Abstract
What is time? What is its beginning, if we may speak of a beginning? All these questions are not stimulated by a crypto-metaphysical need, but by the epistemological approach itself. It is enough here to think of Ilya Prigogine, who has made of the concept of time the main task of his scientific and philosophical research. In this horizon, we must accept what Stephen Hawking himself said about the beginning and the end of time, in physic-cosmological meaning, as we can accept the meaning of experienced time, which stands in the evolution of our history, which begins with us, coincides with the origin of our biological time, or of our biological times, to end with the end of our biological history on a macroscopic scale. Our evolutionary history is, of course, underlined by experienced time, the charioteer of our changes, but in a dialectical relation with chronological, chronometric, chronosophic times, in a relation of one among many, which produces states of suffering. But it does not make this evolutionary history less interesting. So, at the end of our journey, at least the consciousness of being “inhabitants” of time and bearers of change appears, and this occurs whether we have behind us big cataclysms or thermic Death.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Quotation translated by the Author.
- 2.
In regard to attractors, I must underline that, for example, a pendulum would continue to swing indefinitely if there were no attrition, while movement diminishes to then stop; there is an attractor point which explains this example of asymptote stability. Apart from this simple example of the pendulum we have observed other complex cases in which we can no longer speak of a single attractor point, but of a closed bending that translates a periodic behavior. An attractor point is the result of a set of points to which the system observed is attracted at the beginning by one point, and then by another one, and so on. We are at the presence of a “strange attractor,” as this archetype (of chaos) has been called. They can be found in greater or lesser density on some lines, some surfaces, and some volumes. Their dimensions cannot be stated with whole numbers, because they are distributed densely way. Mandelbrot called them “fractals” because they indicate something irregular and indented, for example a coastline (Mandelbrot 1977; Peitgen and Richter 1986; Bellacicco 1980).
- 3.
Quotations from Prigogine (1988) translated by the Author.
- 4.
In instable dynamic systems the concept of trajectory has no meaning. In fact “two points, as narrow as you want, will go exponentially far from each other, according to the number called «Ljapuno’s exponent». Instability destroys the character of the trajectory and modifies our concept of space-time” (Prigogine 1988: 79). Already Einstein married the concept of time with matter, now we must marry the space-time with irreversibility, that is, “that irreversibility expresses also a structure of space-time” (Prigogine 1988: 79).
- 5.
Quotations from Prigogine and Stengers (1989) translated by the Author.
- 6.
For alternative patterns see Lerner (1992).
- 7.
- 8.
In this work Masullo carries out a severe philosophical analysis of the Prigoginian concept of irreversibility, suitably distinguishing the evolutionary irreversibility of Prigogine from the one of the foregoing thermodynamics.
References
Bellacicco, Antonio. (1980). La rappresentazione frattale degli eventi. Firenze: La Nuova Italia Scientifica.
Eliade, M. (1963). Aspects du Mythe. Paris: Gallimard.
Hawking, S. (1982). Ai margini dello spaziotempo. In P. Davies (Ed.). La nuova fisica, (pp. 66–74) (D. Canarutto, Trans.). Torino: Boringhieri.
Hawking, S. (1988). A Brief history of time. United States and Canada: Bantam Books.
Lerner, E. (1992). The big bang never happened. New York: Viking Press.
Mandelbrot, B. (1977). Fractals: Form, chance and dimension. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
Masullo, A. (1993). Epistemologia dell’irreversibile ed etica del tempo. Paradigmi, 11(31), 125–152.
Monod, J. (1970). Le hasard et la nécessité. Le Seuil: Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biologie moderne. Paris.
Peitgen, H., & Richter, P. (1986). The beauty of fractals. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Prigogine, I. (1988). La nascita del tempo. (B. Pedretti, Trans.). Roma-Napoli: Theoria.
Prigogine, I., & Stengers, I. (1989). Tra il tempo e l’eternità. (C. Tatasciore, Trans.). Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.
Rigon, F. (1983). Dimore. Torino: Einaudi.
Von Wright, & Henrik, Georg. (1974). Tempo cambiamento e contraddizione. In Claudio Pizzi (Ed.), Logica del tempo. Torino: Boringhieri.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grana, N. (2016). The Concept of Time in Prigogine. In: Santoianni, F. (eds) The Concept of Time in Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24895-0_28
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24895-0_28
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-24893-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-24895-0
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)