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Quotes from Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day — Gerald James Whitrow

1912–2000 England

← All quotes by Gerald James Whitrow

9 quotes

It must have required enormous effort for man to overcome his natural tendency to live like the animals in a continual present.

Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day (1988)

Man must have been conscious of memories and purposes long before he made any explicit distinction between past, present, and future.

Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day (1988)

Language itself inevitably introduced an element of permanence into the world. For, although speech itself is transitory, the conventionalized sound symbols of language transcended time.

Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day (1988)

Our idea of the universe as a whole remains a product of the imagination.

Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day (1988)

The development of rational thought actually seems to have impeded man's appreciation for the significance of time.

Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day (1988)

The basic objection to attempts to deduce the unidirectional nature of time from concepts such as entropy is that they are attempts to reduce a more fundamental concept to a less fundamental one.

Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day (1988)

Time is naturally associated by us with counting, which is the simplest of all rhythms. It is surely no accident that the words 'arithmetic' and 'rhythm' come from the two Greek terms which are derived from a common root meaning 'to flow'.

Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day (1988)

The history of natural philosophy is characterized by the interplay of two rival philosophies of time — one aiming at its "elimination" and the other based on the belief that it is fundamental and irreducible.

Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day (1988)

Frequently nowadays the use of highly sophisticated computers involves the 'selling' of time on them. In the Middle Ages this practice would have been severely frowned upon by the Church, for one of its main objections to the practice of usury was that it contravened natural law by 'selling time', and in its view time necessarily belongs to all creatures.

Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day (1988)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Gerald James Whitrow (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.