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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
It is no accident that when Socrates, Critias, Hermocrates, and Timaeus came to discuss the historicity of the Ancient Athens in correlation to Socrates' idea of the ideal city, they were led to the problem of the metaphysical reality of time. In Timaeus, time becomes the hinge of correlation between historical reality and eternity. And so it is with Augustine. In his Confessions, after a lengthy discussion of his personal history he sets out to construct an ontological structure for the interpretation of history as a whole. Right there, he encounters the problem of time. ‘What, then, is time? If no one asks of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.’ Lament as Augustine may, he plunges right into the puzzle.
The problem of time is more than a pastime interest for metaphysical speculation. It is at the root of our understanding of the structure both of physical and of human existence. Einstein's relational concept of time affects our understanding of the structure of physical reality, just as the former Newtonian habit of looking at time as an independently flowing stream governed our former way of seeing things. With the suggestion in the Newtonian model that one moment of time flows into the one immediately next in sequence, we unconsciously look at events as flowing one into the other, and so we perceive events in terms of causal connexions. The relational model breaks the necessity of causal connexions and replaces it with a concept of functional dependence.
page 13 note 1 StAugustine, , The Confessions, XI, 14, tr. Pilkington, J. G. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark).Google Scholar
page 17 note 1 Bhagavad-Gita, XI, 25, quoted by Brandon, S. G. F. in his History, Time and Deity (Manchester, 1965), p. 32.Google Scholar
page 17 note 2 Brandon, op. cit., p. 35.
page 17 note 3 op. cit., pp. 40f.
page 17 note 4 Puech, H. C., ‘Gnosis and Time’, Man and Time (Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, vol. III, 1957), pp. 36ff.Google Scholar
page 17 note 5 Brabant, F. H., Time and Eternity in Christian Thought (London, 1937), pp. 7–33Google Scholar. For Plato's treatment of time, refer to Timaeus, 37–39.
page 18 note 1 According to Toulmin, S. and Goodfield, J., in The Discovery of Time (London, 1965), pp. 33ffGoogle Scholar, Hecateus of Miletos, Anaximander, Lucretius and some Epicureans were exceptions. They already had some sort of developmental view of the universe.
page 18 note 2 Pittendingh, C. S., ‘On Temporal Organization in Living Systems’, The Future of Time, ed. Yaker, H. et al. (The Hogarth Press, 1972)Google Scholar. Also refer to Whitrow's, G. J.What is Time? (London, 1972), ch. 3Google Scholar: and Portmann's, Adolf ‘Time in the Life of the Organism’, Man arid Time (Eranos Yearbooks, vol. III).Google Scholar
page 19 note 1 This is best explained in SirEddington's, Arthur own book, The Expanding Universe (London, 1940).Google Scholar
page 20 note 1 Johnson, Martin, Time, Knowledge and the Nebulae (London: Faber, 1944), pp. 37f.Google Scholar
page 21 note 1 Timaeus, 38B (tr. Jowett, B.).Google Scholar
page 21 note 2 ibid.
page 21 note 3 Physica, IV, II (218b, 21–219a, 20), tr. Hardie, R. P. and Gaye, R. K..Google Scholar
page 21 note 4 ibid. (218b, 10).
page 21 note 5 Confessions, XI, 23Google Scholar; quotation from F. H. Brabant, op. cit., p. 59.
page 21 note 6 ibid.
page 23 note 1 Quoted by Martin Johnson, op. cit., p. 36.
page 23 note 2 ibid.
page 24 note 1 Schilling, H. K., The New Consciousness in Science and Religion (London: SCM, 1972). pp. 120–132.Google Scholar
page 26 note 1 Einstein, Albert, Relativity—the Special and the General Theory, trans. Lawson, R. W. (London, 1972), p. 26.Google Scholar
page 27 note 1 Martin Johnson, op. cit., p. 48.
page 27 note 2 Bergon, Henri, Time and Free Will, tr. Pogson, P. L. (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1910), pp. 107ff.Google Scholar
page 28 note 1 An example to illustrate the flexibility of human behaviour can be found in human females' sexual behaviour. While an oestrous cycle is obvious in other female animals, such a cycle seems to be absent in the human female. That is, human females do not ‘go into heat’ periodically. Though their sexual receptivity is at its height just before and after menstruation, their sexual behaviour does not seem to be significantly determined by this. See Fox, Robin, ‘The Evolution of Sexual Behaviour’, Encounter with Anthropology (London, 1975), p. 45.Google Scholar
page 28 note 2 Plessner, Helmet, ‘Relation of Time to Death’, Man arid Time, p. 236.Google Scholar
page 29 note 1 op. cit., p. 237.
page 29 note 2 Maxwell, Robert, ‘Anthropological Perspectives’, The Future of Time, ed. Yaker, H. et al. (London, 1972), pp. 38ff.Google Scholar
page 33 note 1 There were in fact much more elaborate funerary rites as shown by archaeological evidence. Brandon, S. G. F. gives a succinct summary and discussion of this evidence in his Man and his Destiny in the Great Religions (Manchester, 1962), pp. 6ff.Google Scholar