| There are thus two conflicting
opinions about time, and they have been around since antiquity.
According to Archimedes (and to Parmenides earlier still, for whom
ultimate reality is timeless), one must eliminate time, hide it, spirit
it away, transform it, reduce it to something else, to geometry, perhaps. Time is an embarrassment. According to Aristotle (and to
Heraclitus earlier still, for whom the world is a world of happenings),
one must face time squarely, for the world is temporal in its very
nature and its comings-into-being are real.
Modern science has largely followed the path of Archimedes rather than that of Aristotle. Time is downplayed, ignored, transformed, eliminated. Cause and effect are replaced by description and relation: do not ask why, but how; the successes of the Archimedean program characterize our scientific civilization. Davis and Hersh, 1986 [1990] pp.189-90. |