I’m not that good at searching, but maybe someone has an answer or lead for me. Please provide links, even if you have something which VAGUELY relates to this question. Feel free to skip to my question, which is #3 at the bottom. Greek words are underlined.
If the duration of now depends on how we conceive of the passage of time, then Becoming philosophers Heraclitus, William James and Henri Bergson experience a duration of now different from Being philosophers Plotinus, Parmenides, and disciples of the Eleatic School.
Science is dominated by a Becoming perspective, with its emphasis on chronos as its time–objective time. Correlational study, Prospective study, Retrospective study, Longitudinal study, all relate to events occurring within a Becoming or chronos flow of time. Laboratory and field experiments commonly examine the impact of an event or intervention on some outcome, and thus also operate within a Becoming perspective. Daniel N. Stern (in The Present Moment, 2004) is an advocate of the Being perspective and kairos–subjective time. Stern points out that “contemporary psychology has been comfortable with chronos as its time concept and use it productively. For instance, if one is interested in notions of before and after, the estimation of time intervals, the temporal limits of perceiving simultaneity or continuity, most studies of memory, or even how narratives and the real world is constructed in the mind, there is no need for a present moment that is any thicker than a point, no need for subjective units of time, and certainly no need for present moments that unfold with characteristic time contours.” (p. 137).
Stern’s mother-infant dyad research, in contrast, required a thicker present moment, a present moment that unfolds with uncharacteristic time contours.
My question is: Does anyone have a definition of (or further information about) Becoming research versus Being research? Any information about these philosophical perspectives as they relate to Science and research?
It seems appropriate to question time at 7:40am. I don’t study time and have no reliable idea of where to point you, but I do know that sans the writer’s strike, Terminator 4 should be released by 2009.
The next question should regard the nature of material space as it occupies time. Does material space have the ability to exist as “becoming” or “being”, independent of the viewer, are these perspectives present in the object? Even if there are two perspectives of time, is it really possible for there to be two separate kinds of “time” in actual co-existence. Time can’t be what it’s not. So are we talking about stretching space instead?
Well, subjectively, material only exists within conscious and perceived time, at least as a matter of philosophy, which “being” and “becoming” lean towards. I guess I’m setting a base dimension in that statement, i.e. time, and relating everything as it exists towards time. So material is only an expression of how it exists in time and time is an uncertain confluence of “being” and “becoming”… How would you arrange time and space?
Whether there are actually two separate kinds of “time” is not my concern. My concern has to do with the separate experiences of time, how they influence how you do research, and whether these two philosophies which influence temporal experience have influenced the philosophy of science in some distinct bifurcated way.
We have the reality of how a researcher (for example, Stern), sitting firmly in his philosophical perspective instead of simply bending to the research methods (and Becoming perspective) which have been handed down by “science authorities”. Before him, people examined the mother-infant dyad for centuries, but until Stern in the 1960s filmed the dyad interacting and repeatedly examined the interaction sequence, slowing it down, as if under a microscope, they never saw how much was going on in a 2-3 second interval. The Being view is related to an expanded present moment where a LOT occurs, whereas for the Becoming, it’s just one filmic frame passing from the future into the past.
His observational research does not fit into any of the categories listed as Becoming. It’s a different paradigm for research, a Being paradigm in a field dominated by the Becoming paradigm.
The early philosophers took their own phenomenology of time and acted as if it were ontology- or the reality of time.
I’m beginning to think the Philosophy of Science has not yet considered the differential influence of these two philosophical positions on research…
Time is simply a construct we use to help us to describe the relationships between events.
For time to exist, you need two or more events, and an observer - just as for distance to exist, you need two or more objects and an observer.
In fact, in both cases, to make any sort of meaningful statement, you need three or more, rather than two or more, so that the third (and later) events or objects can be used as reference points.
An instant of time is a purely mathematical or philosophical construct. By definition, an instant has no duration, therefore no events can occur in an instant. An instant in time is like a point on a yardstick: it can only be used as a reference point by an observer.
A big difference between time and distance is that people don’t waste distance talking nonsense about this sort of thing.
Certainly there is an “objective” time, and for those who subscribe to a Becoming philosophical view, that suits them very well.
I guess this is much more about the different experiences of time than any “reality” of time. And it seems throughout the ages, philosophers have discussed the two different experiences of time (though they spoke of these experiences as reality, I think incorrectly).
It may have more to do with the Being view having a greater APPRECIATION for the present moment, whereas the Becoming view having a greater appreciation for history and anticipation.
Dean Wareham, frontman for indie bands Luna and Galaxie 5oo told his therapist Bernie about his struggle to be in the here and now:
Dean: Jack has this incredible ability to enjoy the moment. He’s always smiling and laughing and having a good time, while I’m sad about the past and worried about the future. …
Bernie: You’re pissing on the present
Dean: What?
Bernie: If you have one foot in the past and one in the future, then you’re pissing on the present. [from Black Postcards: A rock and roll romance, by Dean Wareham, 2008]
Of course, in this passage, their both revealing their bias against the Becoming view, though Dean may be unhappily stuck with it. There is no connection between either view and dissatisfaction, and it’s no better to piss on the past & future.
I don’t think you’re going to find what you want in philosophy of science, since that tends to be from a historical or sociological perspective. And I think generalisations about the theory-ladenness of ‘time’ within any one research paradigm wouldn’t really affect those broader issues.
But yeah, the philosophy of particular sciences, like philosophy of cognitive science, and the philosophy of physics, are full of interesting discussions of time. Best philosophy resource on the internet is the Stanford Encyclopaedia, and the bibliography might have more specific answers to your problems: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time-experience/
Looking back on our lives, we can all recall having a different experience of time when we were much younger, and time dragged in a manner differently than today.
