Absolute time : rifts in early modern British metaphysics / Emily Thomas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thomas, Emily, 1985- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Time--Philosophy--History.

Time.

Time--Philosophy--History--17th century.

Time--Philosophy--History--18th century.

Metaphysics--History--17th century.

Metaphysics.

Metaphysics--History--18th century.

Philosophy--Great Britain--History--17th century.

Philosophy.

Philosophy--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Great Britain--Intellectual life--17th century.

Great Britain.

Great Britain--Intellectual life--18th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 236 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2018.

Summary:

What is time? This is one of the most fundamental questions we can ask. Traditionally, the answer was that time is a product of the human mind, or of the motion of celestial bodies. In the mid-seventeenth century, a new kind of answer emerged: time or eternal duration is 'absolute', in the sense that it is independent of human minds and material bodies. Emily Thomas explores the development of absolute time or eternal duration during one of Britain's richest and most creative metaphysical periods, from the 1640s to the 1730s. She introduces an interconnected set of main characters - Henry More, Walter Charleton, Isaac Barrow, Isaac Newton, John Locke, Samuel Clarke, and John Jackson - alongside a large and varied supporting cast, whose metaphysical views are all read in their historical context and given a place in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century development of thought about time.

Contents:

Cover; Absolute Time: Rifts in Early Modern British Metaphysics; Copyright; Contents; Abbreviations; Chronology of Selected Writings; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Existing Literature; Scope; General Theses; Overview; 1: Scene Setting: Time, Philosophy, and Seventeenth-Century Britain; 1.1 Introduction; 1.2 A Cook's Tour of the History of Time: From Plato to Descartes; 1.2.1 Antiquity: Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Augustine; 1.2.2 The long Middle Ages: Averroes to Suárez; 1.2.3 Descartes; 1.3 Time in Early Seventeenth-Century British Philosophy; 1.3.1 British Aristotelianism.

1.3.2 British natural philosophy1.3.3 British Platonism; 1.3.4 British materialism; 1.4 The Wider British Seventeenth-Century Scene; 2: Henry More and the Development of Absolute Time; 2.1 Introduction; 2.2 Sketching More's Life and Works; 2.3 More's Evolving Views on Time and Duration; 2.4 More's Evolving Views on Divine Presence in Space and Time; 2.4.1 More on 'nullibism' and 'holenmerism'; 2.4.2 More's mature asymmetric account of God's presence in space and time; 2.5 The Development of More's Early Views on Time; 2.6 Understanding More's Mature Absolutism.

2.7 The Influence of More's Account of Absolute Duration3: A Continental Interlude: Time in van Helmont, Gassendi, and Charleton; 3.1 Introduction; 3.2 Jan Baptist van Helmont's Platonic Time; 3.3 Pierre Gassendi's Space and Time Absolutism; 3.4 Walter Charleton and the Reality of Time; 4: Space and Time in Isaac Barrow: A Modal Relationist Metaphysic; 4.1 Introduction; 4.2 Sketching Barrow's Life and Works; 4.3 Barrow's Texts on Space and Time; 4.4 Existing Readings of Barrow on Space and Time; 4.4.1 The first reading: Barrow lacks a deeper metaphysics of space and time.

4.4.2 The second reading: identifying space and time with God's attributes4.4.3 The third reading: space and time as unreal containers; 4.5 A New Reading of Barrow on Space and Time; 4.5.1 Barrow as a modal relationist; 4.5.2 Modal relationism in Barrow and Leibniz; 4.5.3 An objection to reading Barrow as a modal relationist; 4.6 Barrow, Newton, and Leibniz; 5: Early British Reactions to Absolutism: 1664 to 1687; 5.1 Introduction; 5.2 New Gassendist and Morean Absolutists; 5.3 Emerging Critics of Absolutism; 6: Newton's De Gravitatione on God and his Emanative Effects; 6.1 Introduction.

6.2 Sketching Newton's Life and Works6.3 The Existing Scholarship on Newtonian Time and Space; 6.4 A New Causation Reading of De Gravitatione; 6.5 God's Presence in Time and Space; 6.6 After De Gravitatione; 7: Locke as a Steadfast Relationist about Time and Space; 7.1 Introduction; 7.2 Sketching Locke's Life and Works; 7.3 Locke's 1671-1685 Texts on Time and Space; 7.3.1 Locke's 1671 Draft B; 7.3.2 Locke's 1676-1678 journals; 7.3.3 Locke's 1685 Draft C; 7.4 A Newtonian Interlude: Locke, Newton, and the 1687 Principia; 7.5 Space and Time in Locke's 1690 Essay.

7.5.1 Reading Locke's 1690 Essay as explicitly neutral.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

This edition previously issued in print: 2018.

ISBN:

0-19-253529-3

0-19-184572-8

0-19-253528-5