What is the Present?

Common sense readers may be surprised to discover what a conundrum is posed by the title of this book and how many eminent thinkers have tackled it, going back to Plato and Aristotle and inevitably involving notions of time and memory. Interestingly, our best understanding is perhaps metaphorical, on which to examples are Husserl's comet tail and William James's glow worm. Aristotle began with the idea of a point on a line, which is related to the idea of punctuality, a consequence of more accurate measurement enabling the scheduling of meetings and transport. One can readily appreciate how the measurement of time tends to compress the experience of the present moment, to which a chapter is devoted, concluding that the present is an abstract concept. Then there is the matter of the historical present. The second part looks at the present in visual art, the moments captured in pictures, especially with the advent of perspective - all this was somewhat deconstructed in modern art. The photo bypasses the eye of the artist to present a snapshot, then narrative is embodied both in stories and cinema as the discussion turns to the cinematic present - the film is the present for the viewer. The concluding chapter reviews outstanding issues, relating the here to the now, an approach that might have been supplemented by Gurdjieff's self-remembering - and it would also have been interesting to consider the present in relation to dreams. However, the interdisciplinary scope of the book is already impressive enough.