Portal:Metaphysics

Selected article

Time

There are two distinct views on the meaning of time.

One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence, and time itself is something that can be measured. This is the realist's view, to which Sir Isaac Newton subscribed, and hence is sometimes referred to as Newtonian time.^[3]

A contrasting view is that time is part of the fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number). Within this structure, humans sequence events, quantify the duration of events and the intervals between them, and compare the motions of objects. In this second view, time does not refer to any kind of entity that "flows", that objects "move through", or that is a "container" for events. This view is in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz^[4] and Immanuel Kant,^[5][6] in which time, rather than being an objective thing to be measured, is part of the mental measuring system.

References

Selected biography

Parmenides of Elea (Greek: Παρμενίδης ο Έλεάτης, early 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Hellenic city on the southern coast of Italy. Parmenides was a student of Ameinias and the founder of the School of Elea, which also included Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos. According to Plato, Parmenides had been the erastes of Zeno when the latter had been a youth. ^[1]

Parmenides is one of the most significant of the pre-Socratic philosophers.^[2] His only known work, conventionally titled 'On Nature' is a poem, which has only survived in fragmentary form. Approximately 150 lines of the poem remain today; reportedly the original text had 3,000 lines. It is known, however, that the work originally divided into three parts:

• A proem, which introduced the entire work,
• A section known as "The way of truth" (aletheia), and
• A section known as "The way of appearance/opinion" (doxa).

References

Great Metaphysicians