Yes, and it does some wonders for it's believers: who would be heretic
enough to tell me that I can go back to 1977 and undo cracking my favourite
glass bowl in two by flushing hot water into it. I subscribe to the faith,
but nevertheless cringe at the phrase "physical-time has a prior and
independent reality" seeing what damage it does to theories of
consciousness to believe it has to be built up out of discrete atoms of
time. OK, no. We're not having that discussion again.
It is more interesting to note how the past-in-the present co-constitutes
the present as THIS lived present, if I may play another variation of the
theme introuduced by Ana
>What matters is having
>BOTH, i.e. the implied relation between them (the sign relation, in fact),
>and the way in which having the second-world breaks the time barrier: the
>possibility of multiple 'presents' is the medium through which we make
>'pasts' and 'futures' that are meaningful for a present (as Ana S. clearly
>articulates).
As the quality of the present changes, it involves a corresponding change
in the past. On the personal plane this is pivotal in psychoanalysis and
any number of other techniques of reflective work on our existence: change
the present by changing the past. See past relationships differently and
get leverage for being-in-a-new-way.
I _think_ that it works similarly even in un-reflective modes, when we
don't NOTICE that our past changes along with our present -- as when happy
times get that extra nostalgic sheen by present circumstances...
Slavoj Zizek has some interesting ideas of how it works on a collective
level, how nationalism returns to the traditions of a past that never
was... but now IS, in present practices. (It may be in "The sublime object
of ideology", or in "For they know not what they do: enjoyment as a
political factor" -- I'm not sure, cause I heard him in lecture.)
Anyway: this links interestingly to the scientific re-writing of the
past... I was going to say that, of COURSE we have to do that, unless we
want to assign a hierarchy to the sciences, so that one of them finishes
it's research first, while all the others are put on the backburner until
the next one and then the next one are in turn... I think it's pretty much
a necessity that scholarly knowledge in local domains moves a bit by fits
and starts, as it is, after all, just part of the huge network of "all our
sciences". Hmm... I'll let the issue reel here on the verge of the abyss...
Anybody care to do the future?
Eva