Eternity

Eternity
Eternity personified, holding the ourobouros. Caryatid in the apse of Milan Cathedral (1611).

While in the popular mind, eternity (or foreverness) often simply means existence for a limitless amount of time, many have used it to refer to a timeless existence altogether outside time. By contrast, infinite temporal existence is then called sempiternity. Something eternal exists outside time; by contrast, something sempiternal exists throughout an infinite time. Sempiternity is also known as everlastingness.[1]

There are a number of arguments for eternity, by which proponents of the concept, principally Aristotle, purported to prove that matter, motion, and time must have existed eternally.

Contents

The idea of eternity

The metaphysics of eternity might be summarized by the question: can anything be said to exist "outside of" or independent of Time/Space, and if so how and why? Some consequential metaphysical questions of some importance are then: can "information" be said to exist without, or independent of, the human mind, and, if so, what would be the content and "purpose" of such information?

God and eternity