The perception of time by humans according to John Philoponus and its relation with the Theory of Special and General Relativity

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleThe perception of time by humans according to John Philoponus and its relation with the Theory of Special and General Relativity
3. Language term English
4. lemma author Tampakis, Kostas
5. lemma category Modern physics: Relativity
6. Publication date 2013
7. lemma work The perception of time by humans according to John Philoponus and its relation with the Theory of Special and General Relativity
8. lemma manifestations International Journal of Humanities and Social Science
9. Keywords John Philoponus - Time - General Relativity
10. Url Click Here
11. Lemma body

    1. This article discusses the similarities between the thought of John Philoponus and the Theory of Relativity regarding the concepts of time and the role of the observer. The article begins by offering a short biography of John Philoponus. It then discusses how on Philoponus view, time was linked to motion and to the existence of the world in general. For Philoponus, time did not and could not exist before the creation of the world ex nihilo by God. The authors note that similar views were also to be found in early Christian thought, such as in Saint Basil the Great and in saint Augustine. Finally, he briefly discusses how time is a number of movements in Philoponus, in strict accordance with Aristotelian teachings. The article then moves on to describe how Philoponus discusses time as a mental process, in which temporal flow is apprehended via motion through points of reference, again noting the Aristotelian context of such thoughts. This presentation is followed by a discussion of the notion of the observer in the Special Theory of Relativity (STR), using Lorentzian transformations to present the problem of synchronicity between events. Then the authors move on to the General Theory of Relativity (GTR), which they present as a generalization of Special Theory dealing with all kinds of possible motion. They go on to discuss how the flow of time in GTR is based on the properties of spacetime, in which trajectories of motion become geodesic lines in a four-dimensional manifold. From these discussion, the article concludes that Philoponus stressed that time is characterized by a continuous and unbreakable flow, that in STR the determination of time depends on the system of reference upon which the observer is stationed while on the contrary, in GTR the observer perceives time in a way that depends on the gravitational influence exerted by mass on spacetime. However, it is not clear how and why there are similarities between these views, or why and how Philoponus views differ from Aristotelian teachings.