2.19 Temporal Paradoxes

Category: Metaphysics

Keywords: duration, instant, succession, series, temporal, changing, moments, spatio, temporally, change, clock, interval, changes, continuous, simultaneous

Number of Articles: 310
Percentage of Total: 1%
Rank: 47th

Weighted Number of Articles: 387.5
Percentage of Total: 1.2%
Rank: 28th

Mean Publication Year: 1960.1
Weighted Mean Publication Year: 1961.7
Median Publication Year: 1965
Modal Publication Year: 1952

Topic with Most Overlap: Ordinary Language (0.0499)
Topic this Overlaps Most With: Space and Time (0.0387)
Topic with Least Overlap: Moral Conscience (0.00019)
Topic this Overlaps Least With: Duties (0.00123)

A scatterplot showing which proportion of articles each year are in the temporal paradoxestopic. The x-axis shows the year, the y-axis measures the proportion of articles each year in this topic. There is one dot per year. The highest value is in 1886 when 7.0% of articles were in this topic. The lowest value is in 1879 when 0.5% of articles were in this topic. The full table that provides the data for this graph is available in Table A.19 in Appendix A.

Figure 2.50: Temporal paradoxes.

A set of twelve scatterplots showing the proportion of articles in each journal in each year that are in the Temporal Paradoxestopic. There is one scatterplot for each of the twelve journals that are the focus of this book. In each scatterplot, the x-axis is the year, and the y-axis is the proportion of articles in that year in that journal in this topic. Here are the average values for each of the twelve scatterplots - these tell you on average how much of the journal is dedicated to this topic. Mind - 1.6%. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society - 1.4%. Ethics - 0.3%. Philosophical Review - 1.2%. Analysis - 1.6%. Philosophy and Public Affairs - 0.2%. Journal of Philosophy - 1.2%. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research - 0.9%. Philosophy of Science - 1.2%. Noûs - 1.1%. The Philosophical Quarterly - 1.0%. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science - 1.8%. The topic reaches its zenith in year 1888 when it makes up, on average across the journals, 7.3% of the articles. And it hits a minimum in year 1891 when it makes up, on average across the journals, 0.4% of the articles.

Figure 2.51: Temporal paradoxes articles in each journal.

Table 2.46: Characteristic articles of the temporal paradoxes topic.
Table 2.47: Highly cited articles in the temporal paradoxes topic.

Comments

I’ve called this temporal paradoxes, though that should be read a bit disjunctively. The core of the topic is articles about Zeno’s paradoxes. But there are some other articles about paradoxes. Carroll’s paper (both the original and the repeat) is there I suspect because of the words Achilles and tortoise. And there are several other articles about the passage of time that aren’t connected to the paradoxes. Some of the recent work on temporal parts is in here, though more of it appears much later in composition and constitution.

The steady pace of articles here is quite striking, and maybe a touch ironic given the subject matter.