Concept
Growing block universe
Overview
The growing block universe (GBU; also the growing block view) is a theory of time arguing that the past and present both exist, while the future does not yet exist. The present is the perpetuating factor of time, where new moments are added to the past. By the passage of time more of the world comes into being; therefore, the block universe is said to be growing. The growth of the block is supposed to happen in the present, a very thin slice of spacetime, where more of spacetime is continually coming into being. Growing block theory should not be confused with block universe theory, also known as eternalism.
The growing block view is an alternative to both eternalism (according to which past, present, and future all exist) and presentism (according to which only the present exists). It is held to be closer to common-sense intuitions than the alternatives. C. D. Broad was a proponent of the theory (1923). Some modern defenders are Michael Tooley (in 1997) and Peter Forrest (in 2004), George Ellis (2009), Bernard Carr (2017), and Carl Gunther (2006). Fabrice Correia and Sven Rosenkranz (2015) have developed their own distinctive view of this theory. In related theories Henri Bergson (1886) proposed that memory does not reside in the brain but an extended dimension of time. Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance involves the permanence of past events which reappear as morphic fields that structure both the material and mental dimensions.
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.
To give this argument a stricter form, let us imagine a straight line of unlimited length, and on this line a material point A, which moves. If this point were conscious of itself, it would feel itself change, since it moves: it would perceive a succession; but would this succession assume for it the form of a line? No doubt it would, if it could rise, so to speak, above the line which it traverses, and perceive…
Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will
The author is tied to Growing block universe in the knowledge graph.
Again it might be supposed that the general instability has arisen from a general state of stability; that the period in which we now are, and in which the utilizable energy is diminishing, has been preceded by a period in which the mutability was increasing, and that the alternations of increase and diminution succeed each other for ever. This hypothesis is theoretically conceivable, as has been demonstrated quite…
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
The author is tied to Growing block universe in the knowledge graph.
Nor is it possible to join our idea of future duration with present or past existence, any more than it is possible to make the ideas of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow to be the same; or bring ages past and future together, and make them contemporary.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
Close in meaning to Growing block universe; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Grammatical tense
- Henri Bergson
- John Eccles (neurophysiologist)
- Karl Popper
- Common sense
- Socrates
- Special relativity
- Spacetime
- Memory
- Cell (biology)
- Consciousness
- DNA
- Eternalism (philosophy of time)
- C. D. Broad
- Gorgias
- Peter Forrest (philosopher)
- Trenton Merricks
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.