Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Mumford Stephen

Author:Mumford, Stephen [Mumford, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2012-08-29T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

How does time pass?

We have been considering what there is in terms of some of the most general categories. There are particulars and properties, but there are also things like wholes, parts, changes, and causes. The latter two could not exist unless there was also something else: time. For a change to occur, there must at least be something at one time that is no longer at a later time, or vice versa. Philosophers argue about whether there could be time without change, but it surely looks certain that there could not be change without time.

What is this thing we call time? This is perhaps a question we have all thought about, and in doing so we will have been engaging in metaphysics. One thought is that time is some thing itself and acts as a background in which events are situated. We think of this time as flowing and having a direction. It can pass you by. You need to keep up with it and not waste it. It has reached a certain point. Perhaps it’s a finite resource. This image of time may resemble the flow of a river. It moves at a certain pace, passing certain points along the river bank. At your birth, you jump on a raft and the river takes you downstream, passing all the signposted years on the bank along the way. At your death, you jump off the raft, and the flow of time carries on along its way without you.

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