The passing of time is familiar to everyone: all living things die, generation follows upon generation, the seasons change; even the earth and the universe evolve. Yet, as far back as records of human feelings and thoughts are available, a certain unease has been evident, stemming from our awareness of temporal passage.
Through the many fields of knowledge the best minds of humanity—scientists, poets, philosophers, religious leaders, and the aging man in all of us—have reflected on this passage. But the problems of time show no indication of losing their puzzling character under the impact of scientific knowledge and humanistic insight. The deepest problems seem to refer to conflicts which man can neither resolve nor accept as unresolvable. Thus time, while intimately familiar, has also remained a stranger.
This encyclopedic volume sets forth a new theory as a modest but powerful means of putting order into the many ways that man encounters the reality of time. While developing this theory, it also offers scholarly and scientific perspectives of ideas about matter, life, death, evolution, and value.
The principle of Dr. Fraser’s theory is that all major integrative levels of the world—the electromagnetic universe, the world of atomic particles, of aggregate matter, of the cyclic and aging orders of life, of mind, and of society— display certain conflicts which are unresolvable on their indigenous levels of occurrence. They do, however, find transient solutions in the course of inorganic and organic evolution through the emergence of the next higher level of integration. To each of these levels there corresponds a different type of temporality. What we call “time” comprises all of these levels. The well known difficulties of giving a discursive report on the nature of time (that is, giving a definition of what we mean by the term) stem mostly from the hopelessly confused image that obtains when the hierarchical character of time remains unrecognized.
The theory of time as a hierarchy of unresolvable conflicts provides a coherent conceptual scaffolding for, and directs the exploration of, the many “voices of time” which are surveyed, critically evaluated, and integrated in this book of true intellectual adventure.
“Finally, the title deserves a note,” writes the author in his introduction to the present work. “According to the theory of time as conflict, the most comprehensive level of temporality commanded by man... is associated with certain unresolvable conflicts of his faculties or capacities. One way we may describe this conflict is to regard it as one between knowledge felt and knowledge understood. These two warring projections of a single underlying tension are ordinarily recognized as passion and knowledge.”
J. T. FRASER is one of the world’s leading authorities in the interdisciplinary study of time. Founder and Secretary of the International Society for the Study of Time, he is editor or coeditor and contributor to the following volumes: 'The Voices of Time' (1966); 'The Study of Time v. 1' (1972); 'The Study of Time v. 2' (1975); and 'Timekeepers and Time' (1975). He directs and edits the series 'Perspectives in the Study of Time'. He has taught courses and conducted seminars in the study of time at M.I.T., Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Maryland and is currently teaching the history of science at Fordham University’s Liberal Arts College. Dr. Fraser was formerly a research scientist in communication techniques, magnetic resonance, and field theory.