“Now” Has an Infinitesimal Positive Duration

Reuben Hersh ()
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Reuben Hersh: The University of New Mexico, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

A chapter in Humanizing Mathematics and its Philosophy, 2017, pp 31-37 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Authors writing about Time have struggled to choose between a scientific instantaneous Now, with zero duration, or an experiential Now with some undefined small positive duration. The difficulty is resolved by the infinitesimal of Abraham Robinson. This article offers the nonstandard or “hyperreal” line as a model for Time, thereby to resolve a persistent controversy of the meaning of “Now.” As a “monad” in the Leibnizian time axis, “Now” is a time interval shorter than any standard positive interval, yet longer than any infinitesimal.

Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-61231-7_4

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