Bernardo Motta > Bernardo's Quotes

“Is there a larger metaphysical moral to be drawn from the above analysis of the metaphysics of time and change? I have defined the essence of change as the actualization of a pre-existing potentiality. I have also defined instants as the limits of a process of infinite potential division. It is my contention that these two potentialities are but different aspects of one and the same radical potentiality that lies at the heart of nature itself. Both are necessary for the explanation of change. The actualization of potentiality would not be possible without the potentiality that characterizes time; and if, as I would also contend (without space for a defense here) there is no time without change, the potentiality at the root of time would not be possible without the eduction of form from potentiality that is the essential note of change. In change, form succeeds form: every coming-to-be is a passing-away and every passing-away is a coming-to-be. Change is, then, a continuous process of loss and gain that is without gap and without contradiction. Change is instantaneous: without instants as limits it could not take place. To search for an actual instant of change, however, is to search in vain, for there are no actual instants at all. To search for a transition that does not consist in the actualization of potentiality is to search for a chimera. Transition there must be, and without the exceedingly small there is no transition; but to look for it in the exceedingly small is to miss its presence in the process at large. Ultimately the process is unfathomable – as unfathomable as the very potentiality that explains the finitude of the material universe and everything within it. In metaphysics, this is all the explanation we can hope for. In metaphysics, this is all the explanation we need.”
― Anonymous