Agricola Seminar: Henry More on Time, Physics, and God

Rudolph Agricola invites you for a session of the Agricola seminar. Dr. Emily Thomas will talk to us about the following subject:

Henry More on Time, Physics, and God

Absolutism about time holds that time is eternal, immutable, and independent of human minds and change. The theory arguably emerged in the seventeenth century, and in English thought it was uniquely supplemented by two further theses: time is substantival, a kind of substance-like ‘thing’; and time is divine. Although this kind of absolute time came to prominence in the work of Newton, it can also be found in Henry More, Isaac Barrow, and Samuel Clarke. This paper explores the first English account of absolute time, in the ‘Cambridge Platonist’ More, and argues that two pressures led More to develop it: Cartesian physics, and theology. This work throws new light on More’s metaphysics, and on the influence More had on the English thinkers who followed him.

Dr. Emily Thomas works as a postdoc in the Groningen Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies. Her work largely concerns time, space, and idealism in the history of philosophy and contemporary metaphysics. She is currently writing a book on the shifting conceptions of time and change in seventeenth century British metaphysics, paying particular attention to the interactions between philosophy, science and religion on this issue.

The language will be English.

The Agricola Seminar unites all those at the University of Groningen who work in premodernity. For more information see agricolaseminar.wordpress.com