Brit. J. Phil. Sd.

29 (1978), 39-45 Printed m Great Britain

39

On the Impossibility of an Infinite Past

by G. J. WHITROW
"The idea of infinity proves to be an auxiliary introduced by thought to
facilitate its operations . . . its application to the real world is a misuse."
(Hans Vaihinger [1924], p. 62.)

The problem of the age of the universe and whether, in principle, it must
be finite or could be infinite has a long history and views have been divided.
It is my contention, contrary to the opinion now widely held, that the basic
philosophical problem has not been resolved by Cantor's theory of infinite
sets.
I

HISTORY OF THE PROBLEM

My point of view is a modern version of one that can be traced back at

least as far as the Christian philosopher Joannes Philoponos of Alexandria,
in the first half of the sixth century A.D. In a treatise criticising the neoPlatonist Proclos, believed to have been written not long after 529, Philoponos argued that if the world were eternal it would follow that an infinity
of successive acts could have been enumerated, but this is impossible.1
This philosophical objection to the possibility of an infinite past, i.e. an
infinite chain of past events, has not, however, been accepted by all Christian believers in the creation of the world. A contrary opinion was expressed
by St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who, influenced by Aristotle, maintained, in his Sumrna Theologica (ia, xlvi, 2) 'That the world has not always
existed is to be held by faith alone, and cannot be demonstratively proved.'
In his opusculum De Aeternitate Mundi contra Murmwantes, in which he
1

See Philoponos, J.: Contra Proclum de Aeternitate Mundi, (ed.) H. Rabe. Leipzig:
Teubner, 1899, pp. 8 et seq.

Received 1 June 1977

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1 History of the Problem.

2 Disproof of the Possibility of an Infinite Sequence of Discrete Past
Events.
3 Unrelated Sequences of Past Events.
4 Transformations of Time-Scale.
5 Conclusion.

40 G. Whitrow

In particular, in his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, St Bonaventure

{Opera Ornna, Quarrachi, 1882, II, 21) pointed out that, if the world were infinitely old,
there would have occurred an infinite number of annual revolutions of the Sun around
the ecliptic, but since in each such period there are (roughly) twelve revolutions of the
Moon, i.e. lunar months, one infinity would thus be twelve times anothera conclusion
that he rejected. Despite his rejection of this conclusion, his argument anticipates the
modern idea that an infinite set, unlike a finite set, can be put in oneone correlation
with a sub-set of itself.

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criticised those whom he designated as "murmurers against Aristotle",

he argued at some length that it was logically possible for the universe to
have been created by God out of nothing and yet to have existed from all
eternity as Aristotle believed. The medieval followers of St Augustine,
himself a neo-Platonist, rejected this view. Prominent among those who
argued against it was St Thomas's contemporary St Bonaventure (122174). Of the various arguments that he formulated against the idea of the
eternity of the world1 the most compelling is that the infinite cannot be
bridged: if the universe had no beginning an infinite number of celestial
revolutions must have taken place, and therefore the present day could
not have been reached (Gilson [1938], p. 192). However, he was not aware
of all the subtleties of infinite sets that were revealed last century by
Bolzano, Cantor and others, and he was definitely mistaken when he argued
that 'If no anterior day precedes the present by an infinite duration, then
all the anterior days precede it by a finite duration and therefore the duration of the world had a beginning.' {ibid.)
The possibility of an infinite past was also rejected by the redoubtable
Richard Bentley (1662-1742) in the sixth of his Boyle Sermons in 1692.
He argued that the world cannot be eternal and there cannot have been
an infinite number of past revolutions of a planet around the Sun. 'For,
consider the present revolution of the Earth . . . God Almighty, if he so
pleaseth, may continue this motion to perpetuity in infinite revolutions
to come; because futurity is inexhaustible, and can never be spent or run
out by past and present moments. But then, if we look backwards from
this present revolution, we may apprehend the impossibility of infinite
revolutions on that side; because all are already past, and so were once
actually present, and consequently are finite . . . . For surely we cannot
conceive a preteriteness (if I may say so) still backwards in infinitum, that
never was present, as we can endless futurity that never will be present.
So that one is potentially infinite, yet nevertheless the other is actually
finite.' (Bentley [1838], p. 134.)
The same point of view was taken by Immanuel Kant when, in discussing
the first of his four antimonies of pure reason, he sought to establish the
impossibility of the hypothesis that up to a given moment such as the present
there has passed away an infinite sequence of successive states of the

On the Impossibility of an Infinite Past 41

DISPROOF OF THE POSSIBILITY OF AN INFINITE SEQUENCE

OF DISCRETE PAST EVENTS

Bentley's point was that an infinite sequence of past events is not analogous
to an infinite sequence of future events. All past events are empirical
certainties, in the sense that we can, at least in principle, be presented with
evidence ('traces') of their occurrence. On the other hand, all future events
are no more than empirical possibilities, however strongly we may
happen to believe that they will in fact occur. Moreover, the reason why

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universe. 'Now', argued Kant, 'the infinity of a series consists in the fact
that it can never be completed by successive synthesis. It thus follows that
it is impossible for an infinite world-series to have passed away, and that
a beginning of the world is therefore a necessary condition of the world's
existence.' (Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, Kemp-Smith translation, p.
217). This argument as stated by Kant is imprecise by modern standards.
Kant did not clearly distinguish between the question of whether there
was, or was not, a first event in the world's history and the question of
whether the total duration of past time isfiniteor infinite. Kant's discussion
of the hypothesis that the world had no beginning in time is formulated
as an argument against the idea that the past sequence of successive 'states
of things' is, in the language of modern mathematics, an open set with no
first member. Whether or not an infinite measure is to be associated with
it depends on the choice of temporal unit.
Kant's idea of successive 'states of things' presupposes that there is a
unique time-sequence for the whole universe. However, as I have argued
elsewhere ([1966], p. 568), the objection to the possibility of an infinite
past applies to any set of discrete events forming a sequence in time, e.g.
the swings of a pendulum, or the successive clicks of a Geiger counter
produced by the emission of particles from a radioactive source.
As I have already indicated, in my view Kant's argument cannot be
automatically disposed of by appealing to the modern theory of infinite
sets and sequences. Indeed, all reference to temporal concepts has been
purged from the modern theory of infinite sets and sequences, which are
thought of as aggregates and not as being produced in time. Of course,
any temporal sequence of events can, if we wish, be thought of as merely
an aggregate, but only by omitting all reference to its production in time.
Kant's argument, however, concerns successive actions or events occurring
in time. It does not conflict with the idea that infinite sequences and series
in general are legitimate objects of thought, but it rejects the occurrence
of an infinite sequence of past events as an actual possibility.

42 G. WUtrow

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we tend, if we are 'rational', to place more faith, on the whole, in the

occurrence of a particular past event rather than in that of a particular
future event is not because retrodiction is more reliable than prediction
(after all retrodiction is a form of 'prediction'), but because any genuine
trace that has been left to us of the occurrence of a particular past event
was made when that event occurred, whereas there can be no corresponding
'traces' available now of a particular future event made simultaneously
with the occurrence of that event. That is why, on the whole, it is safer
to put more trust in our memories than in our forecasts, fallible though the
former often prove to be.
Let us now consider a temporal sequence of discrete events, or acts,
En of any kind, where n takes integral valuesnegative, zero and positive.
Since, at this stage of the argument, the question of duration need not be
considered, it is unnecessary for these events to be 'evenly spaced' in time.
Starting from Eo, which I designate 'the present' (i.e. a present event),
consider the sequence of events En for which n > o. These will be labelled
'future events'. If the set En(n > o) is infinite, we can describe it, following
Bentley's terminology, as 'potentially infinite'. This simply means that
we assume that each En will have a successor En+1, for each positive (or
zero) integer n. It cannot mean that there will occur, in the fullness of
time, events Ex, where a denotes the Cantorian cardinal aleph-zero. The
objection to this happening is illustrated by what Bertrand Russell ([1937],
p. 358) has called the 'Tristram Shandy paradox'. Tristram Shandy, in
Sterne's famous novel, on finding that it took him two years to write an
account of the first two days of his life lamented that material for his
biography would thus accumulate faster than he could deal with it, so that
he could never come to an end. 'Now I maintain', argued Russell, 'that,
if he had lived forever, and not wearied of his task, then even if his life
had continued as eventfully as it began, no part of his biography would
have remained unwritten.' Since Tristram Shandy writes in a year the
events of a day, the events of the nth day will be written about in the nth
year, and since any assigned day will be the nth day, it will eventually be
written about. If Tristram Shandy actually succeeded in living for an
infinite number of years, then the time would eventually arrive, as Russell
said, when all the days of his life would have been written about. Such a
situation, however, can never in fact occur. For, as time goes on, not only
does he get no nearer his goal but, on the contrary, the goal continually
recedes.
Now let us consider the sequence of events En for which n < o. If we
can describe it as infinite, then each E_? (writing n = r) was preceded
by an event E_T_1. For many contemporary philosophers this appears to

On the Impossibility of an Infinite Past 43

UNRELATED SEQUENCES OF PAST EVENTS

There remains the possibility that the world might be such that there are
an infinite number of unrelated past sequences E_r such that, although
each sequence can necessarily only contain a finite number of events,
there is no definite finite integer N such that none of the sequences concerned contains more than N members. In that sense, and in that sense
only, could there be a past situation analogous to a potentially infinite
sequence of future events. Nevertheless, there still could not be the possibility of an infinite number of past 'states of the universe'. For, if there is
a temporal sequence of past 'states of the universe' (cf. the technical concept of 'cosmic time' in modern theoretical cosmology withfor the
purposes of this discussionthe usual continuous variable t replaced by
a sequence of discrete instants . . . t_T_1, _n t_r+] . . . t0, where t0 denotes
the present), it must itself constitute a temporal chain of the type that
I have been considering, and hence the number of events in the chain,
whatever this number may be, must necessarily be finite.
Hence, the only possibility that the universe does not have a finite
past arises if no temporal sequence of successive states can be associated
with it. Consequently, a steady-state static universe, for example an
Einstein universe, is not open to objection if it is assumed that nothing
1

There is symmetry, in this respect, of future and past: an infinite sequence (actual
infinity, or aleph-zero) of past events corresponds to an actually infinite (aleph-zero)
sequence of future events. The latter concept has to be rejected and likewise, in my view,
the former.

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be all that is meant by saying that a past sequence of events is infinite.

My objection to this conclusion is that since all past events haveand
not merely any past event hasoccurred, the situation envisaged is strictly
analogous to the situation that confronts us in the Tristram Shandy
paradox when we consider the possibility of events Ex eventually occurring.
If n events occurred in sequence before Eo, then there must have occurred
an event designated E_^, in my notation. Similarly if aleph-zero events
occurred before Eo, then there must actually have occurred (in time past)
events E_^. But, starting from any one such event, it would have been
impossible to attain the event Eo, just as from the event Eo it will never
be possible to attain events Ex in the future. Consequently, the concept
of an infinite sequence of past events is incapable of fulminating in the
present event.1 Hence, just as every future sequence of discrete events
from Eo onwards will always be finite, in the sense that never will an event
En be attained where n is not finite, so in every past sequence the total
number of events, however large, can never be infinite.

44 G. WUtrow

ever happens in it, so that strictly speaking it is timeless. On the other hand,
in the steady-state expanding world-models devised, in 1948, by Hoyle
and by Bondi and Gold, respectively, although the past history of every
observable galaxy is finite, there exists a unidirectional cosmic time t
which is assumed to be without beginning or end. These models are therefore open to the objection discussed above, even if overall they do not
change with time.1
4

TRANSFORMATIONS OF TIME-SCALE

CONCLUSION

Kant assumed that, if the concept of time could be associated with the
universe as a whole, it would be quasi-Newtonian, but he argued that the
universe could not have an infinite past nor have existed for only a
finite part of an infinite past (other 'leg' of the First Antimony of Pure
Reason). He therefore concluded that time does not pertain to the
universe itself but merely to our way of regarding it. Instead, I conclude
that: either the universe is such that there is no 'cosmic time' (in the
modern technical sense) applicable to it, or elseas I prefer to believe
the universe is such that cosmic time exists but its total past range is finite,
in the sense explained above.
1

These models have now been rejected by most astronomers because they are believed to be
incompatible with observations, e.g. the cosmic background 3K black-body radiation
discovered in 1965 by Penzias and Wilson.

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On passing from the sequence of discrete epochs . . . t_T_lt f_r, t_r+1,

. . . t0, . . . tn_v tn, /!+!,... to a continuous time variable t, we can consider,
as Milne and I did forty years ago in connection with the world-models
based on the technique of kinematic relativity, different monotonically
increasing mathematical transformations of t. For example, if t > o in
a world-model that expands uniformly from an initial point-like singularity
{e.g. the initial instant t = o corresponding to an epoch of the order of
io10 years ago), we can introduce another variable T such that
r = t0log(t/t0)+t0,
where t0 is the 'present' value of t, and T = t0, 6T = dt, at t = t0. Although formally T is negatively infinite when t = o, the r-scale applies
only to events for which t > o and not to the initial point-like singularity,
since according to the r-scale the model is static. If the first event after
the initial singularity occurs when, say, t = io" 24 seconds, it will be assigned a finite epoch on the r-scale and be the first event to which that
scale can be applied.

On the Impossibility of an Infinite Past 45

According to current views,1 theoretical world-models (i.e. mathematical

models of the large-scale basic framework of the universe) based on general
relativity must contain singularities, e.g. an initial singularity corresponding
to an epoch of 'world-creation'8 at a finite past epoch. This conclusion is
consistent with current interpretations of the observational results (optical
and radio) that definitely rule out, inter alia, all steady-state world-models,
both those without and those with mutual recessional motion of the
galaxies.
Imperial College of Science and Technology

BENTLEY, R. [1838]: Sermoni Preached at Boyle't Lecture, etc. (edited by A. Dyce.)

London.
GILSON, E. [1938]: The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure (translated by I. Trethowan and
F. J. Sheed). London: Sheed and Ward.
HAWKING, S. W. and ELLIS, G. F. R. [1973]: The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time.
Cambridge University Press.
RUSSELL, B. A. W. [1937]: Principles of Mathematics. Cambridge University Press.
VAIHINCER, H. [1924]: The Philosophy of 'At If (translated by C. K. Ogden). London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
WHITROW, G. J. [1966]: 'Time and the Universe' in J. T. Fraser (cd.): The Voices of Time.
New York: Braziller.
1

See Hawking and Ellis [1973].

World-creation' signifies a finite past. To claim more than that takes us beyond science
into theology.

1 r

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REFERENCES

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