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Aristotle on Time: Temporal passage

Does time pass? Philosophers such as Smart and Mellor assert that the flow of time is an illusion. 1 These scholars argue that nothing can move through time. They claim that dates simply coexist, statically, like points in a space. However, other thinkers, including Prigogine and Davies, are unwilling to dismiss the flow of time as an illusion. 2 They feel that our impression of temporal passage must correspond to a real flow. Any model of temporal passage must provide a mechanism to allow the present to move from past to future. Although various theorists have tried to explain the phenomenon of time flow, their models provide no such mechanism. 3 In this paper, I put forward a new theory of time. I describe the nature of the present and define the mechanism that brings about its motion. The first section of the paper demonstrates that existence is a dynamic process and shows that time arises from this process. The second section presents a geometric analysis of the present's motion. The third section contrasts space with time. In the last section, consciousness and time are discussed within the context of Einstein's theory of relativity. I I must begin, however, with an analysis of existence. A material entity can certainly exist. However, in order to exist, it has to endure for a length of time greater than zero. In the big bang description of the origin of time, time exists at all moments after the big bang but not at the big bang itself. 4 (I refer to this moment of the big bang as T-0.) Consequently, there is no first moment of time in this description: Every moment of time is preceded by an infinite number of other moments that are still closer to T-0. Similarly, a material entity cannot have a first moment of existence, since it has a total lifetime of only zero seconds at that initial moment. (A total lifetime of zero seconds means no lifetime at all, and implies non-existence.) However, the entity can be said to exist at all subsequent moments after the initial one. (I refer to this initial moment as t-0.) At these subsequent moments the entity has a lifetime greater than zero seconds. As in the big bang description, every moment of existence is preceded by an infinite number of other moments of existence; and these moments get closer and closer to …