Abstract : The question of time puzzled Western thinkers such as Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle for thousands of years, yet their answers disagree. Among them, only Heraclitus affirmed the reality of change or time; Parmenides and Plato assumed that only eternity or timelessness is real and that change is just the shadow of eternity. Following Parmenides, many Western philosophers maintained various doctrines of the unreality of time. Some modern scientists claim that time (as well as space) ought to be taken as an independent existence that could exist even were there no ordinary matter in the universe; others maintain that time is nothing but a relational derivation from the existence of ordinary matter or material happenings. Both views presuppose the “measurement” and the “framework of measurement” of time, and the implementation of scientific measurement of time always takes time as discontinuous, homogeneous, quantifiable instants, as equal to the movements of bodies governed by mechanical causal laws. Many process philosophers are convinced that this measurement of time fails to do justice to the continuous, heterogeneous, becoming, irreversible, telic, biological, and emerging nature of time, and they assert the reality of time. Whitehead developed a metaphysics of creativity, which is closer to Indian and Chinese thought, as the concepts of creativity and time are the major themes of the Book of Changes or Yijing .
Yih-Hsien Yu (Mon,) studied this question.