Eternity

According to the minimum total potential energy principle, eternity is the gradient of total potential energy, down which matter flows like a river. This flow of matter from the past (higher total potential energy) to the future (lower total potential energy) is known as time.^[1]

Philosophy

Eternity is not endless time (i.e., endless movement, endless succession):

For Plato, eternity and sempiternity are incompatible because eternity excludes succession, before and after, while these are plainly entailed by sempiternity.^[2]

In Aristotle's metaphysics, eternity is the unmoved mover (God), understood as the gradient of total synergy ("produces motion by being loved").^[3] There are various kinds of synergy (love), the basic of which is the gravitational synergy.^[4] The teleological nature of the unmoved mover implies that it attracts matter towards the futuremost state of maximal total synergy—the eschaton.^[5] The gravitational centre of the universe is the planet Earth.^[6]

Boethius and Aquinas used Aristotle's "center-circle" analogy^[7] to illustrate God's eternity and its relation to time:

In this vision, all the events—past, present, and future—in a continuous temporal series (i.e., the circumference of the circle) are present to God in eternity (i.e., the center of the circle). Elsewhere, Aquinas says that, "God ... is wholly outside the order of time, stationed as it were at the summit of eternity, which is wholly simultaneous, and to Him the whole course of time is subjected in one simple intuition." Therefore, we can conclude that Thomas Aquinas's concept of God's eternity is an absolute timeless eternity. In timeless (i.e., "wholly outside the order of time") eternity, God knows all temporal events—past, present, and future—at once.^[8]

Aquinas accepted Boethius's definition of eternity: "eternity is the instantaneously whole and perfect possession of unending life (aeternitas est interminablis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio)."

References

↑ Neville, Robert C. Eternity and Time's Flow 1993, p. 95. "As the ancient hills are icons of eternity, the river is the icon of time."
↑ Glicksman Grene, Marjorie. Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays Anchor Books, 1973, p. 229
↑ Yu, Jiyuan. The Structure of Being in Aristotle’s Metaphysics Springer, 2003, p. 188
↑ Armour, Leslie; Trott, Elizabeth. The Faces of Reason: An Essay on Philosophy and Culture in English Canada; 1850–1959 Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981, p. 82. "Augustine's world-picture came in its turn to be a rival of this kind of Platonism because it replaced the sense of order and connection as logical necessity with the notion of order and connection as the manifestations of various kinds of love. Things move and are moved, for Augustine, by their natural affinities. The love which is the nature of material things brings them together. 'My weight is my love,' he once said. Gravitation, if you like, is a form of love—a form appropriate to physical things. But love, for Augustine, takes on a series of ascending forms."
↑ Trott, Adriel M. Aristotle on the Nature of Community CUP, 2013, pp. 52–53. "In Physics II.1, Aristotle explains that the shape, morphē of a thing is the nature of a thing. Nature is the end or that for the sake of which a thing is. So the eschaton, which Harclie and Gave translate as 'last stage,' but which carries the sense of the furthest or the uttermost, not necessarily at the end of a series of movement but in the fulfillment reached by activity, is that for the sake of which a thing exists."
↑ Kochiras, Hylarie. Force, Matter, and Metaphysics in Newton's Natural Philosophy ProQuest, 2008, p. 11. "Aristotle's cosmos is geocentric, finite and spherical, comprising three distinct realms. The inner, sublunary realm is distinct from the outer superlunary realm that contains the celestial spheres. The moon itself is connected to the innermost celestial sphere, and so moves with the circular motion characteristic to those spheres. Each realm has its distinctive kinds of elements and its distinctive kind of natural motion. In the inner, sublunary or terrestrial realm, the four material elements are found, as noted earlier. Each element has its natural place, and occupying the regions closest to the earth's center were those elements with gravitas. Thus gravitas or heaviness is a monadic property, as opposed to a relation, as Newton would later claim. Gravitas is possessed by both earth and water, but as the heaviest element, earth's natural place is at the center of the universe. Therefore the cosmos is geocentric, with the center of the body Earth coinciding with the center of the universe."
↑ Aristotle. Physics book 8, ch. 9, pp. 122–23. "Now rotatory motion can be eternal: but no other motion, whether locomotion or motion of any other kind, can be so, since in all of them rest must occur and with the occurrence of rest the motion has perished. Moreover the result at which we have arrived, that rotatory motion is single and continuous, and rectilinear motion is not, is a reasonable one. In rectilinear motion we have a definite starting-point, finishing-point, middle-point, which all have their place in it in such a way that there is a point from which that which is in motion can be said to start and a point at which it can be said to finish its course (for when anything is at the limits of its course, whether at the starting-point or at the finishing-point, it must be in a state of rest). On the other hand in circular motion there are no such definite points: for why should any one point on the line be a limit rather than any other? Any one point as much as any other is alike starting-point, middle-point, and finishing-point, so that we can say of certain things both that they are always and that they never are at a starting-point and at a finishing-point (so that a revolving sphere, while it is in motion, is also in a sense at rest, for it continues to occupy the same place). The reason of this is that in this case all these characteristics belong to the centre: that is to say, the centre is alike starting-point, middle-point, and finishing-point of the space traversed; consequently since this point is not a point on the circular line, there is no point at which that which is in process of locomotion can be in a state of rest as having traversed its course, because in its locomotion it is proceeding always about a central point and not to an extreme point: therefore it remains still, and the whole is in a sense always at rest as well as continuously in motion."
↑ Kim, Eunsoo. Time, Eternity, and the Trinity: A Trinitarian Analogical Understanding of Time and Eternity Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2010, pp. 179–81

External links

Eternity in Christian Thought Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Template:Time in religion and mythology Template:Time in philosophy

[1] Neville, Robert C. Eternity and Time's Flow 1993, p. 95. "As the ancient hills are icons of eternity, the river is the icon of time."

[2] Glicksman Grene, Marjorie. Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays Anchor Books, 1973, p. 229

[3] Yu, Jiyuan. The Structure of Being in Aristotle’s Metaphysics Springer, 2003, p. 188

[4] Armour, Leslie; Trott, Elizabeth. The Faces of Reason: An Essay on Philosophy and Culture in English Canada; 1850–1959 Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981, p. 82. "Augustine's world-picture came in its turn to be a rival of this kind of Platonism because it replaced the sense of order and connection as logical necessity with the notion of order and connection as the manifestations of various kinds of love. Things move and are moved, for Augustine, by their natural affinities. The love which is the nature of material things brings them together. 'My weight is my love,' he once said. Gravitation, if you like, is a form of love—a form appropriate to physical things. But love, for Augustine, takes on a series of ascending forms."

[5] Trott, Adriel M. Aristotle on the Nature of Community CUP, 2013, pp. 52–53. "In Physics II.1, Aristotle explains that the shape, morphē of a thing is the nature of a thing. Nature is the end or that for the sake of which a thing is. So the eschaton, which Harclie and Gave translate as 'last stage,' but which carries the sense of the furthest or the uttermost, not necessarily at the end of a series of movement but in the fulfillment reached by activity, is that for the sake of which a thing exists."

[6] Kochiras, Hylarie. Force, Matter, and Metaphysics in Newton's Natural Philosophy ProQuest, 2008, p. 11. "Aristotle's cosmos is geocentric, finite and spherical, comprising three distinct realms. The inner, sublunary realm is distinct from the outer superlunary realm that contains the celestial spheres. The moon itself is connected to the innermost celestial sphere, and so moves with the circular motion characteristic to those spheres. Each realm has its distinctive kinds of elements and its distinctive kind of natural motion. In the inner, sublunary or terrestrial realm, the four material elements are found, as noted earlier. Each element has its natural place, and occupying the regions closest to the earth's center were those elements with gravitas. Thus gravitas or heaviness is a monadic property, as opposed to a relation, as Newton would later claim. Gravitas is possessed by both earth and water, but as the heaviest element, earth's natural place is at the center of the universe. Therefore the cosmos is geocentric, with the center of the body Earth coinciding with the center of the universe."

[7] Aristotle. Physics book 8, ch. 9, pp. 122–23. "Now rotatory motion can be eternal: but no other motion, whether locomotion or motion of any other kind, can be so, since in all of them rest must occur and with the occurrence of rest the motion has perished. Moreover the result at which we have arrived, that rotatory motion is single and continuous, and rectilinear motion is not, is a reasonable one. In rectilinear motion we have a definite starting-point, finishing-point, middle-point, which all have their place in it in such a way that there is a point from which that which is in motion can be said to start and a point at which it can be said to finish its course (for when anything is at the limits of its course, whether at the starting-point or at the finishing-point, it must be in a state of rest). On the other hand in circular motion there are no such definite points: for why should any one point on the line be a limit rather than any other? Any one point as much as any other is alike starting-point, middle-point, and finishing-point, so that we can say of certain things both that they are always and that they never are at a starting-point and at a finishing-point (so that a revolving sphere, while it is in motion, is also in a sense at rest, for it continues to occupy the same place). The reason of this is that in this case all these characteristics belong to the centre: that is to say, the centre is alike starting-point, middle-point, and finishing-point of the space traversed; consequently since this point is not a point on the circular line, there is no point at which that which is in process of locomotion can be in a state of rest as having traversed its course, because in its locomotion it is proceeding always about a central point and not to an extreme point: therefore it remains still, and the whole is in a sense always at rest as well as continuously in motion."

[8] Kim, Eunsoo. Time, Eternity, and the Trinity: A Trinitarian Analogical Understanding of Time and Eternity Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2010, pp. 179–81

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Philosophy

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References

External links