When:  4:30-6:00 pm Wednesday 7th March.

Where:  Classics 21, 1010 E 59th St. 

Who:  Tom Pashby (Chicago, Philosophy)

What: This is a read ahead event.  The paper is available from the following link (password: theoria) http://voices.uchicago.edu/agarp/2018/03/03/thomas-pashby/

On Aristotle's Theory of Time

My aim here is to develop the resources required to specify a definite theory of time (mathematically formulated but informally so) which can be taken to be an expression of Aristotle's view of time in the Physics. Two recent philosophical monographs, Time for Aristotle (Coope, 2005) and Aristotle on Time (Roark, 2011), testify to a contemporary interest in Aristotle's philosophy of time among historians of philosophy. My account of Aristotle's theory of time can be thought of an attempt to complete the projects of these books by presenting the resulting temporal structure in sufficient detail to satisfy a philosopher of time whose interest is metaphysical as well as historical. On my understanding, the raw material of time is the collection of (what I term) concrete changes, occurring in the past, present or future. When Aristotle defines time as "a number of change in respect of before and after'' he is indicating that there is something which can be counted (the nows) and that these are ordered by temporal relations; this is the form or structure of time. In this sense, I attribute a hylomorphic understanding of time to Aristotle, though not the one suggested by Roark.