Leiden University Student Repository

Verver, Matthijs (2024)

A Timeless World: The redundancy of time in a comprehensive cosmology.

Bachelor thesis | Filosofie (BA)

This thesis proposes a new and alternative conception of Presentism by arguing that time itself does not exist, leaving only the purely spatial dimension which is characterized by its 'ever presence'. By first conceptualizing the 'ordinary' view of time in terms of Immanuel Kant's Transcendental philosophy, I will subsequently argue through the work of Henri Bergson that all temporal thought is reducible to spatial concepts and that Kant's category of time is a superfluous elaboration of the category of space. Primarily, Bergson showed that time as an accumulative extension known as duration, is in fact misapplied spatial arithmetic. Moments are evanescent and do therefor not allow for addition, which makes the measurement of time a purely abstract affair that employs the geometry that only exists in space. As a consequence, our cosmology must do away with time as an ontological category. This 'timeless world' will then be conceptualized after which its (meta)physical implications...Show moreThis thesis proposes a new and alternative conception of Presentism by arguing that time itself does not exist, leaving only the purely spatial dimension which is characterized by its 'ever presence'. By first conceptualizing the 'ordinary' view of time in terms of Immanuel Kant's Transcendental philosophy, I will subsequently argue through the work of Henri Bergson that all temporal thought is reducible to spatial concepts and that Kant's category of time is a superfluous elaboration of the category of space. Primarily, Bergson showed that time as an accumulative extension known as duration, is in fact misapplied spatial arithmetic. Moments are evanescent and do therefor not allow for addition, which makes the measurement of time a purely abstract affair that employs the geometry that only exists in space. As a consequence, our cosmology must do away with time as an ontological category. This 'timeless world' will then be conceptualized after which its (meta)physical implications will be investigated.Show less

Time

Bergson

Presentism

Eternalism

Kant

duration

magnitude

space

extensionality

present

Author

Verver, Matthijs

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Theoretic Philosophy

Supervisors

Gijsbers, V.A.

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en