"Can each of them have a different time, and must there be more than one time running simultaneously? Surely not. For a time that is both equal and simultaneous is one and the same time, and even those that are not simultaneous are one in kind; for if there were dogs and horses, and seven of each, the number would be the same." (Aristotle, "Physics", 4th century BC)
"Further, if simultaneity in time, and not being before or after, means coinciding and being in the very ‘now’ wherein they coincide, then." (Aristotle, "Physics", 4th century BC)
"It is established that every continuum has further parts, and not so many parts finite in number that there are not further parts, and has all its parts actually and simultaneously, and therefore every continuum has simultaneously and actually infinitely many parts." (Gregory of Rimini [Gregorii Ariminensis], "Lectura super primum et secundum sententiarum", cca. 1350)
"There is a very different relationship between [...] space and duration. For we do not ascribe various durations to the different parts of space, but say that all endure together. The moment of duration is the same at Rome and at London, on the Earth and on the stars, and throughout the heavens. And just as we understand any moment of duration to be diffused throughout all spaces, according to its kind, without any thought of its parts, so it is no more contradictory that Mind also, according to its kind, can be diffused through space without any thought of its parts." (Isaac Newton, De Gravitatione et Aequipondio Fluridorum, cca. 1664-1668)
"Just as space existed before the world was created and even now there exists an infinite space beyond the world (with which God coexists) [...] so time exists before the world and simultaneously with the world (prius mundo et simul cum mundo)." (Isaac Barrow, "Lectiones Geometricae", 1672)
"Not at all as far as its absolute, intrinsic nature is concerned. [,,,] Whether things run or stand still, whether we sleep or wake, time flows in its even tenor (aequo tenore tempus labitur). Even if all the stars would have remained at the places where they had been created, nothing would have been lost to time (nihil inde quicquam tempori decessisset). The temporal relations of earlier, afterwards, and simultaneity, even in that tranquil state, would have had their proper existence (prius, posterius, simul etiam in illo transquillo statu fuisset in se)." (Isaac Barrow, "Lectiones Geometricae", 1672)
"Time absolutely is quantity, admitting in some manner the chief affections of quantity, equality, inequality, and proportion; nor do I believe there is anyone but allows that those things existed equal times, which rose and perished simultaneously." (Isaac Barrow, "Lectiones Geometricae", 1672)
"If a plurality of states of things is assumed to exist which involves no opposition to each other, they are said to exist simultaneously. Thus we deny that what occurred last year and this year are simultaneous, for they involve incompatible states of the same thing. If one of two states which are not simultaneous involves a reason for the other, the former is held to be prior, the latter posterior. My earlier state involves a reason for the existence of my later state. And since my prior state, by reason of the connection between all things, involves the prior state of other things as well, it also involves a reason for the later state of these other things and is thus prior to them. Therefore whatever exists is either simultaneous with other existences or prior or posterior." (Gottfried W Leibniz, "Initium rerum Mathematicarum metaphysica", 1715)
"Time is the order of existence of those things which are not simultaneous. Thus time is the universal order of changes when we do not take into consideration the particular kinds of change. Duration is magnitude of time. If the magnitude of time is diminished uniformly and continuously, time disappears into moment, whose magnitude is zero. Space is the order of coexisting things, or the order of existence for things which are simultaneous." (Gottfried W Leibniz, "Initium rerum Mathematicarum metaphysica", 1715)
"In the same way, this should also happen with regard to time, namely, that between a preceding continuous time & the next following there should be a single instant, which is the indivisible boundary of either. There cannot be two instants, as we intimated above, contiguous to one another; but between one instant & another there must always intervene some interval of continuous time divisible indefinitely. In the same way, in any quantity which lasts for a continuous interval of time, there must be obtained a series of magnitudes of such a kind that to each instant of time there is its corresponding magnitude; & this magnitude connects the one that precedes with the one that follows it, & differs from the former by some definite magnitude. Nay even in that class of quantities, in which we cannot have two magnitudes at the same time, this very point can be deduced far more clearly, namely, that there cannot be any sudden change from one to another. For at that instant, when the sudden change should take place, & the series be broken by some momentary definite addition, two -magnitudes would necessarily be obtained, namely, the last of the first series & the first of the next. Now this very point is still more clearly seen in those states of things, in which on the one hand there must be at any instant some state so that at no time can the thing be without some state of the kind, whilst on the other hand it can never have two states of the kind simultaneously." (Roger J Boscovich, "Philosophiae Naturalis Theoria Redacta Ad Unicam Legera Virium in Natura Existentium, 1758)
"The difficulty of bringing idea and experience into relation with one another makes itself very painfully felt in all investigation of nature. The idea is independent of space and time. Research is limited in space and time. Hence in the idea simultaneous and successive features are most intimately linked, whereas these are always separated in experience; and to think of a process of nature as simultaneous and successive at once, in accordance with the idea, makes our heads spin. The understanding is unable to conceive of those sense data as jointly present which experience transmitted to it one at a time. Thus, the contradiction between ideation and perception remains forever unresolved." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Doubt and Resignation", 1820)
"Men have very good means of knowing in some cases, and of imagining in other cases, the distance between the points of space simultaneously occupied by the centres of two balls; if, at least, we be content to waive the difficulty as to imperfection of our means of ascertaining or specifying, or clearly idealising, simultaneity at distant places. For this we do commonly use signals by sound, by light, by electricity, by connecting wires or bars, or by various other means. The time required in the transmission of the signal involves an imperfection in human powers of ascertaining simultaneity of occurrences in distant places. It seems, however, probably not to involve any difficulty of idealising or imagining the existence of simultaneity." (James Thomson, "On the law of inertia, the principle of chronometry and the principle of absolute clinural rest, and of absolute rotation",” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 12, 1884)
"Time is the supreme illusion. It is but the inner prism by which we decompose being and life, the mode under which we perceive successively what is simultaneous in idea." (Henri-Frédéric Amiel, [journal entry] 1893)
"[...] if another way of measuring time would be adopted, the experiments on which Newton’s law is founded would none the less have the same meaning. Only the enunciation of the law would be different, because it would be translated into another language. [...] Time should be so defined that the equations of mechanics may be as simple as possible. In other words, there is not one way of measuring time more true than another; that which is generally adopted is only more convenient. Of two watches, we have no right to say that the one goes true, the other wrong; we can only say that it is advantageous to conform to the indications of the first." (Henri Poincaré, "La mesure du temps", 1898)
"I designate the following duplex thesis: any general attributive term - such as the adjective ‘simultaneous’ and the abstract noun ‘simultaneity’ - (1) has ‘meaning’ only if its definition formulates some practicable method by which the applicability of the term in question to a given subject of discourse can be experimentally determined, i.e., describes some event capable of being directly observed at first hand under exactly determinable conditions, which event shall serve as the criterion for such applicability; and (2) the occurrence of such event, under the conditions set forth in the definition, is the meaning, and the whole meaning of the term." (Arthur O Lovejoy, 1930)
"[...] even in a temporal description of nature given by a relational theory of time. However, a theory, like the special theory of relativity, that denies the existence of an infinitely fast causal chain, deprives the concept of absolute simultaneity of its physical meaning even within a single inertial system. [...] But since the metrical concept of velocity presupposes that we know the meaning of a transit time and since such a time, in turn, depends on a prior criterion of clock synchronization or simultaneity, we must first formulate the limiting property of electromagnetic chains [the fastest causal chain] without using the concept of simultaneity of noncoincident events." (Adolf Grünbaum, "Logical and philosophical foundations of the special theory of relativity", American Journal of Physics 23, 1955)
"The uncertainty principle refers to the degree of indeterminateness in the possible present knowledge of the simultaneous values of various quantities with which the quantum theory deals; it does not restrict, for example, the exactness of a position measurement alone or a velocity measurement alone." (Werner Heisenberg, "The Uncertainty Principle", [in James R Newman, "The World of Mathematics" Vol. II], 1956)
“The fundamental meaning of the Now is that of a universal simultaneity [...] it contains the whole world-wide extent of the simultaneous" (Eugen Fink, "Zur Ontologischen Frühgeschichte von Raum-Zeit-Bewegung", 1957)
"Synchronistic phenomena prove the simultaneous occurrence of meaningful equivalences in heterogenous, causally unrelated processes; in other words, they prove that a content perceived by an observer can, at the same time, be represented by an outside event, without any causal connection. From this it follows either that the psyche cannot be localized in time, or that space is relative to the psyche." (Carl G Jung, "The structure and dynamics of the psyche", 1960)
"The ‘relativity’ of the new theory - one of the most solidly verified theories in the entire range of physics - is chiefly, therefore, a relativity of simultaneity." (Ernan McMullin, "Simultaneity", 1967)
"According to the special theory there is a finite limit to the speed of causal chains, whereas classical causality allowed arbitrarily fast signals. Foundational studies […] soon revealed that this departure from classical causality in the special theory is intimately related to its most dramatic consequences: the relativity of simultaneity, time dilation, and length contraction. By now it had become clear that these kinematical effects are best seen as consequences of Minkowski space-time, which in turn incorporates a nonclassical theory of causal structure. However, it has not widely been recognized that the converse of this proposition is also true: the causal structure of Minkowski space-time contains within itself the entire geometry (topological and metrical structure) of Minkowski space-time." (John A. Winnie," The Causal Theory of Space-Time", 1977)
"It is hard to overestimate the impact of Einstein’s definition of distant simultaneity on philosophy in this century, set, as the words were, in the context of a highly successful theory of physics." (Graham Nerlich, "Simultaneity and convention in special relativity", 1982)
“If an event takes some time, while it happens, the now so to speak cuts through it, dividing that part of it which is already gone from that which is still to come. Two events which are thus cleaved by the same now are said to be simultaneous. Simultaneity, defined in this way, is evidently reflexive and symmetric, but it is not transitive. [...] However, if we conceive simultaneity as a relation between (idealized) durationless events we automatically ensure that it is transitive and hence an equivalence." (Roberto Torretti, Relativity and Geometry, 1983)
"There are many difficulties in application of [the games] theory to the real world. [...] In general, competitors are not in complete opposition. As a matter of fact often they don't even have the same objectives. This difficulty can often be circumvented by using a different objective, 'games of survival'. Secondly, a decision is seldom made once. This motivated the study of multistage games [...]. Finally, decisions are not usually made simultaneously. Recognition of this fact leads to 'games of protocol' [...]. Games of protocol can also be used to handle processes involving three or more people." (Richard E Bellman, "Eye of the Hurricane: An Autobiography", 1984)
"Much of what the universe had been, was, and would be, Newton had disclosed, was the outcome of an infinity of material particles all pulling on one another simultaneously. If the result of all that gravitational tussling had appeared to the Greeks to be a cosmos, it was simply because the underlying equation describing their behavior had itself turned out to be every bit a cosmos-orderly, beautiful, and decent." (Michael Guillen, "Five Equations That Changed the World", 1995)
"By means of a revision of the concept of simultaneity in a shapable form I arrived at the special relativity theory." (Albert Einstein)
