إشكالية الزمان في الفلسفة والعلم / The Problematic of Time in Philosophy and Science

Program

ALIF

Find in your Library

http://www.jstor.org/stable/521594

All Authors

الخولي, يمنى طريف; El-Kholy, Yomna Tarief

Document Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics

Publication Date

1989

doi

https://www.doi.org/10.2307/521594

Abstract

[The article argues that space-time is the frame of being which renders the universe into a cosmos. Time, in contradistinction to space, is not only a central notion in science, but also central in the internal existence of human beings. The study approaches the historiography of time through the double perspectives of "rationality" and "irrationality". Such an approach eliminates the confusion between eternity and infinity. Plato was the earliest thinker to spell out the duplicity of the concept of time in its "irrational" dimension: eternal, internal, subjective, qualitative, noumenal, existential, emotional and psychological on one hand; and on the other, the "rational" dimension of time: cosmological, astronomical, natural, phenomenal, external, objective, quantitative, chronometrical, scientific and physical. Both trends associate time with motion. The "irrational" trend relates time to internal motion of the self, either of the universal self as in Classical philosophy or the subjective self of Modern philosophy. "Irrational" time, unlike "rational" time, is not related to space. The article traces the perspective of "irrational" time in medieval Gnostic, Christian and Islamic Mysticism as well as its articulation in modern thought by such philosophers as Bergson, Tillich and Heidegger. The perspective of "rational" time is traced also from Aristotle through Averroes to modern science (from Newton to Einstein). The article sheds light on the interrelationship and struggle between the two trends leading finally to the relativity theory which defies man's common sense thus reinstating man's bewilderment before the intricacy of the concept.]

First Page

8

Last Page

70

Link to Full Text
Find this item online

Share

COinS