The Inadequacy of the Atomistic Theory of Time

Abstract

But does not this last sentence indicate the acceptance of the atomic structure of time with all its absurdities? This is the third possible objection to the denial of mathematical, point-like instants. We have to remember that the concept ‘atom of time’ is basically self-contradictory because (a) it implies a surreptitious return to the concept of mathematical instant, and (b) because it seems to imply that the temporal process is made up of parts which themselves are devoid of temporality. A thinly disguised return to the concept of mathematical instant is implied by the assumption that time is a succession of temporal segments, each having a finite length; but does not the idea of ‘segment’ imply the presence of both initial and final extremities by which each segment is delimited from the anterior and subsequent ones? And how else can this boundary be conceived except as instantaneous, without temporal thickness, at least as long as an infinite regress is to be avoided? The second difficulty seems to be equally serious: How can we speak about the duration of the time-atom, if there is no possibility of discerning two successive moments within it? Is this possibility not excluded by the alleged indivisibility of the corresponding ‘atomic’ interval? Not much is gained, if we claim that subsequent temporal segments have no ‘sharp edges’ and that they ‘compenetrate each other’ like liquids in osmotic solutions. Bertrand Russell would undoubtedly object that this is nothing but a ‘thick fog’¹ and that even the thickest fog, when microscopically analyzed, would appear as made of discontinuous, tiny drops; then the very same problem would arise again.