Nows

Back to Proper Philosophy

A brief expose of part of book 6 of Physics on nows

In book theta of metaphysics three hypothesis, or three very different relations to change were given.

One could be a science, and therefore include all changes which ones nature, as ones parts. Or one could change as learning does. Each learn, each point of the change is external to the over all process which always overhangs the entire. Or one could change with activities, and put forward changes, in particular intuitions which where s blends of past and present. To perceive was therefore always also to have already perceived, as to see was to have seen.

Time was therefore dissolved into a shifting mirage of temporalities – or different ways o be across a time.

And yet in Physics one deals with that other time, the one that I hard and refuses to go away 9or at least one might think that one does), if one is lazy and concentrates of book 4 alone). however in book six rather a different picture emerges. Aristotle wonders if he can locate time within these changes, and if so exactly which one

The problem here is rather a severe one. If Aristotle is really serous that the intuitions occur in the present and the past, he clearly needs to be able to understand how this occurs, in relation to time. Or rather how this occurs in relation to the three different temporalities which have been outlined above it might belong to. This then matters, as argued in the previous essay, intuitions are what allows humans to actively function in the world. They give humans a world of final causes. And yet they appear to have a real problem, They appear o defy what time might be.

Aristotle is too brave a thinker not to accept this. If time s a continua, and he for one is prepared to accept that it is, it cannot be made up of parts, and so cannot be made up of knows. Time for itself is therefore never composed of parts. Or rather every part f time, as it is a part of time will belong to the middle of the temporalities involved. It is then like learning. One can define point or elements within a change, and yet in doing so, each point or part is separate from the change itself (as each point learnt could be divided into other learning’s).

Moreover this much he suggests can be simply derived from the nature of different speeds of movement. Faster movements will always have moved further in a shorter time. If one the compares the length of time that slower movement took to cross a certain reach of space, then the faster movements would have take less time. One can look then to see how far the slower would have gone in this shorter period of time, and compare that distance once again with the time it would take the faster speed, producing a new time and so a new distance ad infinitum,

So that difference of speed set up a spiral of temporalities: the One’s distance is expressed in the Other’s time, which then creates a new distance in The one, and so a new time in the other. And any attempt to delimit a time collapses into this nexus.

Or again the Time appears to erupt from he normal rules of wholes. These wholes were places rather carefully between the domain of changes which place that which has changed in a past (learning but also walking, and those which involved an element which builds each part into itself (science or going on a journey).

Time though does not really follow this neat pattern, or perhaps it establish a problematic eddy within it or even an unwanted feed back. A Feed back which centres around the fact that time and magnitude (rather than intuition) wants to claim mastery over the links between walks and journeys (via their union in speeds) , and yet in doing so creates an apparent impossibility. As a define a movement starts with a defining of a walk. One goes from A to B, and once one has done this then A and B are done and over (and so drop out of the moving- one is then n the world of the walk therefore). The magnitude, the distance, see then the world as walks, and they suggests that these walks be compared to other walks of walking the same distance. But taken then into that other, the faster movement, the moving from A to B, will be thought as a part of a journey (not a walk) a journey that ran its course, sweeping up A and B, an some other elements as well. What of course forces one to understand this portioning out of magnitude as a journey (and not a walk) is that in the same time this other movement has gone so much faster, and to think this speed (to know its difference), is to think as a journey thinks, across a time in which or through which a change it made. And yet time here nags. Okay we have a journey (not a walk), but what would this journey look like when one returns back to the slower movement, where will it leave that movement? The answer is of course it leaves it with less distance as a journey. It is at this point magnitude pipes up ones again, and wants to take one of again into the world of walks, and so in the journey of the faster mover. And the result is a tumble into infinity.

Magnitude and time by themselves are, quite frankly not to be trusted. They impel the incautious mind into the world of Zeno – if allowed (with undue patients). And yet, and yet, that does not stop Aristotle – he is too greater thinker to tumble into the twin errors or either asserting time was merely an illusion (how can it be when change is real0 or that it was a mere quality. In the latter case the problem is that I it were, is time was always about journey (with different realms of journey) then one would be locked in a Bergonsian stink, where durations were tantamount to continua and locked within trajectory of changing, one could of course jump horse from time to time from journey to pilgrimages to settling to … and yet as one did so one needed to change the nature of ones duration and wrap in others (Bergson is happy to do this, and loose the world in a maze of virtualities as time/memory ,problematising action in the process : in matter an memory; or rendering it as virtual – and so across a span of time, already ‘real’ - and so allowing real comparisons between different dimensions – movement an photosynthesis of really the same virtually …- Aristotle would say here well they are if you tie your mind in knots to do so, but so hat, one could easily tie any jovian knot).Aristotle is not happy with placing the split here, as he, could empiricist he is, wants the slit to be more open that this, and so much more problematic (and difficult to think).

This s really perhaps because Aristotle wants three elements to time. A element say a person which has changed, a time itself which always changes and an end point to that change. Bergson wants to drop the first of these (or pretend in this really the third). Aristotle wants this move do doubt because although he is wedded to final causes perhaps more truly than Bergson (or at least more explicitly) he is a ware of simply imposing a logic of final cause of the world (which bergson allows in unthinkable_and yet one must behave as if they were there), he (meaning Aristotle is aware one cannot simply parachutes in these cause, one has to allow then to enter into a world in which they are not. The personal is then the result of this dilemma – the problem of thinking that element of change.

Moreover ,from his own perspective in time, Aristotle is not bothered with those post-kantian concerns which wants to breed race of people adequate to time itself He wants rather to understand the perhaps more profound problem of how one can be within time, a part of it and yet still have perceptions, which make one stand apart from it – and therefore not simply in some stale duration. One needs to think then how one can be within something one is not, and yet which seems (as it occludes the space for the intuition) to destroy the very possibility that one is..

The problem of finding this element – the element which will allow one to understand what intuition is (which changes and is changed as it is given), in the a critical one. All the more so because Aristotle wants o allow this position its maximum profundity. The Now is now a part of time and yet… that is it is not a part of it (as so is merely is accident) and yet it will remain open was to exactly whether or not time is thought within this non-part. It is and is not- in the same way the world is and is not intuition. It of course stands to Aristotle’s greatness, ad our post Kantian naffness that we have not been very happy to let this merry paradox simply stand. We have felt the need to solve it.

But then the problem is how. How can one have an element of time, which can be given as change and change at the same point –given this giving is impossible. Aristotle argues that put this way one cannot. And therefore the now must place one in time in a way more nuanced that that. That is it cannot be so directly placed as intuition would (if it were simply synomous with time) suggest.

Task is then t allow the paradox to stand. That is one has to look for an indivisible point within a continuum which nonetheless remains absolutely divisible (as walking demands that it is).

What is looked for is then not a part of time, so much as the limit of past and a future. This limiting then needs to be understood in two ways. Of course one can (and Aristotle knows this) see it in terms of the continua of time. One cannot have a now which it itself moving or any part of time, for it were and yet still a now it would be divisible as a part of it would be of the future and a part of it would be of the past. It cannot therefore of itself be of time. Moreover its role is not simply to be dissolved into that problematic continua which betrays existence. it is rather to impose a limit or better impose an entry in which intuitions can be thought to meaningfully tumble into time (that is define the point in which it makes sense to take of change-changed as given in the same now. It is the point in which one can in this tumble inter relate the conflicting temporalities of past and future. Aristotle then immediately turns to consider these order, He suggests aka metaphysics there are two rather different forms of changing. One can change as science or learning, as walking and journeying. But critically these changes are not equally the inhabitant of time. The scientific or journeying change is a change of duration, it will therefore include time within it changing process . This is not putting the problem of time centre stage, Aristotle says. Time’s problem lies in the fact that I surely belong to that other kind of change, the one which orphans whatever it cares to produce. Time is an orphan maker, our problem is not to be orphaned.

It is therefore pointless to simply appeal to qualities or process. One must demand a world of activities. – but How?

Aristotle answer this be an carefully nuanced arguments which resolves around the issue of positioning.

If one takes a change which involves a contradiction, is it clearly that there will be a moment that the new element tumbles out of the process, a point that it exists at, a point then when the change has happened. Moreover if this point is seen solely in term of time then this point, will not make any sense. that is in terms of the continua time – this instance would always be change into something else. It would be already then otherwise…

The guile here is immense. Aristotle has inserted a knife into a seemingly seamless flux, and yet found a point of articulation in the process. That is it is clearly cutting along with time, seen as the process of walking. That process might abandon its babies, and so already be going on. And yet as we perceive those babies, as we value them in our intuitions, we might see them otherwise – they might become (with care) our orphans to adopt (adapt).

The key passage in that in the tumble into a being, carefully sorts between different types of time. Firstly Aristotle is keen to demonstrate the sheer possibility of this now. Such a now, he says is clearly the end point of the activity. Once it has changed, it is done finished – the changing has changed and ended (as sight and seen are none and the same.

But additionally such a point will have a very different relationship between the two tenses of future and past. Those tenses, when things were seen in terms of continua screwed things up badly. They made the now collapse into a screaming (or weeping) void. And yet this point, this present understood as the first moment of changing has rather a different relationship with these tenses. It manipulated them to give it breathing space.

This time starting from a journey for A to C. this journey will have a part as B, which is divisible (it is a station of the journey). Once at B, Aristotle suggests one can make whoopee with the tense, for one can insists that B is not a part of the change from A to C, one is one walk not a journey therefore. Moreover once one has allowed this to happen, one is no longer on a journey at all. The point B is not simply then the ending point of the change AB or and the beginning point of BC, as if it were one would simply tumble back into the world of journey in, which one does not (yet)want to do. Here is then a point, which stated of a journey, and yet then in the course of that journey suddenly treated that journeying as a walk, and so pulled it out from the continua of the journeying future. This point is then quite indivisible. It is the point in which a journey suddenly was stopped. the moment a changing became a changed – the moment which allowed perception to be at all. Perceiving is then the placing in a tense. ONE starts with futures, and teas those futures into time, into an ended change, and yet in that move keeps the changing aspect or treats that changing aspect as if it were a qualities change all the same. If one behaves in this manner on created within the fluxes of tense the right to a present and therefore the right to intuit.

However one needs to be so careful about what one has found here. Aristotle suggests, one must not give oneself airs. In particular one cannot then reverse this process, and an expect that if a journey erupted in a walk, on would create also a now (or even a different now). That is that there is a first moment in which a change has begun. This is because if there were such a moment, either nows would have to be really part of time, as they gave that in which the change commenced. This would of course be utterly paradoxical as the same basic mover from walks to journeys also removes one from the very possibility of allowing for such flickering moments. Additionally any such first moment will run up against the very heavy water of exactly defining exactly how to reconcile the two parts of journey and walks. If on attempts to pretend that the parts of the journey are as the parts of the walk (and so can be thought as separate on indivisible) then one looses sight to exactly what makes the journey itself – namely its appeal to have all parts of a motion for its very own. If own goes then with the journeying aspect and allows the parts to be divided as it might divide them, then one is caught up an infinite regress, as one questions after the very moment of change (which has always tumbled between any two moments –as walking leaves then anyway…

Hence Aristotle’s says one needs such a careful series of distinction. Those things that change in relation to an end point, such as a journey, tumble into the future (and one might talk of a first moment of their movement) but those for whom time is the prime measure do not. they have no first moment –no beginning. But rather ark the point win which a changing has tumbled into a changed.

This however means thinking this now becomes a matter of very careful balancing. Te Now defined a right to define a changed within a changing , a first instance of completion, in terms of a movement as a whole. That is it was a movement treated as a quality which was the erupted. It must retain then is qualities suspect, in that ach now will limit or define a movement which of itself took time. Each element in it could be divided up therefore, and be thought in terms of a smaller unit. That is fine. The Now as therefore rather a carefully nuanced element. It breeds a point a changing tumbles into a changed, and yet does not dictate what that chaining it ,or even its own length, taken as a qualities movement of itself. I is the point the change is given as a thing in the finishing, but is open to how that giving is done.

The now is very really not a part in duration therefore. it makes rather the point one breaks with durating. The point then when one says oh that process is over. It is done with, given in the past even as it was given to the future: and as it is given in the past one gives it as if it were in extension (a walk) that is a thing finished and ended. (and so potentially at least part of other changes) That is it gives the point in which a change can be allowed to have actually past, and a new change to have begun.

What is more in the curious interbreeding of walking and journeying, qualitivity itself becomes of the past (and not as it almost always other is, a creature of the future). When this happens there is nothing which changes now which was not changing earlier, and therefore open to a new now. The very infinite regress which haunts time becomes then almost a resource. No matter where one makes the division, other dividing are of course possible, and can always be made. of course they can – because to divide at all is to tear oneself away from the very during process, and in intuition or rather through intuition allow what was enduring in one way, be said rather differently – that is to be also a part of intuition, and the personal which demands that this division be itself an end of a process, and does so such that it itself might begin to plot and weave its own teleology after this process has ended.

Aristotle faced a real dilemma when thinking of time. He was very aware that the apparent continua of time was made all the more problematic by his belief in shifting temporalities. The future and the past when taken in the logical (and external) forms seemed to collapse any hope 0f a present into an invented regress. This move would be fine if room was not required for the personal also to be. The Now, he breeds the answer to his prayer. One can allow intuition (and with it define a place for a person to begin,) if one precedes with due care an attention. One will pay in this thought all sorts of prices and cost about what can be said and what not. And yet these price in inevitable is one can create within a continua a point a flicker a limit at which a changing terminates in a changed, and therefore a perceptino is possible.