"Now" has an infinitesimal positive duration

Reuben Hersh

pp. 31-37

in: Bharath Sriraman (ed), Humanizing mathematics and its philosophy, Basel, Birkhäuser, 2017

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.

Cited authors

Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm