John Ellis McTaggart (3 September 1866 – 18 January 1925) was a fellow and lecturer in philosophy at
Trinity College, Cambridge UK. He is best known today for his work “The Unreality of Time” (1908).
McTaggart's expressed the view that the way we perceive time is an illusion. He described events as A and B
series in time. The A series consisted of events in future present and past moving along the time line toward
the past a constantly changing position. This series basically is the so called flow of time. In his B series he
talks of fixed relationship of events as earlier and later. Death of a person is always later then their birth. The B
series can also be called the arrow or direction of time. He argued that the changing A series is more essential
to time than a fixed relationship of earlier and later therefore our perception of time is an illusion. His most
interesting observation however may be that historical events have the same time characteristic as fictional
stories. For example fictional events written by various authors, as well as past historical events have in them,
the earlier and the later as well as the past the present and the future, thus suggesting that past really is more
like memory of events and does not exist anymore than the imagination of a writer.
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
sexta-feira, 23 de novembro de 2012
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1 comentário:
Tudo o que está para trás
do tempo que nós vivemos
todos nós o concebemos
consoante nos apraz!
JCN
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