"Some philosophers have believed that a philosophical clarification of space also provided a solution of the problem of time. Kant presented space and time as analogous forms of visualization and treated them in a common chapter in his major epistemological work. Time therefore seems to be much less problematic since it has none of the difficulties resulting from multidimensionality. Time does not have the problem of mirror-image congruence, i.e., the problem of equal and similarly shaped figures that cannot be superimposed, a problem that has played some role in Kant's philosophy. Furthermore, time has no problem analogous to non-Euclidean geometry. In a one-dimensional schema it is impossible to distinguish between straightness and curvature. ...A line may have external curvature but never an internal one, since this possibility exists only for a two-dimensional or higher continuum. Thus time lacks, because of its one-dimensionality, all those problems which have led to philosophical analysis of the problems of space."
React to this quote
More by Hans Reichenbach
See allResonant Thoughts
"Nothing is more usual and more natural for those, who pretend to discover anything new to the world in philosophy and the sciences, than to insinuate the praises of their own systems, by decrying all …"
"Some other Course therefore must be taken to promote the Search of Knowledge. Some other kind of Art for Inquiry than what hath been hitherto made use of, must be discovered; the Intellect is not to h…"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"I once asked a group of young managers in a workshop: would you prefer to work with a friend who never keep…"
— Nigel Cumberland"The Decision Theory School : Another approach to management theory, undertaken by a growing and scholarly g…"
— Harold Koontz"One does not paint for design students or historians but for human beings, and the reaction in human terms …"
— Mark Rothko"Language is a finite instrument crudely applied to an infinity of ideas, and one consequence of the failure…"
— Tom Stoppard"One should become aware of oneself, indivisible, and perfect; free from identification with all things tran…"
— Adi Shankara"Bujak spoke of Einstein as if he were God's literary critic, God being a poet. I, more stolidly, tend to su…"
— Martin Amis
Related Thinkers
Related Topics
Deep Dives
- Baruch Spinoza on philosophy
- Friedrich Nietzsche on philosophy
- Thomas Carlyle on philosophy
- Aristotle on philosophy
- Immanuel Kant on philosophy
- Ludwig Wittgenstein on philosophy
- Michel de Montaigne on philosophy
- Epictetus on philosophy
- Baruch Spinoza on knowledge
- Baruch Spinoza on mind
- knowledge & Beauty
- knowledge & Change
