Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-30T04:10:20.288Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Infinity and the Past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Quentin Smith
Quentin Smith*
Affiliation:
Marion, Indiana
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Several contemporary philosophers, like G. J. Whitrow, argue that it is logically impossible for the past to be infinite, and offer several arguments in support of this thesis. I believe their arguments are unsuccessful and aim to refute six of them in the six sections of the paper. One of my main criticisms concerns their supposition that an infinite series of past events must contain some events separated from the present event by an infinite number of intermediate events, and consequently that from one of these infinitely distant past events the present could never have been reached. I introduce several considerations to show that an infinite series of past events need not contain any events separated from the present event by an infinite number of intermediate events.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 1987 , pp. 63 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I am grateful to William Vallicella and a reader for Philosophy of Science for their helpful criticisms of an earlier version of this paper.

References

REFERENCES

Conway, David A. (1974), “Possibility and Infinite Time: A Logical Paradox in St. Thomas' Third Way”, International Philosophical Quarterly 14.Google Scholar
Craig, William Lane (1979), The Kalam Cosmological Argument. New York: Harper & Row.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huby, Pamela M. (1971), “Kant or Cantor: That the Universe, if Real, Must Be Finite in Both Space and Time”, Philosophy 46: 121–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, I. (1960), Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Berlin.Google Scholar
Russell, Bertrand (1938), The Principles of Mathematics. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Russell, Bertrand (1960), Our Knowledge of the External World. New York: Mentor Books.Google Scholar
Salmon, Wesley C. (ed.) (1970), Zeno's Paradoxes. Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Smith, Quentin (1985a), “Kant and the Beginning of the World”, The New Scholasticism 59: 339–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Quentin (1985b), “The Mind-Independence of Temporal Becoming”, Philosophical Studies 47: 109–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Quentin (1985c), “On the Beginning of Time”, Noûs 19: 579–584.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Quentin (1986), The Felt Meanings of the World. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press.Google Scholar
Strawson, P. F. (1966), The Bounds of Sense. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Whitrow, G. T. (1966), “Time and the Universe”, in The Voices of Time, Fraser, J. T. (ed.). New York: George Braziller.Google Scholar
Whitrow, G. T. (1978), “On the Impossibility of an Infinite Past”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 29: 39–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitrow, G. T. (1980), The Natural Philosophy of Time. 2nd edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar