Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
...expressive of more immediate concerns. But the menace of death is of another order, and it affects man more profoundly because of personal awareness of the temporal categories of past, present, and future. This time-consciousness is possessed by no other species with such insistent clarity. It enables man to draw upon past experience in the present and to plan for future contingencies. This...
Time is frequently perceived as a continuum with three main divisions: past, present, and future. The past and future times are defined in relation to the present time (now). Past tense refers to any time before the present time, and future tense refers to any time after the present. Not all languages perceive this relationship as a linear one, nor do these categories characterize all...
...as a dimension actually misrepresents reality. Philosophers of the manifold hold that the flow of time or human advance through time is an illusion. They argue, for example, that words such as past, future, and now, as well as the tenses of verbs, are indexical expressions that refer to the act of their own utterance. Hence, the alleged change of an event from being future to being past is an...
...passage in the De interpretatione that was influential in later developments in this area. In chapter 9 of that work, Aristotle discussed the assertion “There will be a sea battle tomorrow.” The discussion assumes that as of now the question is still unsettled. Although there are different interpretations of the passage, Aristotle seems there to have been maintaining...
...In addition, modal factors were incorporated into the theory of supposition. But the most important developments in modal logic occurred in three other contexts: (1) whether propositions about future contingent events are now true or false (Aristotle had raised this question in De interpretatione, chapter 9), (2) whether a future contingent event can be known in advance, and (3)...
...“Mary will have been informed”). In this area, statements are employed in which some essential reference to the before-after relationship or the past-present-future relationship is at issue; and the ideas of succession, change, and constancy enter in.
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commercial contract calling for the purchase or sale of specified quantities of a commodity at specified future dates. The origin of futures contracts was in trade in agricultural commodities, and the term commodity is used to define the underlying asset even though the contract is frequently completely divorced from the product. It therefore differs from a simple forward purchase or sale in the cash market, which involves actual delivery of the commodity at the agreed time in the future.
From very early times, and in many lines of trade, buyers and sellers have found it advantageous to enter into contracts—termed futures contracts—calling for delivery of a commodity at a later date. Dutch whalers in the 16th century entered into forward sales contracts before sailing, partly to finance their voyage and partly to get a better price for their product. From early times, U.S. potato growers in Maine made forward sales of potatoes at planting time. The European futures markets arose out of import trade. Cotton importers in Liverpool, for example, entered forward contracts with U.S. exporters from about 1840. With the introduction of the fast transatlantic Cunard mail services, it became possible for cotton exporters in the United States to send samples to Liverpool in advance of the slow cargo ships, which carried the bulk of the cotton. Futures trading within the United States in the form of “to arrive” contracts appears to have commenced before the railroad days (1850s) in Chicago. Merchants in Chicago who bought wheat from outlying territories were not sure of the arrival time and quality of a delivery. The introduction of “to arrive” contracts enabled the sellers to get a better price for their product and buyers to avoid serious price risk.
Futures trading of this sort in grains, coffee, cotton, and...
...expressive of more immediate concerns. But the menace of death is of another order, and it affects man more profoundly because of personal awareness of the temporal categories of past, present, and future. This time-consciousness is possessed by no other species with such insistent clarity. It enables man to draw upon past experience in the present and to plan for future contingencies. This...
Time is frequently perceived as a continuum with three main divisions: past, present, and future. The past and future times are defined in relation to the present time (now). Past tense refers to any time before the present time, and future tense refers to any time after the present. Not all languages perceive this relationship as a linear one, nor do these categories characterize all...
...passage in the De interpretatione that was influential in later developments in this area. In chapter 9 of that work, Aristotle discussed the assertion “There will be a sea battle tomorrow.” The discussion assumes that as of now the question is still unsettled. Although there are different interpretations of the passage, Aristotle seems there to have been maintaining...
...In addition, modal factors were incorporated into the theory of supposition. But the most important developments in modal logic occurred in three other contexts: (1) whether propositions about future contingent events are now true or false (Aristotle had raised this question in De interpretatione, chapter 9), (2) whether a future contingent event can be known in advance, and (3)...
...“Mary will have been informed”). In this area, statements are employed in which some essential reference to the...
...tenses other than the present, there is a famous passage in the De interpretatione that was influential in later developments in this area. In chapter 9 of that work, Aristotle discussed the assertion “There will be a sea battle tomorrow.” The discussion assumes that as of now the question is still unsettled. Although there are different interpretations of the passage,...
The disappearance of the Latin future has been remedied in most Romance languages by the development of new forms of periphrastic origin. Many of these forms use some reflex of habēre ‘to have’ joined to an infinitive. From Latin cantāre habēo ‘I will sing’ are derived Italian canterò, Spanish, Catalan cantaré, Portuguese...
...with three main divisions: past, present, and future. The past and future times are defined in relation to the present time (now). Past tense refers to any time before the present time, and future tense refers to any time after the present. Not all languages perceive this relationship as a linear one, nor do these categories characterize all possible times. Tense, then, is a...
...insights that came to him in preparing this work, he was led to realize the possibility of a political unity of the world in a 1958 work called Die Atombombe und die Zukunft des Menschen (The Future of Mankind, 1961). The aim of this political world union would not be absolute sovereignty but rather world confederation, in which the various entities could live and communicate in...
...is important to recognize this now and to begin the arduous mental and physical preparations accordingly. The words of Arthur C. Clarke, one of the most perceptive of contemporary seers, in his Profiles of the Future (1962), are worth recalling in this context. Thinking ahead to the countless aeons that could stem from the remarkable human achievement summarized in the history of...
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