Space and time

“ What appears to us gives an idea of space and time. We measure as great a portion of either as our forms of expression admit of our describing by definite terms, but we are immediately conscious of another reality, an endless extension or duration, because we are conscious that we have not exhausted and can not exhaust, by our measurements and descriptions, the whole possible existence of space or time. ”

“ The reason for this result is that nature is no longer confined within space at an instant. Space and time are now interconnected; and this peculiar factor of time which is so immediately distinguished among the deliverances of our sense-awareness, relates itself to one particular congruence relation in space. ”

“ When we come to study the perception of Space, we shall find it quite analogous to time in this regard. Date in time corresponds to position in space; and although we now mentally construct large spaces by mentally imagining remoter and remoter positions, just as we now construct great durations by mentally prolonging a series of successive dates, yet the original experience of both space and time is always of something already given as a unit, inside of which attention afterward discriminates parts in relation to each other. ”

“ Our system concerning space and time consists of two parts, which are intimately connected together. The first depends on this chain of reasoning. The capacity of the mind is not infinite; consequently no idea of extension or duration consists of an infinite number of parts or inferior ideas, but of a finite number, and these simple and indivisible: ‘Tis therefore possible for space and time to exist conformable to this idea: And if it be possible, ‘tis certain they actually do exist conformable to it; since their infinite divisibility is utterly impossible and contradictory. ”

“ Convincing ourselves that the concept of space as an aggregate of points is untenable, we are reduced to the solution, developed in the preceding paragraphs: space and time is a relation between things, i.e., between parts of the contents of our mind; the difference between them being, that while time is an abstraction of the whole—perceptual and non-perceptual—content of the mind, space is an abstraction from the first only, from the events, from Experience. The definition of this relation is given by its being the only relation, common to all and any two parts of this content. ”

“ So it behooves us to search if this prevalent view about the relation of One and Many to Time and Space is trustworthy and exact. What place and function in philosophy must Space and Time be given?—for they certainly have a place and function; they certainly are among the inexpugnable conceptions with which thought has to concern itself when it undertakes to gain a view of the whole. But it may be easy to give them a larger place and function than belong to them by right. ”

“ A chill wind from space seemed to be blowing through the room, whispering of time’s vagaries, and how space had different clocks, and how the affairs of men were swept by time and chance down to a sunless sea. ”

“ Space and time, however, are by no means conceptions, but forms of intuition, or intuitions themselves. For in every universal conception the individual is comprehended under it, and is not a part of it; but in space and time, all individual spaces and times are parts of and contained within the universal space and the universal time. ”

“ When we remember that space and time, as they actually condition our perception and movement, are the space and time which radiate out from an unique here and now of immediate feeling, it is fairly evident that the spatial and temporal aspect of our experience is, as already suggested, a consequence of that limitation of our attentive interests which constitutes our finitude. ”

“ We cannot insist too strongly upon the point that the space and the time of which we think in our science as containing the entire physical order, are not space and time as directly known to us in sense-perception, but are concepts elaborated out of the space and time of direct perception by a complicated process of synthesis and analysis, and involving abstraction from some of the most essential features of the space and time of actual experience. ”

“ All events of nature occur in space and in time. Whatever we perceive, whatever record we receive through our senses, always is attached to, and contained in, space and time. But are space and time real existing things? Have they an absolute reality outside of our mind, as a part or framework of nature, as entities—that is, things that are? Or are they merely a conception of the human mind, a form given by the character of our mind to the events of nature—that is, to the hypothetical cause of our sense perceptions? ”

“ The parts, into which the ideas of space and time resolve themselves, become at last indivisible; and these indivisible parts, being nothing in themselves, are inconceivable when not fill’d with something real and existent. The ideas of space and time are therefore no separate or distinct ideas, but merely those of the manner or order, in which objects exist: Or in other words, ‘tis impossible to conceive either a vacuum and extension without matter, or a time, when there was no succession or change in any real existence. ”

“ When we consider the four-dimensional space-time continuum, where space and time are on the same footing, there is nothing to suggest either a flowing of time or a privileged direction for this flow. In order to conform the theory to the facts of experience, it is therefore necessary to postulate that our consciousness rises along the world-line of our body through space-time, discovering the events on its course. ”

“ We measure time according to the movement of countless suns; and they measure time by little machines in their little pockets.
Now tell me, how could we ever meet at the same place and the same time?
Space is not space between the earth and the sun to one who looks down from the windows of the Milky Way.
Humanity is a river of light running from ex-eternity to eternity. ”

“ It is easy enough to follow out the genesis of time, in the same way as the genesis of space. The constituent quality of space and time is the same in both, and is subject in both to the same act of synthesis, in order that the essential plurality of "the form of intuition" may be created into the unity of "the formal intuition" itself—the single thing, space or time. ”

“ What renders the explanation of life by mechanism and teleology necessary is the conception according to which space and time are two media, perfectly homogeneous, in which phenomena successively or simultaneously develop. Consider space as a multiplicity, indefinitely diffused, and you must consider the things which are in space as being also diffused and infinitely divisible. ”

“ Here it is to be seen, with this theory, what is my idea of space, & of time, how each of them may be said to be continuous, infinitely divisible, eternal, immense, immovable, necessary, although neither of them, as I have shown in a note, have a real nature of their own that is possessed of these properties. Real local and temporal modes of existence must of necessity be admitted by every one. ”

“ Warp space with a rapidly moving object, move away from the observer with the speed of light—and the whole of human history assumed the firm contours of a landscape in space. Time and space merged and became one. And a man in an intricately-equipped Time Observatory could revisit the past as easily as he could travel across the great curve of the universe to the farthest planet of the farthest star. ”

“ Time, continuity in space and time, are themselves creations, and how can piece of creation intervene between God and His creation. Hence our words before, after, where, whence, etc., in this sphere of thought, should not be construed to imply time or space. ”

“ The essence of our definition lies in the fact that it defines space and time as relations between percepts; and it permits of the distinction between time and space by making time also a relation between the non-perceptual parts of the mind.
34. We know empirically that elements of experience forming a given moment can be ordered by the spatial relation in one-, two-, or at most three-dimensional continuous aggregates ”

“ Hence, time is related to power as space is to matter. Power and matter being the subjective realities, while space and time are their objective results, or the necessary effects of the experience in consciousness of their united result, which is motion. ”

“ Space and time are thus vehicles of continuity, by which the world's parts hang together. The practical difference to us, resultant from these forms of union, is immense. Our whole motor life is based upon them.
3. There are innumerable other paths of practical continuity among things. Lines of INFLUENCE can be traced by which they together. Following any such line you pass from one thing to another till you may have covered a good part of the universe's extent. Gravity and heat-conduction are such all-uniting influences, so far as the physical world goes. ”

“ To call Space and Time empty forms, must mean that they can be thought of without any concrete embodiment whatsoever; that one can think of Time, as a pure abstraction, without having in one’s mind any concrete succession. Now, this doctrine is in the last degree questionable. ”

“ What has space or time to do with being? Can distance destroy fact? What if one day the chain of gravity were to break, and, starting from the edge of the pine wood, we fared or flew farther and farther towards the bars of gold and rose and green! ”

“ On investigating the character of our actual perception of space and time, it appears to contain two aspects, which we may call the quantitative and the qualitative. On the one hand, whenever we perceive space we perceive a certain magnitude of extension, whenever we perceive time we perceive a longer or shorter lapse of duration. ”

“ THE CONQUEST OF TIME AND SPACE INTRODUCTION THE preceding volume dealt with the general principles of application and transformation of the powers of Nature through which the world's work is carried on. In the present volume we are chiefly concerned with man's application of the same principles in his efforts to set at defiance, so far as may be, the limitations of time and space. ”

“ Space is the relation of various limited beings among themselves. It exists. But time is only the relation of the movement of living beings among themselves, and the movement of matter which we consider dead. ”

“ I have explicitly said, that Space and Time would not exist if Matter did not exist. Æther spread out within itself first constitutes real Space, and the movement of this æther and consequent real genesis of everything individual and separate, constitutes real Time. ”

“ How calmly and genially the mind apprehends one after another the laws of physics! What noble emotions dilate the mortal as he enters into the counsels of the creation, and feels by knowledge the privilege to Be! His insight refines him. The beauty of nature shines in his ​own breast. Man is greater than he can see this, and the universe less, because Time and Space relations vanish as laws are known. ”

“ As we wish to eliminate the danger of a possible logical circle in our definition, we must be on the alert to prevent any specially spatio-temporal concepts from creeping surreptitiously into our definition of space and time through the material on which this definition is to be based ”

“ Since then we have but a finite number of indestructible elements and forces, and an infinite space and time—or at least a space and time to which we can conceive no limits—it must follow that the same combinations will repeat themselves incessantly both in space and time. ”

“ The attention of the physicists was recently led towards the fundamental notions of space and time, as new experimental facts obliged us to alter them; nothing can better demonstrate the empirical origin of these notions than their progressive adaptation, still not finished, with the increasing subtlety of human experiments. ”

“ As ‘tis from the disposition of visible and tangible objects we receive the idea of space, so from the succession of ideas and impressions we form the idea of time, nor is it possible for time alone ever to make its appearance, or be taken notice of by the mind. A man in a sound sleep, or strongly occupy’d with one thought, is insensible of time; and according as his perceptions succeed each other with greater or less rapidity, the same duration appears longer or shorter to his imagination. ”

“ But there is a fundamental difference between our space conception and our time conception, in that we can pass through time only in one direction, from the past to the future, while we can pass through space in any direction, from north to south, as well as from south to north—that is, time is irreversible, flows uniformly in one direction, while space is reversible, can be traversed in any direction. ”

“ I think you will readily understand what is meant by a frame of space and time. It is the system of location to which we appeal when we state, for example, that one event is 100 miles distant from and 10 hours later than another. ”

“ For ages that stagger the imagination this earth spun hot and lifeless, and again for ages of equal vastness it held no life above the level of the animalculæ in a drop of ditch-water.
Not only is Space from the point of view of life and humanity empty, but Time is empty also. ”

“ What we announced before with respect to these two ideas, considering the idea of time as only what it appeared at first sight, we may now assert as the secure result of analytical investigations. I call attention in particular to the following parallel, because it greatly explains the ideas of both.
74. Space is nothing in itself, distinguished from bodies; it is only the extension of bodies: time is nothing in itself, distinguished from things. It is only the succession of things. ”