Mike,
when I used the word "just" in "just an elaborate topology" I meant that the
underlying model of each of the different "characteristic time scales" was
still fundamentally spatial. From the Bergsonian point of view they would
be "scientific time" signified by the letter "t" and measured with clocks
and chronometers. The elaborate topology provided with the concept of
heterochrony doesn't alter this fundamental characteristic of the
interacting time scales. I used the word "just" with an implicit reference
to the Bergsonian notion of "lived time" (duree reele); as in "just
scientific not lived time. "
Husserl and Heidegger also developed incisive analyses of the relationship
between "constructed/expressed time" and "lived time". Heidegger's
deconstruction of Aristotelian time; ie, the basic linear
past-present-future and instantaneous "now" model ( in Fundamental Problems
of Phenomenology, sections 19-21) is the best and most penetrating
development of this direction of which I am aware. If anyone knows of other
good work in this direction I'd like to hear about it.
Many of the issues Bergson developed around the confusion between the two
types of time, e.g., the question of freedom v. determinism, seem relevant
to discussions that occur on xmca, e.g. agency/structure.
But whereas I appreciate Bergson's distinctions concerning time, I'm not so
keen on the rest of his philosophy which seems quite akin to Teilhard de
Chardin's (and now Ken Wilber's?) spiritualist evolutionism. I'm not sure
where one would go with that. In the twilight all cats are grey.
Still I remain puzzed as to how any of Bergson's ideas might have been
appropriated by the dominant conceptions of legitimacy as I understood
Diane to claim.
Paul H. Dillon
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