Time

Typology

1. Jennifer Gidley:

“Russian archaeologist L. S. Klejn (2005) has recently identified “twelve concepts of time . . .

These are

1. the primordial presentism,
2. the cyclic notion of time,
3. the genealogical, labeled perception of time (marked time),
4. the linear concept (measured time),
5. the dynamic time (the notion of the flow of time),
6. the concept of general time,
7. the vector time,
8. the time acceleration,
9. the relativist concept,
10. the static time,
11. and the annihilation of time” (Abstract).

His article discusses how they manifest various archaeological epochs and how they are displayed in archaeology. The full article is only available in Russian.”

(https://www.academia.edu/197841/The_Evolution_of_Consciousness_as_a_Planetary_Imperative_An_Integration_of_Integral_Views)

2. Palaeos:

• "Cosmological time is logarithmic; it begins with the postulated unimaginably short moments of, and immediately following, the Big Bang, then becomes more sedate as the universe expands and things slow down. Finally it settles down to a leisurely rate of billions of years. Scientists have even postulated trillions upon trillions of future years in which all the stars slowly go out, a rather bleak prospect which does not take into account various other factors such as alternative cosmologies and possible future space-time engineering technology. For now, Cosmic Time is defined as the period from the origin of the known universe (the "Big Bang") to the present, a period of some 13.7 billion years (or 137 geons), and is considered to extend an indefinite but finite number of gigayears into the future.

• Geological Time encompasses four and a half billion years of Earth History, and is divided into eons, eras, periods, epochs, and so on. Five aeons are postulated here: the Chaotian, Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic, and Phanerozoic eons. Of these, the Chaotian was the shortest, but also in a sense the most important, because that's when the Solar System was formed. Then for the next three eons, which make up almost the whole history of the Earth, nothing happened except for microbes swimming around the primordial ocean. Finally, following an extraordinary coincidence of events such as a really big ice age (Snowball Earth), the break-up of a supercontinent (called Rodinia) a rise in oxygen, and change in ocean chemistry, complex life suddenly emerged, the result being the Cambrian explosion and the start of the Phanerozoic. From the Cambrian to now was little more than a tenth of the age of the Earth and Solar System. Yet so much happens that we need finer divisions, and eons, eras and geons are replaced by eras (the famous Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic), periods, epochs, ages, -and megayears. Hence the story of the succession of all sorts of amazing plants and animals, documented herein.

• Quaternary Time: Between the megayear expanses of Geological Time, the drift of continents, and the rise and fall of dynasties of life, and the mere centuries of Historical Time, with its own rise and fall of dynasties of nations and civilisations, there is an intermediate region that we don't really cover in great detail here, but is still interesting nevertheless. That is Quaternary Time, which covers the two million or so years of paleoclimatology, paleoanthropology, paleontology, and archeology from the Plio-Pleistocene to the current Holocene, using divisions of time on the scale of millennia and tens of millennia. This timescale is relevant to studies on medium term climate fluctuations and their ecological effects. From our anthropocentric perspective, paleolithic human migrations and the origin and early evolution of human language and culture, all pertain to this timescale.

• Historical Time is, well, about history. Everything from the beginnings of the city-state and civilization in the Chalcolithic through to Bronze Age Near and Middle East, social innovations as commerce, monarchy, the church, and the standing army, the rise and fall of empires, the invention of the printing press, the steam engine and the industrial revolution. As with geological time there seems to be a sort of exponential acceleration, with lots of things happening in the twentieth century, and even more with the information revolution and the global noosphere of the internet. According to transhumanists we're heading for a technological singularity, although we have already passed peak oil. With the way resources are being consumed and species exterminated, it is clear we've reached the end of nature, and perhaps the end of history. Which brings us to...

• Future Time: Although the future is unpredictable and remains to be determined, four possible stylised outcomes are listed here for the near-term, each of which will have implications for the longer term. These are - postapocalypse (out with a bang, equivalent or even worse than the P-T mass extinction), long decline (out with a wimper), ecotopia (the best of all possible worlds from our present knowledge), and singularity (the evolution of radical new "kingdom", totally transcending humanity and current life on Earth). All of which implies very different timescales of course."

(http://palaeos.com/time/index.html)

Discussion

Jennifer Gidley’s Reflections on Time

Jennifer Gidley:

“To the perspectival age time meant nothing but a system of measurement or relationships between two moments. . . . Time, however, is a much more complex phenomenon than the mere instrumentality or accidence of chronological time.” (Gebser, 1949/1985, p. 285)

My cognizance of the complexity of the discourses on time—cultural, scientific, philosophical, feminist, historical, theological— in tim idates me. Yet, inspired by the criticality of our present planetary moment in time, I feel beckoned into developing a tentative temporal template for my evolution of consciousness research.

The imperative to contextualize the default notion of time is twofold. First, a lack of contextualization may lead to my work being misconstrued as being “just another modernist, linear, (perhaps tacitly) Euro centric narrative”—albeit camouflaged as integral. Second, the macrohistorical nature of my narrative necessitates a careful consideration of time from multiple perspectives. By the default view of time I mean the three phase linear time model of past, present and future that underlies modernist models of development, evolution and progress .

These models are invariably value loaded such that the past is problematized as primitive, while progress, development, evolution are lauded as unilinear paths to civilization. Although these modernist grand narratives have been under siege for decades, theoretical understanding of this taken for granted notion of time is relatively undeveloped.

Over the last two millennia the linear conception of time—which began as the more formal measurement of already recognized cosmic and natural temporal cycles—became rationally conceptualized as the chronological measurement of change. The early development of clocks included astronomical/astrological features, indicating notions of time that were still connected with cosmic cycles—beautifully exemplified by the astrological clock in the tower of the town hall in Prague, built in the early 15th century. Since the Industrial Revolution linear, chronological time has further contracted by association with mechanical time and factory time.

Further scientific and technological developments in the last century have seen temporal partitioning become hyper exaggerated by increasingly sophisticated scientific and digital means, from one extreme in radioactive half life, to the other extreme in nanoseconds.

Linear time has also become dominated by politico-economic features, exemplified by such phrases as “time is money,” “buying time.” This mechanistic and economic colonization of time has increased exponentially in recent decades, contributing to the speed addiction of our present age—demonstrated in fast foods, internet, instant global text messaging, accelerated learning, and the three-quick-steps-to-spiritual-enlightenment culture. Just to cope there are drugs to keep up, such as speed and cocaine; and drugs to slow down, such as alcohol and tranquillizers. However, in parallel with the accelerating freneticism and time panic of the 20th century alternative notions have been emerging.

In the early 20 century significant theoretical developments concerning the notion of time occurred in both the natural sciences and the social sciences. In physics, Einstein’s theory of relativity displaced the Newtonian conception of objective time as an unchangeable, permanent ‘place’ upon which the movement or change of things can be measured in discrete, identical fragments (Einstein, 1920/2000; Weik, 2004). Synchronously, the new philosophical phenomenology of Husserl was positing a subjective time—the time of the soul—in contrast to external or objective time (Husserl, 1905/1964). Numerous theoretical attempts have been made to come to terms with these new perspectives on time. Philosophical developments include Heidegger’s phenomenological notion of existential time (Heidegger, 1927/1962); Whitehead’s process view of time (Griffin, 1986a, 1986b; Weik, 2004; Whitehead, 1929/1985); and Bergson’s paradoxical notion of durée — the conscious flow of life—which includes a radical multiplicity of Time (Bergson, 1922/1965; Deleuze, 1966/2006). Significant — albeit lesser known—contributions were also made by Steiner and Gebser and will be explicated in this appendix. More recent attempts have been made to reconcile some of these views, e.g., by Schatzki’s notion of history and Ricoeur’s poetics of narrative (Ricoeur, 1985/1988; Schatzki,2005).

In addition, there has been a recent trend towards diversity in conceptualizations of time (Geissler, 2002). Notions of cyclical time are being reclaimed from non-western (Eliade, 1954/1989; Inayatullah, 1999) and feminist perspectives (Forman & Sowton, 1989; Kristeva, 1986; Leccardi, 1996; Milojevic, 2005b). Initially these two major time perspectives—linear and cyclical—were set up in opposition to each other. However, increasingly, new discourses are emerging that provide a more complex, nuanced perspective.

These include:

• Postmodern philosophical concepts such as repetition and difference (Deleuze & Conley, 1992), complex recursion (Morin, 2005a);

• Complex concepts of time in archaeology (Klejn, 2005)

The emergence of futures studies as an academic field, introducing new concepts of past, present and future, e.g. the 200-year present and the long-now (Boulding, 1990; Slaughter, 1996; Slaughter & Inayatullah, 2000); macrohistory (Galtung & Inayatullah, 1998); long-term and non-Western future-time concepts (Inayatullah, 2000; Inayatullah & Boxwell, 2003);

• Spiral notions of development in worldviews and values reflecting both cyclical and progressive notions (Beck & Cowan, 1996; Cowan & Todorovic, 2005; Inayatullah, 1999; Inayatullah, 2004; Wilber, 1996c);

• Contemporary developments in the “time arts—music and film” (Benedikter, 2005);

• Multiple dimensions of time (Starr & Torbert, 2005);

• Spiritual notions of Eternal Time and the Now (Tolle, 2004);

• The emergent slow time movement, e.g. slow food movement (Parkins, 2004); the slow school movement (McGill, 2005).

While there is unquestionably now a substantial and growing body of literature on the various notions of time, there is a lack of theoretical coherence. This appendix is primarily an explication of the time perspectives (temporics) of Steiner, Gebser and Wilber, who frame many of the above-mentioned notions in a macrohistorical, evolutionary context. It is a work-in-progress, providing additional depth to the main paper and pointing to theoretical possibilities for further Research.”

(https://www.academia.edu/197841/The_Evolution_of_Consciousness_as_a_Planetary_Imperative_An_Integration_of_Integral_Views)

More information

The Time Conceptions of Gebser, Steiner and Wilber