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Mary Calkins, Victoria Welby, and the spatialization of time

Thomas, Emily

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Abstract

This paper explores a trans-Atlantic clash about time: in 1899, American philosopher Mary Calkins argued we should not spatialize time; in 1899, British philosopher Victoria Welby argued we should. I take their disagreement as a starting point to contextualize, study, and compare the accounts of time presented in their respective articles. Both Calkins and Welby cared deeply about time, writing on the topic across their careers, but their views have not been studied by historians of philosophy. This is unfortunate, for I argue their novel theories reward attention. Calkins’ 1899 account draws on Kant to arrive at the earliest American-British causal theory of time, pioneers the metaphysical applications of temporal experimental psychology, and replies to F. H. Bradley’s proclamation that it is ‘impossible’ to explain the appearance of time. Meanwhile, I read Welby’s 1907 account as offering a radical metaphysic, on which time is literally a kind of space, resonating with 1880s literature around the ‘fourth dimension’ and H. G. Wells’ 1895 novel The Time Machine. I have uncovered an early draft of Welby’s paper dating to 1902 and, using this alongside other unstudied writings by Welby, trace the development of her views from the 1880s onwards.

Citation

Thomas, E. (2023). Mary Calkins, Victoria Welby, and the spatialization of time. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 31(2), 205-230. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2022.2123780

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 8, 2022
Online Publication Date Oct 11, 2022
Publication Date 2023
Deposit Date Sep 12, 2022
Publicly Available Date Mar 13, 2023
Journal British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Print ISSN 0960-8788
Electronic ISSN 1469-3526
Publisher Routledge
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 31
Issue 2
Pages 205-230
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2022.2123780
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1191703

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.






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