Arguments for eternity
Encyclopedia
Arguments for eternity composed a particularly important area of philosophical debate among Greek
, Jewish, Islam
ic, and Christian
philosophers during the ancient
and medieval
periods. The foremost philosopher arguing for eternity was Aristotle
. Those ascribing to Creationism
ex nihilo (that is, creation from nothing
) challenged these argument
s for eternity
, and held instead that God
created the universe
, so that the universe had a definite beginning in time.
, made by Aristotle in Physics
, proceeds as follows:
Everything that comes into existence
does so from a substratum
. If the underlying matter of the universe came into existence, it would come into existence from a substratum. But the nature of matter is precisely to be the substratum from which other things arise. Consequently, the underlying matter of the universe could have come into evidence only from an already existing matter exactly like itself; to assume that the underlying matter of the universe came into existence would require assuming that an underlying matter already existed. The assumption is thus self-contradictory, and matter must be eternal.
The key premise of the argument is, clearly, that everything that comes into existence does so from a substratum. Aristotle defends this argument inductively
as follows:
Maimonides
challenged the inductive assertion on that "everything in existence comes from a substratum," on that basis that his reliance on induction and analogy is a fundamentally flawed means of explaining unobserved phenomenon. According to Maimonides, to argue that "because I have never observed something coming into existence without coming from a substratum it cannot occur" is equivalent to arguing that "because I cannot empirically
observe eternity it does not exist."
argued as follows:
Prior to a thing's coming into actual existence, its existence must have been 'possible
.' Were its existence necessary
, the thing would already have existed, and were its existence impossible, the thing would never exist. The possibility of the thing must therefore in some sense have its own existence. Possibility cannot exist in itself, but must reside within a subject. If an already existent matter must precede everything coming into existence, clearly nothing, including matter, can come into existence ex nihilo, that is, from absolute nothingness. An absolute beginning of the existence of matter is therefore impossible.
The argument is challenged on the basis that the "possibility" of creation could be ascribed to the Creator, and on the basis that the concept of "possibility" is merely an intellectual judgment with no actual existence in any real sense.
, made by Aristotle, proceeds as follows:
If an absolute beginning of motion should be assumed, the object to undergo the first motion must either have come into existence and begun to move, or have existed in an eternal state of rest before beginning to move.
Aristotle argues that option A is self-contradictory because an object cannot move before it comes into existence, and the act of coming into existence is itself a "movement," so that the first movement requires a movement before it, that is, the act of coming into existence.
Aristotle argues that option B is unsatisfactory for two reasons.
Aristotle concludes that motion is necessarily eternal.
Creationists responded that the "First motion" could be ascribed to God's creative act (which would, of course, be transcendental
and thus not necessarily physical in nature).
Creationists responded that the apparent contradiction is only in our imaginations, as the perceived necessity as time "before" time is merely due to our experience, and not anything essential about the universe. God could be beyond time, but the universe exhibit a definite beginning and ending of time.
One philosophical critique of the Creationist argument counters that, no one can say, write, figure, argue or demonstrate in any way what the notion that God exists outside or beyond time means or what properties and qualities such an existence has. This is because the concept transcends all thinking. If such a concept transcends all thinking no reason logical or illogical can be given and we therefore cannot be responsible for knowing it. Thus, even if God exists outside or beyond time (and has power such that God can create and sustain contradictions) we cannot have reason to believe such a claim and it remains as plausible as any belief whatever. Some have countered this argument saying that reason is not required for true belief. In this case, one can still reasonably believe anything giving all belief without reason no value.
" (that is, a place where there is no matter) is impossible. Material objects can come into existence only in place, that is, occupy space. Were something to come from nothing, "the place to be occupied by what comes into existence would previously have been occupied by a vacuum, inasmuch as no body existed." But a vacuum is impossible, and matter must be eternal.
Creationists responded that God created the dimension
s at the same time he created the matter, so there was no vacuum before there was matter.
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, Jewish, Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
ic, and Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
philosophers during the ancient
Ancient history
Ancient history is the study of the written past from the beginning of recorded human history to the Early Middle Ages. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, with Cuneiform script, the oldest discovered form of coherent writing, from the protoliterate period around the 30th century BC...
and medieval
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
periods. The foremost philosopher arguing for eternity was Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
. Those ascribing to Creationism
Creationism
Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...
ex nihilo (that is, creation from nothing
Ex nihilo
Ex nihilo is a Latin phrase meaning "out of nothing". It often appears in conjunction with the concept of creation, as in creatio ex nihilo, meaning "creation out of nothing"—chiefly in philosophical or theological contexts, but also occurs in other fields.In theology, the common phrase creatio ex...
) challenged these argument
Argument
In philosophy and logic, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, or give evidence or reasons for accepting a particular conclusion.Argument may also refer to:-Mathematics and computer science:...
s for eternity
Eternity
While in the popular mind, eternity often simply means existence for a limitless amount of time, many have used it to refer to a timeless existence altogether outside time. By contrast, infinite temporal existence is then called sempiternity. Something eternal exists outside time; by contrast,...
, and held instead that God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
created the universe
Universe
The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...
, so that the universe had a definite beginning in time.
Argument from the nature of matter
The argument from the nature of matterMatter
Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume...
, made by Aristotle in Physics
Physics (Aristotle)
The Physics of Aristotle is one of the foundational books of Western science and philosophy...
, proceeds as follows:
Everything that comes into existence
Existence
In common usage, existence is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. In academic philosophy the word has a more specialized meaning, being contrasted with essence, which specifies different forms of existence as well as different identity...
does so from a substratum
Hypokeimenon
Hypokeimenon , later often material substratum, is a term in metaphysics which literally means the "underlying thing" ....
. If the underlying matter of the universe came into existence, it would come into existence from a substratum. But the nature of matter is precisely to be the substratum from which other things arise. Consequently, the underlying matter of the universe could have come into evidence only from an already existing matter exactly like itself; to assume that the underlying matter of the universe came into existence would require assuming that an underlying matter already existed. The assumption is thus self-contradictory, and matter must be eternal.
The key premise of the argument is, clearly, that everything that comes into existence does so from a substratum. Aristotle defends this argument inductively
Inductive reasoning
Inductive reasoning, also known as induction or inductive logic, is a kind of reasoning that constructs or evaluates propositions that are abstractions of observations. It is commonly construed as a form of reasoning that makes generalizations based on individual instances...
as follows:
- "We can," he argued, "always observeObservationObservation is either an activity of a living being, such as a human, consisting of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses, or the recording of data using scientific instruments. The term may also refer to any data collected during this activity...
something underlying, from which the generated object comes, plants and animals, for example, coming from seed." - Further, the impossibility "that generation should take place from nothing" is self-evident.
Maimonides
Maimonides
Moses ben-Maimon, called Maimonides and also known as Mūsā ibn Maymūn in Arabic, or Rambam , was a preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher and one of the greatest Torah scholars and physicians of the Middle Ages...
challenged the inductive assertion on that "everything in existence comes from a substratum," on that basis that his reliance on induction and analogy is a fundamentally flawed means of explaining unobserved phenomenon. According to Maimonides, to argue that "because I have never observed something coming into existence without coming from a substratum it cannot occur" is equivalent to arguing that "because I cannot empirically
Empiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
observe eternity it does not exist."
Argument from possibility
The medieval philosopher AvicennaAvicenna
Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā , commonly known as Ibn Sīnā or by his Latinized name Avicenna, was a Persian polymath, who wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived...
argued as follows:
Prior to a thing's coming into actual existence, its existence must have been 'possible
Possibility
Possibility is the condition or fact of being possible. The Latin origins of the word hint at ability. Possibility also refers to something that "could happen", that is not precluded by the facts, but usually not probable...
.' Were its existence necessary
Necessary
Necessary may refer to:help* Something that is a required condition for something else to be the case, see necessary and sufficient condition.* A necessary truth, something that cannot fail to be true, see logical possibility....
, the thing would already have existed, and were its existence impossible, the thing would never exist. The possibility of the thing must therefore in some sense have its own existence. Possibility cannot exist in itself, but must reside within a subject. If an already existent matter must precede everything coming into existence, clearly nothing, including matter, can come into existence ex nihilo, that is, from absolute nothingness. An absolute beginning of the existence of matter is therefore impossible.
The argument is challenged on the basis that the "possibility" of creation could be ascribed to the Creator, and on the basis that the concept of "possibility" is merely an intellectual judgment with no actual existence in any real sense.
Argument from motion
The argument from motionMotion (physics)
In physics, motion is a change in position of an object with respect to time. Change in action is the result of an unbalanced force. Motion is typically described in terms of velocity, acceleration, displacement and time . An object's velocity cannot change unless it is acted upon by a force, as...
, made by Aristotle, proceeds as follows:
If an absolute beginning of motion should be assumed, the object to undergo the first motion must either have come into existence and begun to move, or have existed in an eternal state of rest before beginning to move.
Aristotle argues that option A is self-contradictory because an object cannot move before it comes into existence, and the act of coming into existence is itself a "movement," so that the first movement requires a movement before it, that is, the act of coming into existence.
Aristotle argues that option B is unsatisfactory for two reasons.
- First, if the world began at a state of rest, the coming into existence of that state of rest would itself have been motion.
- Second, if the world changed from a state of rest to a state of motion, the cause of that change to motion would itself have been a motion.
Aristotle concludes that motion is necessarily eternal.
Creationists responded that the "First motion" could be ascribed to God's creative act (which would, of course, be transcendental
Transcendence (religion)
In religion transcendence refers to the aspect of God's nature which is wholly independent of the physical universe. This is contrasted with immanence where God is fully present in the physical world and thus accessible to creatures in various ways...
and thus not necessarily physical in nature).
Argument from the nature of time
Aristotle proceeds along two lines:- TimeTimeTime is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
must be eternal because to refer to a time "before" time began implies that there was time before time, making the concept self-contradictory. - Time is by definition a series of "momentsMoment (time)A moment is a medieval unit of time equal to 1.5 minutes or 1/40 of an hour. In modern English it usually refers to "a short period of time" but doesn't specifically say how short.-Rega:...
." The nature of a moment is "a beginning of the futureFutureThe future is the indefinite time period after the present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the nature of the reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently exists and will exist is temporary and will come...
and an end of the pastPastMost generally, the past is a term used to indicate the totality of events which occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience time, and is...
." The assumption of an absolutely first moment would consequently carry with it the implication of a period of time which is terminated by, and prior to, that first moment, and the prior time would itself contain moments. The assumption of an absolutely first moment is thus self-contradictory.
Creationists responded that the apparent contradiction is only in our imaginations, as the perceived necessity as time "before" time is merely due to our experience, and not anything essential about the universe. God could be beyond time, but the universe exhibit a definite beginning and ending of time.
One philosophical critique of the Creationist argument counters that, no one can say, write, figure, argue or demonstrate in any way what the notion that God exists outside or beyond time means or what properties and qualities such an existence has. This is because the concept transcends all thinking. If such a concept transcends all thinking no reason logical or illogical can be given and we therefore cannot be responsible for knowing it. Thus, even if God exists outside or beyond time (and has power such that God can create and sustain contradictions) we cannot have reason to believe such a claim and it remains as plausible as any belief whatever. Some have countered this argument saying that reason is not required for true belief. In this case, one can still reasonably believe anything giving all belief without reason no value.
Argument from the vacuum
Aristotle argued that a "vacuumVacuum
In everyday usage, vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure. The word comes from the Latin term for "empty". A perfect vacuum would be one with no particles in it at all, which is impossible to achieve in...
" (that is, a place where there is no matter) is impossible. Material objects can come into existence only in place, that is, occupy space. Were something to come from nothing, "the place to be occupied by what comes into existence would previously have been occupied by a vacuum, inasmuch as no body existed." But a vacuum is impossible, and matter must be eternal.
Creationists responded that God created the dimension
Dimension
In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a space or object is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Thus a line has a dimension of one because only one coordinate is needed to specify a point on it...
s at the same time he created the matter, so there was no vacuum before there was matter.
See also
- Big BangBig BangThe Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in...
- Big CrunchBig CrunchIn physical cosmology, the Big Crunch is one possible scenario for the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the metric expansion of space eventually reverses and the universe recollapses, ultimately ending as a black hole singularity.- Overview :...
- Big Freeze
- Big RipBig RipThe Big Rip is a cosmological hypothesis first published in 2003, about the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the matter of the universe, from stars and galaxies to atoms and subatomic particles, is progressively torn apart by the expansion of the universe at a certain time in the future...
- EternalismEternalismThe word eternalism has at least three meanings:* In philosophy, Eternalism is a philosophical approach to the ontological nature of time, which takes the view that all points in time are equally "real", as opposed to the presentist idea that only the present is real.*Eternalism is a position in...
- MultiverseMultiverse (science)The multiverse is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes that together comprise everything that exists and can exist: the entirety of space, time, matter, and energy as well as the physical laws and constants that describe them...
- Oscillatory universe