Verbal Art: English Literary Narratives
nested integrative levels of nature / hierarchy of temporalities / canonical forms of causation / world5. / human ‘minding’ / sociotemporal
nootemporal / collective intentionality / historical causation
individual long-term intentionality / social world /
society
mental world
of individual human
4. / living matter
(organic being) / biotemporal / short-term intentionality / physical world of living organism
3. / matter
(material being) / eotemporal / deterministic lawfulness / inorganic physical world
2. / particles + mass
(stochastic being) / prototemporal / probabilistic lawfulness / wave-particle world
1. / photons no mass
(becoming) / atemporal / none - chaos / electro-magnetic radiation
J.T. Fraser’s model of the evolution of temporalities
The levels of nature are
• nested in that each emerges from the previous, with increasing orders of complexity
• integrative in that each earlier level continues to co-exist with those which have later emerged
• are sufficiently stable and differentiated to have characteristic properties of temporality and causation.
Umwelt- the spatio-temporal “reality” experienced/ construed by the inhabitants of each level (Jakob von Uexküll: an organism’s understanding of its environment).
Level 1: the world of electro-magnetic radiation, a world inhabited by photons with no mass, characterised by atemporality (everything happens at once), a world of becoming rather than being, lacking a form of causation. The reality of a chaotic world.
Level 2: the world inhabited by wave-particles with mass. Prototemporality: the world in which the possibility of time emerges. Its causation/lawfulness is probabilistic: not possible to point to the exact instant when a particle is emitted, only to the probability of its having been emitted (as in the half life of radioactive material eg half-life of cobalt 60 is 5.27 years, ie after 5.27 years half of the possible particle emissions will have taken place). The reality of being is stochastic, possible, but not identifiable.
Level 3: the world of inorganic physical matter, of galaxies, of material being. Eotemporality, the 'dawn of time'. (EosGreek goddess of dawn.) Its value can be measured, though the value will depend on the measurer’s spatial location. As a consequence, this temporality is not directional, is even reversible. Its causation is that of deterministic lawfulness; its inhabitants exist in a reality of determinable cause and effect.
Level 4: the world of living organisms, of organic being, the physiological world of the human species. Biotemporality: makes sense to us in our human experience, is directional, moving from birth to death for the individual organism. The first temporality to which the concept of “the present” is relevant, as the time at which the organism feels or satisfies its need. Its canonical form of causation Fraser calls short-term intentionality, as in the organism’s intention to satisfy its needs of survival and reproduction.
Level 5: that peculiar to the evolution of the human species. Fraser: human 'minding' - associated with the most complex development, that of the human brain. Gives rise to two worlds of human experience: that internal to the individual consciousness (memories, predictions, fantasies) and that of social interaction and consensus (myth, ritual, social identities and attributes, historical understanding). Nootemporality: the time of the individual mental world (noos Greek 'mind'), associated causation that of individual long-term intentionality. Sociotemporality: the time of the social world, the society of the human group, associated causation that of collective intentionality / historical causation.
1. (Elizabeth waits for an omnibus.)
Buses swooped, settled, were off – garish caravans, glistening with red and yellow varnish. But which should she get on to? She had no preferences. Of course, she would not push her way. She inclined to be passive. It was expression she needed, but her eyes were fine, Chinese, oriental, and, as her mother said, with such nice shoulders and holding herself so straight, she was always charming to look at; and lately, in the evening especially, when she was interested, for she never seemed excited, she looked almost beautiful, very stately, very serene. What could she be thinking? ... Well, thought Clarissa about three o'clock in the morning, reading Baron Marbot for she could not sleep,, it proves she has a heart.
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway. (first published 1925) Penguin, p148.
2. Twenty years old, Orion had gazed across the table at Molly's father with a mixture of resentment and misery. He was good at math, of course, but he excelled at building little computer systems piece by piece. Orion had always loved to tinker. He was a puzzle solver, no deep-thinking puzzle maker. He had done well in his CS courses: programming, distributed systems, hardware, algorithms, and graphics, for which he'd rendered a faceted crystal vase filled with water and a single red rose so that it cast an accurate shadow on a wood-grain tabletop. Were these exercises at all important? In Carl's presence, he'd felt acutely that computer science lacked a certain - he would never say the word aloud - but, yes, the field lacked a certain majesty.
Allegra Goodman, The Cookbook Collector (2010), p134.
3. Perhaps if he had been strong enough to persist in his determination to be the more because she was less, that evening might have had a better issue. If his energy could have borne down that check, he might still have wrought on Rosamond’s vision and will. We cannot be sure that any natures, however inflexible or peculiar, will resist this effect from a more massive being than their own. They may be taken by storm and for the moment converted, becoming part of the soul which enwraps them in the ardour of its movement.But poor Lydgate had a throbbing pain within him , and his energy had fallen short of its task.
George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871-2) Penguin, p758.
4. Years later, they remembered where they had been. At their desks or in their beds, indoors or out. Driving, walking, working, alert, or half asleep. Each recalled momentary confusion. An airplane hit the World Trade Center. Pilot error? Technical glitch? And then the shock. A second plane. No accident. No mistake. The flames were real, as everyone could see on television. The Twin Towers burning, again and again. Bodies falling, again and again. The same towers, and the same bodies, and the Pentagon in flames. The scenes played constantly, at once heartbreaking and titillating, their repetition necessary, but also cheapening. Who, after all, could believe such a catastrophe after just one viewing? And who, after viewing once, could look away?
Allegra Goodman, The Cookbook Collector (2010) p329.
5. (In Venice, the artist Hunter talks with Dally, a young woman - possibly pre WWI.)
Hunter had somehow fetched up here, demobilized from a war that nobody knew about, obscurely damaged, seeking refuge from time, safety behind the cloaks and masks and thousand-named mists of Venezia.
"There was a war? Where?"
"Europe. Everywhere. But no one seems to know of it...here..." he hesitated, with a wary look -"yet."
"Why not? It's so far away the news hasn't reached here 'yet'?" She let a breath go by, then - "Or it hasn't happened 'yet'?"
He gazed back, not in distress so much as a queer forgiveness, as if reluctant to blame her for not knowing. How could any of them know?
"Then I guess you're a time-traveler from the future?" Not mocking, really, nor much surprised either. (text omitted)
(Hunter) "I wish I could remember. Anything. Whatever the time-reversal of 'remembering' is ..."
Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day (2006) p577.
Rosemary Huisman
Honorary Associate Professor, The University of Sydney.
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