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"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of ideas."

TIL: the invention of an independent time

Very slowly, from the sixteenth century onwards, a new theory of time began to emerge. Many of the arguments for it involve thought experiments: experiments we can work through in our minds. Philosophers asked, “What would happen to time if the stars stopped moving?”.

The first fully-fledged ‘absolute’ account of time emerged a bit later, in the 1640s work of Pierre Gassendi (trans. 1972, 384-8). He argued that time would continue to flow at the same rate, whether the stars stuttered or sped up. This means that time must be a necessary, real being, independent of other things in the universe.

In the 1650s, Cambridge philosopher Henry More independently developed another absolutism about time. More (repr. 1992, 487) also used thought experiments, arguing that if God annihilated the world, and then remade it, time would still pass. However, he puts a new twist on the nature of time.
More argues there was time before God created the material world, and there will still be time after it ends. This means time is eternal, unchanging - ‘never-fading’. This hints at the true nature of time: it is an ‘obscure sub-indication’ of God. More (1662, 164; VII: 2) claims that time is God’s eternal existence, his attribute of eternity.

--- Thomas, Emily (2021) 'Time Through Time: Its Evolution through Western Philosophy in Seven Ideas.', Think., 20 (58). pp. 23-38.