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The Status of the Future and the Invisible World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Raymond Ruyer

Extract

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The primitive conception is that the future already exists like a terra incognita which one can dimly make out with or without the help of the gods. This idea is at the basis of fatalism and of belief in prophets, oracles and astrologers. This ancient concept was replaced in the nineteenth century by the vocabulary of scientific determinism which said that actual beings can only function. If one knew in detail their structures and their movements, one could calculate the results of their functioning with perfect precision.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 28 , Issue 109 , March 1980 , pp. 37 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 The Serial Universe, London, Faber and Faber, 1934. Each "pre-existent" time would require a "conveying" time and so forth to infinity.

2 See Raymond Ruyer, Les Cent prochains siècles, Fayard, 1977.

3 See Raymond Ruyer, La Gnose de Princeton, Fayard, Coll. Pluriel, p. 112 and 116.