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1. The first serious attempt to analyze the concept of time occurs in Aristotle's Physics. He raises the question, "In what sense, if any, can time be said to exist?" For Aristotle, only individual substances, which are compounds of form and matter, can be said to exist in an unqualified sense, everything else being attributes of these substances. Time is defined as the "number of movement in respect of "before" and "after."" Motion is an attribute of a substance, and time in turn is an attribute of motion. Time is not motion, but the number or measure of motion. Motion is potentially time and becomes such in actuality only when its temporal succession is noted and measured by some sentient creature. Thus time is not a substantial entity which is capable of existing separately from other things: it has no reality independently of the changes that substances undergo. It has being only as an attribute of an attribute of substance.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-15243-8_1

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