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The concept of time in Prigogine

Nicola Grana

pp. 229-237

What is time? What is its beginning, if we may speak of a beginning? All these questions are not stimulated by a crypto-metaphysical need, but by the epistemological approach itself. It is enough here to think of Ilya Prigogine, who has made of the concept of time the main task of his scientific and philosophical research. In this horizon, we must accept what Stephen Hawking himself said about the beginning and the end of time, in physic-cosmological meaning, as we can accept the meaning of experienced time, which stands in the evolution of our history, which begins with us, coincides with the origin of our biological time, or of our biological times, to end with the end of our biological history on a macroscopic scale. Our evolutionary history is, of course, underlined by experienced time, the charioteer of our changes, but in a dialectical relation with chronological, chronometric, chronosophic times, in a relation of one among many, which produces states of suffering. But it does not make this evolutionary history less interesting. So, at the end of our journey, at least the consciousness of being "inhabitants" of time and bearers of change appears, and this occurs whether we have behind us big cataclysms or thermic Death.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-24895-0_28

Full citation:

Grana, N. (2016)., The concept of time in Prigogine, in F. Santoianni (ed.), The concept of time in early twentieth-century philosophy, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 229-237.

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