The idea that time could be granular, that there could be minimal intervals of time, is not new. It was defended in the seventh century by Isidore of Seville in his Etymologiae, and in the following century by the Venerable Bede in a work suggestively entitled De Divisionibus Temporum (“On the Divisions of Time”). In the thirteenth century, the great philosopher Maimonides writes: “Time is composed of atoms, that is to say of many parts that cannot be further subdivided, on account of their short duration.”53 The idea probably dates back even further: the loss of the original texts of
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