Michael Goldman, Princeton University

Then and now are not so far apart, as my reader may confirm by trying to think back to when this sentence began. When did that then cease to be now? For that matter, when did the sentence really begin? Perhaps two weeks ago when I first drafted it, perhaps in kindergarten., perhaps as part of a gleam in my father's eye, perhaps in the Renaissance, to which we shall soon be going. Or perhaps the then we are seeking will not exist till a moment from now—or was it a moment ago?—when, troubled by some distracting twist in my argument, you looked back and began what I have called "this sentence" again.

I'm trying to evoke really two points in this riff on now and then. First, that the present moment is not a dimensionless point on the time line, but...