History and the Concept of Relative Time

My purpose here is to provide a descriptive I epistemology with regard to the concept of relative time, which I consider an important feature of modern historical theory and of historical knowledge as such. Though I have applied the descriptive method in similar and other contexts before, I should state once again that my method is descriptive in the sense that I shall be investigating the origin, nature, and significance of certain key notions in the views of some leading philosophers and historians between the mid-seventeenth century and the present day. Admittedly, the views I have in mind may not be necessarily valid or correct On the other hand, they proved eminently successful; for what they achieved was to bring into prominence a number of fictive constructions and rational analyses of considerable psychological and critical acumen and of unquestionable influence on the development of the logical empiricist method in modern thought.2 Being descriptive in the sense I have indicated, my enquiry is of the kind which Professor E. A. Burtt3 may have had in mind when recommending the study of the history of the concept of time to those trying to solve its problem. However, what I consider essential, after all the discussion which has been devoted to the notion of the relativity of time in physics, is to explain (a) that this notion was discussed by philosophers, as a problem arising within their own province, long before it assumed its latter-day scientific significance; and (b) that at no time since the seventeenth century has it become less relevant in connection with the nature of historical thought. It has indeed been frequently stressed (rightly in my opinion) that the historian's

Epistemology · History · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science

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