Time, Creation and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages - Softcover

Richard Sorabji here takes time as his central theme, exploring fundamental questions about its nature: Is it real or an aspect of consciousness? Did it begin along with the universe? Can anything escape from it? Does it come in atomic chunks? In addressing these and myriad other issues, Sorabji engages in an illuminating discussion of early thought about time, ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Islamic, Christian, and Jewish medieval thinkers. Sorabji argues that the thought of these often negelected philosophers about the subject is, in many cases, more complete than that of their more recent counterparts.

“Splendid. . . . The canvas is vast, the picture animated, the painter nonpareil. . . . Sorabji’s work will encourage more adventurers to follow him to this fascinating new-found land.”—Jonathan Barnes,Times Literary Supplement

“One of the most important works in the history of metaphysics to appear in English for a considerable time. No one concerned with the problems with which it deals either as a historian of ideas or as a philosopher can afford to neglect it.”—Donald MacKinnon,Scottish Journal of Theology

“Unusually readable for such scholarly content, the book provides in rich and cogent terms a lively and well-balanced discussion of matters of concern to a wide academic audience.”—Choice

Richard Sorabji is emeritus professor of philosophy at King's College, London, and fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. He is the author of Aristotle on Memory; Necessity, Cause and Blame; Matter, Space, and Motion; Animal Minds and Human Morals; Emotion and Peace of Mind, and Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death. He is also general editor of seventy volumes to date of The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, and coeditor of The Ethics of War: Shared Problems in Different Traditions.