All the Time in the World:

Aristotle'sAccount of the

Extent of Space and Time.

Jonah Bossewitch

PHI 301

Professor Sarah Broadie

December 7, 1995

Gazing up into the midnight sky, any creature with a shred of curiousity in its soul is assulted by mysteries, puzzles and riddles as numerous as the stars. It is intruiging that our nature's are drawn towards insoluble problems whose solutions have no practical significance whatsoever. This fact has not changed since Aristotle's time despite the radical alteration of the conceptual lenses through which we currently veiw the world. Although most people are not usually comfortable discussing abstract metaphysical propositions, almost everyody has thought about them. Many of Aristaotle's concerns and beleifs about the universe have been answered or "proven" one way or another, but they have always left in their place new questions to plague the next generation. Other issues have remained with us unchanged and unresolved to this day and these questions seem as eternal as the phenomenon they address.

How did the universe begin? Was it created, or has it always existed? Will it last forever, or will it come to an end? What is space? Is it bounded, or is it infinite in size? If it's bounded, what's outside of it? What about time? What is its realationship to space? Will time last forever? Do all of these questions make sence? Throughout the history of mankind any religion worth its gods had a mythology that attemped to answer at least some of these questions. Philosophers too have naturally been compeled to endlessly ponder these questions "which lay claim to insight into what is beyond the field of all possible experiences."1 Aristotle was not the first Greek to propose solutions in this domain as is seeen by his frequent refutation of competing theories.