by Nikki Albert

Created on: November 18, 2010

Medieval philosophers often thought of time as relative to motion. Even today we may wonder why we need to postulate time as a dimension, time as anything more than a measure of motion and change. Time for William Ockham is a measure of the duration of motion. It is worthwhile to note that Ockham suggests motion is not separate from objects. This is an attractive notion since we would no longer be concerned with time’s ontological status, as it is not separate from permanent things. Ockham argues that time and an instant are relative to the motion of objects. For him there is no need for absolute time separate from motion.

The first step in his critique concerns the instant. He argues against the opinion that an instant is a “certain flowing thing which is steadily destroyed, or lost, so that it does not remain.” (p. 91 Shapiro). Such that the present moment is destroyed by the new moment. He argues that in a finite section of time there would be an infinite amount of instants, due to time’s infinite divisibility. He further takes issue with the notion of an instant being destroyed. He points out that “since there has been no contrary introduced, and since the original cause is still active - nor can the subject of these absolute moments be said to have been destroyed - how can one explain the exorable passage out of being of absolute moment after moment?” (p.92 Shapiro). In other words, one instant and another instant are not opposites or contrary to each other in kind, such that one can destroy the other. Finally there is the problem that an instant according to Ockham cannot be adequately described as a substance or a quality. Therefore he does not believe in an absolute moment of time or that time is composed of instants.

He does not believe time can be understood as an entity streaming from the past to the future separate from permanent objects. Time is a divisible accident, for it is within a temporal body. Further being a divisible accident “time must have simultaneously existent parts to account for its extended and divisible character - but Aristotle expressly denied the simultaneity of the parts of time.” (p.94 Shapiro). Conversely, other theorists suggest “that time’s extended character is owing to successive addition of temporal to temporal part, rather than to their simultaneous existence.” (p.94, Shapiro). The idea of temporal parts according to Ockham is still at odds with Aristotle,

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