This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Temporal finitism article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
This article was nominated for deletion on 22 December 2007. The result of the discussion was keep through nomination withdrawn. |
A fact from Temporal finitism appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the
Did you know column on 28 December 2007, and was viewed approximately 4,015 times (
disclaimer) (
check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
|
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I don't see how the scientific acceptance of the big bang model would somehow imply acceptance of temporal finitism. The scientific formulation of the big bang theory does not imply that. In the light of the acceptance of material causes for the big bang (as for instance inflationary cosmology) at least the point of view that the big bang would mean an absolute begin of time, has been dropped.
As far as I know the question of eternity of time or a begin of time is an open question in cosmology. Even Guth (one of the authors of the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorema that states that any classical spacetime that is on average expanding, can not be past external) states that this issue is an open question in cosmology. To state that this means ANY spacetime can not be past eternal, and hence time must have had a begin, is known to not be true, as the theorema can be circumvented. Yet, it has not been demonstrated yet that one can create a realistic consistent cosmological model that is past eternal, apart from some (unrealistic) toy models (models with two axis of time, one going up, other down). R.heusdens ( talk) 21:13, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Want to help write or improve articles about Time? Join
WikiProject Time or visit the
Time Portal for a list of articles that need improving.
—
Yamara
✉
21:31, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
All the stuff under "modern" looks pretty broken to me William M. Connolley ( talk) 23:13, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't have the time to find references and things, but i'm fairly sure that this is presenting some fringe ideas as mainstream. William Lane Craig, in particular, does not find general acceptance of his ideas amongst the secular philosophical community, and yet his ideas are presented as if they were accepted.
From a mathematical point of view, there are a number of points that should be made to tighten up the modern part: 0 Mathematics has more-or-less stopped debating whether "infinity" exists because the question is somewhat meaningless. in some situations, sets are defined for which an attempt to count them would never end. They are described as infinite, but the statement that "infinity does not exist therefore that set doesn't exist" is meaningless.
1 The entire argument appears to be against "actual infinity" as the duration of the universe, an idea which is clearly nonsensical. The text seems to imply that that means that the universe therefore has to have a beginning, which it doesn't. Therefore, it's not clear what relevance the statement that actual infinity cannot be reached by adding 1 successively to the conclusion they draw that therefore the universe had to have a beginning.
2 It is easy to imagine a logically consistent universe that has no beginning: for instance, it might be homomorphic with the set of natural numbers, and so any statement that appears to logically disprove the idea of a universe with no beginning must include a discussion of counter opinions.
3 The article neglects to point out that physicists are in agreement that the universe logically could have turned out to be infinite, but that the position has turned out to be difficult to defend against the evidence for the big bang (and thermodynamic questions)
4 It might be worth pointing out that current cosmological theories suggest that the universe will be infinite in time in the direction of the future.
5 All of the "absurdity" arguments such as the man counting from infinity to zero, should have their criticisms voiced: It is easy mathematically to conceive of a man, who at time t is currently counting down and is at the number of days until 2015-04-30. If you ask him why didn't he finish yesterday, he will simply reply "because I was at the number 1". Therefore, it is not clear in what way this is absurd, and in what way that absurdity has any relevance to whether time can be infinite in the past. You may as well ask what would happen if a man counted forwards from 1, starting today (since WLC seems to accept that the universe might be infinite in the future too?), and ask him why he started today.
6 The vast majority of the references in this section are from a small number of philosophers with a strong religious bias.
86.129.36.2 ( talk) 18:23, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
In the lede is the phrase "[...] who were unable to reconcile the Aristotelian conception of the eternal with the Abrahamic view of Creation."
Would it be more clear to the reader if that phrase was altered to "[...] who were unable to reconcile the Aristotelian conception of the eternal with the Abrahamic view of Creation, which held that time as finite." or some variation (exact phrasing isn't important as long as it conveys more clearly what the opposing views, that are being compared, were)? The only problem I see with the choice of words, that I above suggested being added, is that "finite" may not be the best choice since the Abrahamic concept of Creation only speaks about a beginning, and not about an end (which leaves the possibilities of both single-ended finite time, as well as double-ended finite time). Hopefully my explanations here were not too confusing (I don't think I expressed my thoughts too well here). —
al-Shimoni (
talk)
17:03, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
I found one paper that seems citeable and which goes through WLC's arguments in detail. There are many others, but they often focus on the whole of the kalam cosmological argument as made by WLC, and some of them are vaguely less citeable. In many cases, their validity rests on the fact that their criticisms are obviously logically sound (whereas a lot of WLC's are less logically sound), rather than because their author is well known and influential. This seems to be at least partly because WLC's work is not taken seriously in the philosophical community due to an obvious religious bias (and a willingness to overlook logical soundness because of it) and so serious criticism is less easy to come by. I've added the paper and a summary of it. I hope that my summary of that work is adequate. I will email the author of that paper and check that they consider my summary to be accurate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by H123 wiki ( talk • contribs) 23:46, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
Let me explain why I think that this page has more importance, both in proposition and opposition than its current length suggests: This is an example of the cross-over between philosophy and physics, and is important in the philosophy and history of science. For instance, the big bang theory and its acceptance was obviously affected by Temporal finitism and infinitism. It is very closely related to spatial finitism, which had a similar effect on physicists, some of whom had initially assumed, for reasons similar to the rough arguments put forward by Kant &c, that an infinite universe was unlikely or impossible. These almost-logical arguments suggesting an absurdity, rather than mandating a contradiction have historically had more weight than they are merited, and the realisation of the scientific community that they cannot rule out any mathematically coherent theory at all --- even it if suggests very counter intuitive results, such as multiple universes, or time dilation, led to spectacular advances in the 20th century.
The page could eventually encompass some of this, in my view, or at least link to a page that discusses the influence of philosphy, both good and bad, on the history of science. I think that, like almost every page in the sciences, when an argument has a counter argument, both are on the wikipedia page. I would agree that more work is needed to find other references and expand both the proposing side and its criticism, but I don't think that it is constructive to simply remove the criticism section in this page without even discussing it. H123 wiki ( talk) 08:49, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
TMD, this article is not too short to have a criticism section, and H123 is not required to get lost simply because he seems to be a single-purpose account. The criticism section might have to be shorter than it was, but there's nothing wrong with having that section if its contents are properly sourced. Temporal finitism is a concept, not a person or organization who we need to protect from undue negative content. In an article about a concept it's useful to describe that concept in the main sections of the article to describe what it is, and put criticism in a separate section. — Jeraphine Gryphon ( talk) 12:28, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
Who is this person and why does his opinion matter? The source goes to academia.edu which is a site where any academic can upload their writings. I think the writings in this article that rely on that source alone need to be seriously shortened. — Jeraphine Gryphon ( talk) 15:15, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
It does seem as though that is not a peer-reviewed article, and references to it might be shortened. Personally, I find that a shame, since his views seem very correct, in a field where an argument can be judged on its own merit, but I agree that it should be shortened. Another reference that I might summarise in its place is this: S Puryear - Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2014;FINITISM AND THE BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE; http://www4.ncsu.edu/~smpuryea/papers/FinitismBeginningUniverse.pdf.
The arguments put forward there are similar in that they point out that WLC's argument goes like this: More precisely, the argument can be put this way: 1. If the universe did not have a beginning, then the past would consist in an infinite temporal sequence of events. 2. An infinite temporal sequence of past events would be actually and not merely potentially infinite. 3. It is impossible for a sequence formed by successive addition to be actually infinite. 4. The temporal sequence of past events was formed by successive addition. 5. Therefore, the universe had a beginning.
and points 2,3 and 4 are not solid. The reference is better in that it talks a lot more about other authors than Swingrover does.
Let me see if I can re-jig the criticism part with this, and a much shorter Swingrover part. H123 wiki ( talk) 21:15, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
I am afraid that the article mainspace might be too ambitious in its current state. Instead of trying to succinctly summarize the many twists and turns in the scholarly literature concerning arguments for a finite past, I think it would be more helpful for readers to simply summarize the main lines of argument for a finite past and the principal objections that have been raised against them; that way readers can learn about this subject without getting bogged down in some of the scholarly literature's more obscure rabbit trails.
Also, I would like to rename the section titles to the more apt "Medieval background," "Modern revival," and "Critical reception." TheNewSaadia ( talk) 17:24, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
I cut:
There's quite a lot wrong with it. Firstly, also illustrates the absurdity of an infinite past makes it appear as though this makes an infinite past absurd. That would imply that the argument can be settled, by pure reason. However, we all know it can't be. Second, this is merely yet another paradox-of-infinity, no more interesting or unusual than "are there more integers or square integers?" I don't have access to BR. I suspect that he merely raises it in the std-paradox-of-infinity line William M. Connolley ( talk) 18:11, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
I haven't cut, but probably ought to, Craig asks us to suppose that we met a man who claims to have been counting down from infinity and is now just finishing because it is stupid. Its yet another in the very many "oh dear isn't infinity odd" quasi-paradoxes. The "solution" is that it isn't possible to start counting down from infinity, any more than its possible to write down the digits of pi backwards William M. Connolley ( talk) 18:19, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
OK, sooo... the crit rec section: 3. It is impossible for a sequence formed by successive addition to be actually infinite... Puryear points out that... the most contentious is point 3... "Consider the fact that things move from one point in space to another. In so doing, the moving object passes through an actual infinity of intervening points. Hence, motion involves traversing an actual infinite. This (like so much of the article, and quite possibly so much of the philosophy) confuses maths and physical reality; and this particular bit is distinctly muddled between integer and real maths. For example, the moving object passes through an actual infinity of intervening points is only true if you believe the real physical world is non-granular; yet it fails to point that out. More importantly, it fails to understand what the original point 3 is saying, which is that finite addition of finite numbers doesn't lead to infinity; which is true, but irrelevant; because all that is being done is adding {0} to {...-3, -2, -1}. The {0} doesn't "complete" anything, nor does it transform a finite thing into an infinite thing William M. Connolley ( talk) 15:51, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
References
{{
cite book}}
: |first=
has generic name (
help)
The current first reference footnoted for the Tristram Shandy paradox features an infinite future (as opposed to infinite past) situation. Pages 358-9 of The Principle of Mathematics by Russell (available on archive.org), does include a discussion of Tristram Shandy history writing, but the situation described is where the "series of days and years has no last term" etc. In the infinite past situation (which I didn't see discussed in the reference), if there is a last day, then the historian doesn't have another year after that to write the history for that day. I recommend removing this reference, or editing the article to clarify how this reference is useful. I didn't look at the second reference footnoted (Craig and Sinclair 2009, p 121) which might be relevant, and I also note that currently the Tristram Shandy topic is discussed further down the page as well.
Flamingovelocity (
talk)
08:36, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
As anyone familiar with Jagged85 might expect, the refs to Al-and-so-on were inserted by him [1]. I'm going to take them out; not because I know for certain that they are wrong, but because they're unreliable from such a source. Feel free to re-introduce, providing you have personally checked that they are valid William M. Connolley ( talk) 21:41, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
I see this almost entirely overlaps with Eternity of the world, which was written by User:Editor with a background in philosophy, who he? Ideally they would be merged. I need to check if 'temporal finitism' is a recognized name for the subject. Peter Damian ( talk) 16:05, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Google eternity of the world has fewer, and generally less reliable sources than Google temporal finitism. Peter Damian ( talk) 16:09, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
This article shouldn't exist in a kind of philosophical ghetto, so it needs some kind of link back to modern physics; my Modern Cosmogony accepts finitism, in the form of the big bang, but on physical rather than philosophical grounds is an attempt to do that (without getting into some complex argument about whether the std big bang does indeed imply finite time). What this article lacks is some kind of "history of acceptance of the concept", or "history of how the concept was thought about". By which I mean: once upon a time it was purely in the realm of philosophy, and that's what this article is about at present. Nowadays, its not pure philosophy; its also part of physics. I don't know - and reading the article doesn't enlighten me, so that's a flaw - whether "modern philosophy" regards the issue as resolved (by physics, in favour of finite) or resolved (by philosophy, in either direction) or unresolved, or just not very interesting any more William M. Connolley ( talk) 18:02, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
The arguments for finitism in the past are equivalent to arguments about the future, simply reflected in the time axis. I'm curious if anyone familiar with the history of this knows if people did indeed apply the same arguments to demonstrate that time must come to an end? William M. Connolley ( talk) 20:40, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
I propose to copy over the text of the Medieval Section into Eternity of the world, as this is what the question was known as in the Middle Ages (and Philoponus actually calls his treatise On the Eternity of the World against Aristotle. Once I have edited this into the article, we can discuss moving the remainder. Note that this article is about a thesis or doctrine, namely temporal finitism, whereas the other article is about a question, which is neutral about whether the world has existed eternally or not. Peter Damian ( talk) 16:54, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
See also Cosmic age problem and Age of the universe. Peter Damian ( talk) 17:18, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
There is an interesting history to this, which I was never aware of, which is scattered and Wikipedia and elsewhere, but never captured in a single article, which I briefly summarise in the following timeline:
From the lead:
From Cosmonogy:
So what is it? Didn't Penrose propose a model where the end of one universe became the big bang of the next one? Prevalence ( talk) 08:13, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Dear @ William M. Connolley,
I would appreciate it if you would be willing to interact with the concerns I've raised on this talk page. As you can see by the above comments, I have concerns with your addition to the lead section as well as your idea of merging this article with the Eternity of the world article. If you're not willing to discuss the matter with other editors here, I don't see why you're recent edits to this article should remain.
My desire for this article is that it accurately reflects the current state of the scholarly discussion around the question of temporal finitism in the philosophical literature (or "ghetto," as you might call it). From my point of view, modern physics/astronomy/cosmology are almost entirely irrelevant to this question for reasons already mentioned above. Also, while there is a relationship between the doctrine of temporal finitism and that of the world's eternity in the sense that if the former is true then it follows that the latter must be false, these are still distinct issues that require separate articles since the converse is not necessarily true (i.e. if the latter doctrine is false then the former doctrine might still be false). These doctrines are not logically equivalent, hence they are not different ways of saying the same thing! Finally, the question of the world's eternity is of obviously greater theological concern than that of temporal finitism, as the former doctrine shows up in key religious texts like Genesis 1:1 while the latter doesn't. I would imagine that an article devoted to the ancient question of the world's eternity would make reference to such texts, in contrast with an article devoted to a more exclusively philosophical question like temporal finitism.
Regards,
TheNewSaadia ( talk) 17:05, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
The article mentions one of the arguments of Kant, his argument that time can not be eternal, but 'forgets' to state that Kant also made the opposite claim, that time can not be thought of as having a begin, and thereby showed the inherent contradiction in both propositions.
In Engels' polemic Anti-Dühring, Engels discusses a similar argument made by Dühring, arguing against the etenity of time, and showed that the argument was literally stolen from Kant, and that the opposite page contained the argument against the begin of time. Again there a one-sided approach!
Engels conclusion is however that just BECAUSE infinity is a contradiction (the contradiction of an "actual infinity" of moments in time), time is a process evolving endlessly in time. (NB. The contradiction of an "actual infinity" only arises if one treats all moments of time as existing "simultaneously". Which of course is NOT the case, since the past moments do no longer exist, the future moments do not yet exist.)
It should be added to the article (showing BOTH sides of the issue) and providing a link to the argument of Engels in: engels/anti-duhring ch. philosophy of nature. space and time R.heusdens ( talk) 22:00, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Temporal finitism article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
This article was nominated for deletion on 22 December 2007. The result of the discussion was keep through nomination withdrawn. |
A fact from Temporal finitism appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the
Did you know column on 28 December 2007, and was viewed approximately 4,015 times (
disclaimer) (
check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
|
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I don't see how the scientific acceptance of the big bang model would somehow imply acceptance of temporal finitism. The scientific formulation of the big bang theory does not imply that. In the light of the acceptance of material causes for the big bang (as for instance inflationary cosmology) at least the point of view that the big bang would mean an absolute begin of time, has been dropped.
As far as I know the question of eternity of time or a begin of time is an open question in cosmology. Even Guth (one of the authors of the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorema that states that any classical spacetime that is on average expanding, can not be past external) states that this issue is an open question in cosmology. To state that this means ANY spacetime can not be past eternal, and hence time must have had a begin, is known to not be true, as the theorema can be circumvented. Yet, it has not been demonstrated yet that one can create a realistic consistent cosmological model that is past eternal, apart from some (unrealistic) toy models (models with two axis of time, one going up, other down). R.heusdens ( talk) 21:13, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Want to help write or improve articles about Time? Join
WikiProject Time or visit the
Time Portal for a list of articles that need improving.
—
Yamara
✉
21:31, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
All the stuff under "modern" looks pretty broken to me William M. Connolley ( talk) 23:13, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't have the time to find references and things, but i'm fairly sure that this is presenting some fringe ideas as mainstream. William Lane Craig, in particular, does not find general acceptance of his ideas amongst the secular philosophical community, and yet his ideas are presented as if they were accepted.
From a mathematical point of view, there are a number of points that should be made to tighten up the modern part: 0 Mathematics has more-or-less stopped debating whether "infinity" exists because the question is somewhat meaningless. in some situations, sets are defined for which an attempt to count them would never end. They are described as infinite, but the statement that "infinity does not exist therefore that set doesn't exist" is meaningless.
1 The entire argument appears to be against "actual infinity" as the duration of the universe, an idea which is clearly nonsensical. The text seems to imply that that means that the universe therefore has to have a beginning, which it doesn't. Therefore, it's not clear what relevance the statement that actual infinity cannot be reached by adding 1 successively to the conclusion they draw that therefore the universe had to have a beginning.
2 It is easy to imagine a logically consistent universe that has no beginning: for instance, it might be homomorphic with the set of natural numbers, and so any statement that appears to logically disprove the idea of a universe with no beginning must include a discussion of counter opinions.
3 The article neglects to point out that physicists are in agreement that the universe logically could have turned out to be infinite, but that the position has turned out to be difficult to defend against the evidence for the big bang (and thermodynamic questions)
4 It might be worth pointing out that current cosmological theories suggest that the universe will be infinite in time in the direction of the future.
5 All of the "absurdity" arguments such as the man counting from infinity to zero, should have their criticisms voiced: It is easy mathematically to conceive of a man, who at time t is currently counting down and is at the number of days until 2015-04-30. If you ask him why didn't he finish yesterday, he will simply reply "because I was at the number 1". Therefore, it is not clear in what way this is absurd, and in what way that absurdity has any relevance to whether time can be infinite in the past. You may as well ask what would happen if a man counted forwards from 1, starting today (since WLC seems to accept that the universe might be infinite in the future too?), and ask him why he started today.
6 The vast majority of the references in this section are from a small number of philosophers with a strong religious bias.
86.129.36.2 ( talk) 18:23, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
In the lede is the phrase "[...] who were unable to reconcile the Aristotelian conception of the eternal with the Abrahamic view of Creation."
Would it be more clear to the reader if that phrase was altered to "[...] who were unable to reconcile the Aristotelian conception of the eternal with the Abrahamic view of Creation, which held that time as finite." or some variation (exact phrasing isn't important as long as it conveys more clearly what the opposing views, that are being compared, were)? The only problem I see with the choice of words, that I above suggested being added, is that "finite" may not be the best choice since the Abrahamic concept of Creation only speaks about a beginning, and not about an end (which leaves the possibilities of both single-ended finite time, as well as double-ended finite time). Hopefully my explanations here were not too confusing (I don't think I expressed my thoughts too well here). —
al-Shimoni (
talk)
17:03, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
I found one paper that seems citeable and which goes through WLC's arguments in detail. There are many others, but they often focus on the whole of the kalam cosmological argument as made by WLC, and some of them are vaguely less citeable. In many cases, their validity rests on the fact that their criticisms are obviously logically sound (whereas a lot of WLC's are less logically sound), rather than because their author is well known and influential. This seems to be at least partly because WLC's work is not taken seriously in the philosophical community due to an obvious religious bias (and a willingness to overlook logical soundness because of it) and so serious criticism is less easy to come by. I've added the paper and a summary of it. I hope that my summary of that work is adequate. I will email the author of that paper and check that they consider my summary to be accurate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by H123 wiki ( talk • contribs) 23:46, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
Let me explain why I think that this page has more importance, both in proposition and opposition than its current length suggests: This is an example of the cross-over between philosophy and physics, and is important in the philosophy and history of science. For instance, the big bang theory and its acceptance was obviously affected by Temporal finitism and infinitism. It is very closely related to spatial finitism, which had a similar effect on physicists, some of whom had initially assumed, for reasons similar to the rough arguments put forward by Kant &c, that an infinite universe was unlikely or impossible. These almost-logical arguments suggesting an absurdity, rather than mandating a contradiction have historically had more weight than they are merited, and the realisation of the scientific community that they cannot rule out any mathematically coherent theory at all --- even it if suggests very counter intuitive results, such as multiple universes, or time dilation, led to spectacular advances in the 20th century.
The page could eventually encompass some of this, in my view, or at least link to a page that discusses the influence of philosphy, both good and bad, on the history of science. I think that, like almost every page in the sciences, when an argument has a counter argument, both are on the wikipedia page. I would agree that more work is needed to find other references and expand both the proposing side and its criticism, but I don't think that it is constructive to simply remove the criticism section in this page without even discussing it. H123 wiki ( talk) 08:49, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
TMD, this article is not too short to have a criticism section, and H123 is not required to get lost simply because he seems to be a single-purpose account. The criticism section might have to be shorter than it was, but there's nothing wrong with having that section if its contents are properly sourced. Temporal finitism is a concept, not a person or organization who we need to protect from undue negative content. In an article about a concept it's useful to describe that concept in the main sections of the article to describe what it is, and put criticism in a separate section. — Jeraphine Gryphon ( talk) 12:28, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
Who is this person and why does his opinion matter? The source goes to academia.edu which is a site where any academic can upload their writings. I think the writings in this article that rely on that source alone need to be seriously shortened. — Jeraphine Gryphon ( talk) 15:15, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
It does seem as though that is not a peer-reviewed article, and references to it might be shortened. Personally, I find that a shame, since his views seem very correct, in a field where an argument can be judged on its own merit, but I agree that it should be shortened. Another reference that I might summarise in its place is this: S Puryear - Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2014;FINITISM AND THE BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE; http://www4.ncsu.edu/~smpuryea/papers/FinitismBeginningUniverse.pdf.
The arguments put forward there are similar in that they point out that WLC's argument goes like this: More precisely, the argument can be put this way: 1. If the universe did not have a beginning, then the past would consist in an infinite temporal sequence of events. 2. An infinite temporal sequence of past events would be actually and not merely potentially infinite. 3. It is impossible for a sequence formed by successive addition to be actually infinite. 4. The temporal sequence of past events was formed by successive addition. 5. Therefore, the universe had a beginning.
and points 2,3 and 4 are not solid. The reference is better in that it talks a lot more about other authors than Swingrover does.
Let me see if I can re-jig the criticism part with this, and a much shorter Swingrover part. H123 wiki ( talk) 21:15, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
I am afraid that the article mainspace might be too ambitious in its current state. Instead of trying to succinctly summarize the many twists and turns in the scholarly literature concerning arguments for a finite past, I think it would be more helpful for readers to simply summarize the main lines of argument for a finite past and the principal objections that have been raised against them; that way readers can learn about this subject without getting bogged down in some of the scholarly literature's more obscure rabbit trails.
Also, I would like to rename the section titles to the more apt "Medieval background," "Modern revival," and "Critical reception." TheNewSaadia ( talk) 17:24, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
I cut:
There's quite a lot wrong with it. Firstly, also illustrates the absurdity of an infinite past makes it appear as though this makes an infinite past absurd. That would imply that the argument can be settled, by pure reason. However, we all know it can't be. Second, this is merely yet another paradox-of-infinity, no more interesting or unusual than "are there more integers or square integers?" I don't have access to BR. I suspect that he merely raises it in the std-paradox-of-infinity line William M. Connolley ( talk) 18:11, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
I haven't cut, but probably ought to, Craig asks us to suppose that we met a man who claims to have been counting down from infinity and is now just finishing because it is stupid. Its yet another in the very many "oh dear isn't infinity odd" quasi-paradoxes. The "solution" is that it isn't possible to start counting down from infinity, any more than its possible to write down the digits of pi backwards William M. Connolley ( talk) 18:19, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
OK, sooo... the crit rec section: 3. It is impossible for a sequence formed by successive addition to be actually infinite... Puryear points out that... the most contentious is point 3... "Consider the fact that things move from one point in space to another. In so doing, the moving object passes through an actual infinity of intervening points. Hence, motion involves traversing an actual infinite. This (like so much of the article, and quite possibly so much of the philosophy) confuses maths and physical reality; and this particular bit is distinctly muddled between integer and real maths. For example, the moving object passes through an actual infinity of intervening points is only true if you believe the real physical world is non-granular; yet it fails to point that out. More importantly, it fails to understand what the original point 3 is saying, which is that finite addition of finite numbers doesn't lead to infinity; which is true, but irrelevant; because all that is being done is adding {0} to {...-3, -2, -1}. The {0} doesn't "complete" anything, nor does it transform a finite thing into an infinite thing William M. Connolley ( talk) 15:51, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
References
{{
cite book}}
: |first=
has generic name (
help)
The current first reference footnoted for the Tristram Shandy paradox features an infinite future (as opposed to infinite past) situation. Pages 358-9 of The Principle of Mathematics by Russell (available on archive.org), does include a discussion of Tristram Shandy history writing, but the situation described is where the "series of days and years has no last term" etc. In the infinite past situation (which I didn't see discussed in the reference), if there is a last day, then the historian doesn't have another year after that to write the history for that day. I recommend removing this reference, or editing the article to clarify how this reference is useful. I didn't look at the second reference footnoted (Craig and Sinclair 2009, p 121) which might be relevant, and I also note that currently the Tristram Shandy topic is discussed further down the page as well.
Flamingovelocity (
talk)
08:36, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
As anyone familiar with Jagged85 might expect, the refs to Al-and-so-on were inserted by him [1]. I'm going to take them out; not because I know for certain that they are wrong, but because they're unreliable from such a source. Feel free to re-introduce, providing you have personally checked that they are valid William M. Connolley ( talk) 21:41, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
I see this almost entirely overlaps with Eternity of the world, which was written by User:Editor with a background in philosophy, who he? Ideally they would be merged. I need to check if 'temporal finitism' is a recognized name for the subject. Peter Damian ( talk) 16:05, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Google eternity of the world has fewer, and generally less reliable sources than Google temporal finitism. Peter Damian ( talk) 16:09, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
This article shouldn't exist in a kind of philosophical ghetto, so it needs some kind of link back to modern physics; my Modern Cosmogony accepts finitism, in the form of the big bang, but on physical rather than philosophical grounds is an attempt to do that (without getting into some complex argument about whether the std big bang does indeed imply finite time). What this article lacks is some kind of "history of acceptance of the concept", or "history of how the concept was thought about". By which I mean: once upon a time it was purely in the realm of philosophy, and that's what this article is about at present. Nowadays, its not pure philosophy; its also part of physics. I don't know - and reading the article doesn't enlighten me, so that's a flaw - whether "modern philosophy" regards the issue as resolved (by physics, in favour of finite) or resolved (by philosophy, in either direction) or unresolved, or just not very interesting any more William M. Connolley ( talk) 18:02, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
The arguments for finitism in the past are equivalent to arguments about the future, simply reflected in the time axis. I'm curious if anyone familiar with the history of this knows if people did indeed apply the same arguments to demonstrate that time must come to an end? William M. Connolley ( talk) 20:40, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
I propose to copy over the text of the Medieval Section into Eternity of the world, as this is what the question was known as in the Middle Ages (and Philoponus actually calls his treatise On the Eternity of the World against Aristotle. Once I have edited this into the article, we can discuss moving the remainder. Note that this article is about a thesis or doctrine, namely temporal finitism, whereas the other article is about a question, which is neutral about whether the world has existed eternally or not. Peter Damian ( talk) 16:54, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
See also Cosmic age problem and Age of the universe. Peter Damian ( talk) 17:18, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
There is an interesting history to this, which I was never aware of, which is scattered and Wikipedia and elsewhere, but never captured in a single article, which I briefly summarise in the following timeline:
From the lead:
From Cosmonogy:
So what is it? Didn't Penrose propose a model where the end of one universe became the big bang of the next one? Prevalence ( talk) 08:13, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Dear @ William M. Connolley,
I would appreciate it if you would be willing to interact with the concerns I've raised on this talk page. As you can see by the above comments, I have concerns with your addition to the lead section as well as your idea of merging this article with the Eternity of the world article. If you're not willing to discuss the matter with other editors here, I don't see why you're recent edits to this article should remain.
My desire for this article is that it accurately reflects the current state of the scholarly discussion around the question of temporal finitism in the philosophical literature (or "ghetto," as you might call it). From my point of view, modern physics/astronomy/cosmology are almost entirely irrelevant to this question for reasons already mentioned above. Also, while there is a relationship between the doctrine of temporal finitism and that of the world's eternity in the sense that if the former is true then it follows that the latter must be false, these are still distinct issues that require separate articles since the converse is not necessarily true (i.e. if the latter doctrine is false then the former doctrine might still be false). These doctrines are not logically equivalent, hence they are not different ways of saying the same thing! Finally, the question of the world's eternity is of obviously greater theological concern than that of temporal finitism, as the former doctrine shows up in key religious texts like Genesis 1:1 while the latter doesn't. I would imagine that an article devoted to the ancient question of the world's eternity would make reference to such texts, in contrast with an article devoted to a more exclusively philosophical question like temporal finitism.
Regards,
TheNewSaadia ( talk) 17:05, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
The article mentions one of the arguments of Kant, his argument that time can not be eternal, but 'forgets' to state that Kant also made the opposite claim, that time can not be thought of as having a begin, and thereby showed the inherent contradiction in both propositions.
In Engels' polemic Anti-Dühring, Engels discusses a similar argument made by Dühring, arguing against the etenity of time, and showed that the argument was literally stolen from Kant, and that the opposite page contained the argument against the begin of time. Again there a one-sided approach!
Engels conclusion is however that just BECAUSE infinity is a contradiction (the contradiction of an "actual infinity" of moments in time), time is a process evolving endlessly in time. (NB. The contradiction of an "actual infinity" only arises if one treats all moments of time as existing "simultaneously". Which of course is NOT the case, since the past moments do no longer exist, the future moments do not yet exist.)
It should be added to the article (showing BOTH sides of the issue) and providing a link to the argument of Engels in: engels/anti-duhring ch. philosophy of nature. space and time R.heusdens ( talk) 22:00, 13 January 2018 (UTC)