THE CONCEPT OF TIME IN ARISTOTLE

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TIME
How Time Is Related To Motion(Book 4, Lesson 16)
Time is not the same as  motion, because  motion  exists in  the particular things that  are in  motion, where as  time  is everywhere and among all things. Besides, every motion is either  slow or  fast, but time  is neither; rather it is the measure of what is fast or slow, since something is fast if It is moved a great distance in a short time.
On the other hand, time is not independent of motion. A sign of this is that we think little or no time has
passed(or  time has gone  fast) if  nothing  is  happening  around  us  or we become so absorbed in something that we are unaware of what is happening around us.
Therefore time is not motion, but it does not exist without motion.

Time, precisely, is  the  number of motion. That is because time is a counting of the different “befores”
and “afters” of a motion. We could re-phrase our definition  to say that  time is  the  numbering  of motion according to before and after.  The “before” and “after” are not those of time, so that the definition would be circular, but the “before” and “after” of motion as it crosses different points of place.
The Meaning Of “Now”(Book4,Lesson 18 & 21)
Just as the parts of motion are always other and other,so also the parts of time. But what always exists
throughout the whole of time is the same, namely,  the  “now” which, as to  its  nature is always the same, although in conception it  varies  according as  it  is  prior  and  subsequent. Thus  the “now” measures time not in as much as it is always the same thing, but in as much as in conception it is other and other, i.e. “before” and “after”.
[Other words  for  “now”  are: a  “point  in time”,  an “instant”,  a “moment”,  but the latter  two  are more often understood as infinitesimal segments of time.]
[Other words  for  “now”  are: a  “point  in time”,  an “instant”,  a “moment”,  but the latter  two  are more often understood as infinitesimal segments of time.]
In so far as the “now” constantly changes with the succession of time and of motion, in that sense it is
other  and  not always the  same,  but  in  so  far  as  the  “now”  is  a  certain  being, abstracted  from “before” and “after”,  in that sense it is  always of the same nature. “Now” is comparable  to a  moving car  along a  road.
In its nature it is always the same, yet different when considered located at different positions along its
path. Just as the mobile object is more known to us than motion, and motion is known through the mobile object, so time is known through the “now”.
It is plain that if there is no time there will be no “now”, and if there is no “now” there will be no time.
Time is the  number  of local motion, but a single “now”  is not the  number  of motion(since  it is
indivisible), but a principle of motion, just as “one” is the principle of number.
The “now” of time is continuous  like the  point  of a  line, being at the same time a  potential  end  of the past and beginning of the future. Only when we designate one “now” as the end of one period of time and the beginning of another is it  an actualized point.
“Now” in its  strict sense has the double  function of  being an  end of the past  and a beginning of  the future.
Thus, of its nature, time does not necessarily have a beginning or an end. Only were the whole universe
and its motion to have a beginning would the first “now” serve only as a beginning and not as an end.
And were the whole universe and its motion to have an end, then the last “now” would serve only as an
End and not as a beginning.

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