Research note - Time and the mobile body

Journal/Book: Time Soc. 1999; 8: 6 Bonhill Street, London, England EC2a 4Pu. Sage Publications Ltd. 183-193.

Abstract: One standard model for time is the 'timeline'. According to this model, experience is stored and the future projected as a linear narrative of continuities and successions. I will argue that animal mobility is a plausible source for the linear construction of time. Time is linear, when it is linear, because the organism is focussed in a point, at here and now, and, as a result of its linear mobility, projects that point in the form of a line. Another model, here called the 'timespread', ignores sequence and assimilates experience to categories. Once actualized, the timespread model amounts to 'knowledge'. Both models, timeline and timespread, are realized from the perspective of an individual organism restricted to a particular, if mobile, location, and accumulating its now-experiences in ways that reflect its self-interest.

Note: Article Burrows D, 511 W 232 St, Apartment E52, Bronx,NY 10463 USA

Keyword(s): body; dynamical systems theory; now; time; timeline; timespread

Zurück | Weiter