from the throne, and then castrated his own father, and later was killed by his own son, Zeus.
Chronos was the one who was responsible for the change of the seasons and for the time as a whole. But for things that happen to men and women during this time, it was not Chronos who answered, but somebody else.
The life cycle of man, his birth, growing up, aging and death, was the area of responsibility of those who were called the goddesses of fate - Moira. Clotho spun the thread of life, Lachezis defined human destiny, and finally, Atropos cut the thread, and the life of man ended on this.