- published: 27 Dec 2015
- views: 18
Temporal finitism is the doctrine that time is finite in the past. The philosophy of Aristotle, expressed in such works as his Physics, held that although space was finite, with only void existing beyond the outermost sphere of the heavens, time was infinite. This caused problems for mediaeval Islamic, Jewish, and Christian philosophers, who were unable to reconcile the Aristotelian conception of the eternal with the Abrahamic view of Creation.
Modern Cosmogony accepts finitism, in the form of the big bang, rather than Steady State theory which allows for an infinite universe, but on physical rather than philosophical grounds.
In contrast to ancient Greek philosophers who believed that the universe had an infinite past with no beginning, medieval philosophers and theologians developed the concept of the universe having a finite past with a beginning. This view was inspired by the creation doctrine shared by the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.