Concept
Aeon
Overview
The word aeon , also spelled eon (in American and Australian English), originally meant "life", "vital force" or "being", "generation" or "a period of time", though it tended to be translated as "age" in the sense of "ages", "forever", "timeless" or "for eternity". In Greek, it literally refers to the timespan of one hundred years. A cognate Latin word aevum (cf. αἰϝών) for "age" is present in words such as eternal, longevity and mediaeval.
Although the term aeon may be used in reference to a period of a billion years (especially in geology, cosmology and astronomy), its more common usage is for any long, indefinite period. Aeon can also refer to the four aeons on the geologic time scale that make up the Earth's history, the Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic, and the current aeon, Phanerozoic.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
All attributes, such as “the First,” “the Last,” occurring in the Scriptures in reference to God, are as metaphorical as the expressions “ear” and “eye.” They simply signify that God is not subject to any change or innovation whatever; they do not imply that God can be described by time, or that there is any comparison between Him and any other being as regards time, and that He is called on that account “the first”…
Moses Maimonides, The guide for the perplexed
States what Aeon is.
But because Adolescence does not begin at the beginning of life--taking it in the way which has been said--but about eight months from birth; and because our life strives to ascend, and curbs itself in the descent; because the natural heat is lessened and can do little, and the moist humour is increased, not in quantity, but in quality, so that it is less able to evaporate and be consumed; it happens that beyond Old…
Dante Alighieri, The Banquet
States what Aeon is.
In the physics of Aristotle, it is by the concepts "high" and "low," spontaneous displacement and forced displacement, own place and strange place, that the movement of a body shot into space or falling freely is defined. But Galileo thought there was no essential moment, no privileged instant. To study the falling body is to consider it at it matters not what moment in its course.
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
States what Aeon is.
Philosophers who discussed Aeon
Related ideas
- Monad (Gnosticism)
- Geology
- Gnosticism
- Hinduism
- Heaven
- Cosmology
- American English
- Valentinianism
- Emanationism
- Eternity
- Occult
- Roger Penrose
- Buddhism
- Kingship and kingdom of God
- Big Bang
- God
- Astronomy
- Christianity
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy of history.