Absolute Time: Rifts in Early Modern British Metaphysics by Emily Thomas

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 557-558
Author(s):  
Edward Slowik
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Absolute Time

Scene Setting

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Philosophy Of Time ◽  
Absolute Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Metaphysics Of Time

Absolute Time studies roughly a century of British metaphysics, starting from the 1640s. This chapter contextualizes this period of history, both philosophically and more widely. It opens with a speedy and extremely selective Cook’s tour of the history of philosophy of time leading up to seventeenth-century philosophy, emphasizing the work of Aristotle and Plotinus. It continues by describing the metaphysics of time found in a variety of early seventeenth-century British philosophers. The final part of this chapter enters into the wider history of the period, discussing non-philosophical reasons that may have played a role in increasing early modern interest in time: horology, chronology, and apocalypse studies.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Absolute Time

Absolute Time: Rifts in Early Modern British Metaphysics explores the development of absolute time during one of Britain’s richest metaphysical periods, from the 1640s to the 1730s. This study is the first of its kind, although it connects to several existing bodies of literature. The Introduction places Absolute Time in the existing literature, and details it scope with regard to geography, historical period, and topic. The Introduction also sets out Absolute Time’s general developmental theses. First, the complexity of positions on time (and space) defended during this period is under-appreciated. Second, three distinct kinds of absolutism appeared during this wedge of philosophical history: Morean, Gassendist, and Newtonian. Finally, the Introduction provides an overview of the coming chapters.

scholarly journals The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence as a Case Study for the Historiography of Physics

2020 ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Matt Waldschlagel
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ◽  
History Of Physics ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Absolute Space ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Absolute Time ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
History Of

This paper examines an important episode in the history of early modern physics – the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence of 1715-16, an exchange that occurred at the intersection of physics, metaphysics and theology – before turning to questions of interpretation in the historiography of physics.  Samuel Clarke, a disciple of Isaac Newton, engaged in a dispute over Newton’s commitment to absolute space and absolute time with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who criticized Newton’s views and advanced a rival account.  I clarify the positions at stake in the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, define a variety of terms – absolute space, absolute time, substantivalism, and relationalism – endogenous to the exchange, and reconstruct key elements in the philosophical dimension of the dispute.  I then use the Leibniz-Clarke exchange as a springboard from which to examine interpretive considerations in the historiography of physics.  I argue that the history of physics can benefit from reassessing its historiographical commitments by borrowing or appropriating some of the intellectual resources used by philosophers working in the history of philosophy.  This historiographical reassessment, I contend, will not only shed new light on the Leibniz-Clarke exchange but may also reinvigorate the history of physics.

Modern Phenomenology II

2018 ◽  
pp. 392-404
Author(s):  
Thomas Nail
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Absolute Time ◽  
Elastic Regime ◽  
Flow Of Time ◽  
Lived Time

This chapter argues that the descriptive primacy of time in modern ontology follows an elastic regime of motion. As noted in the previous chapter, some degree of elasticity had always been part of the kinetic structure of “tensional” time. In early modern descriptions of abstract or absolute time, the folds of lived time could expand and contract, as could the flow of time itself. However, this elasticity was also simultaneously subordinated to the ontological tensions of a more primary divine force. This chapter discusses time in the work of Kant, Hegel, and Marx.

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