NationMaster - Encyclopedia: J. M. E. McTaggart

John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart (1866-1925) was the leading Hegel scholar in England at the beginning of the 20th Century, and friend and teacher of Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore. He later developed his own highly original metaphysical system in his two-volume Nature of Existence, the most famous element of which is his argument for the unreality of time. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. ... Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM (18 May 1872–2 February 1970) was an influential mathematician, philosopher, and logician of the modern age, working mostly in the 20th century. ... George Edward Moore George Edward Moore, also known as G.E. Moore, (November 4, 1873 - October 24, 1958) was a distinguished and hugely influential English philosopher who was educated and taught at the University of Cambridge. ...

In his famous paper The Unreality of Time (1908), J. M. Ellis McTaggart argued that our perception of time is an illusion, and that time itself is merely ideal. He introduced the notions of the A-series and B-series interpretations of time, representing two different ways that events in time can be ordered. Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Unreality of Time The Unreality of Time is an important paper on the Philosophy of Time written in 1908 by John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart. ... 1908 is a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 8:17 am, August 6, 1945, Japanese time. ... In mathematics, the term ideal has multiple meanings. ... Order is the opposite of anarchy and chaos. ...

The A-series corresponds to our everyday notions of past, present, and future. An A-series ordering involves statements such as X occurred in the past, X is occurring now, or X will occur in the future. This is contrasted with the B-series, in which events are placed in a chronological order according to relations of the form X occurred before Y, X occurred at the same time as Y, or X occurred after Y. ... Present may mean: present (time): time that is neither past nor future a gift: thing given free of charge, gratis This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... In a linear conception of time, the future is the portion of the timeline that is still to occur, i. ...

McTaggart argued that the A-series was a necessary component of any full theory of time, but that it was also self-contradictory and that our perception of time was therefore an ultimately incoherent illusion. Broadly speaking, a contradiction is when two or more statements, ideas, or actions are seen as incompatible. ...