Another clarification ... dialogue inevitably generates readings grounded
in the reader's agenda, to which some context from the writer's is usefully
added.
Far from accepting any objective view of time, the 'timescales' approach I
have sketched here on occasion, critiques objective, linear, universalized
views of clock or chronological time in at least three ways:
1. Relational timescales. Durations and rates are long or short only
relative to the "cogent moments" (Salthe's term), the internally generated
characteristic-process timescales, of the (usually) adjacent levels of
organization. This does not require a universal system of units of measure
or comparison, for by construction the timescales of adjacent levels differ
by one or two orders of magnitude, so that qualitative difference, esp.
between same-level, faster-constituent-process-level, and
slower-constraint-level, is as seen from the internal timescale perspective
of each level of organization and its own characteristic processes.
2. External heterochrony, or "folded time". The order of events in time is
also not objective or universal, at least to the extent that order is a
proxy for nearness in time, insofar as semiotic artifacts and their
processes of production and interpretation can mediate dynamic couplings
among events distant in time relative to other not-so-coupled events nearer
in time. The relevant history of every event lies in a history that is
complexly folded relative to linear chronologies (which are themselves a
specialized construction). Moreover, the combination of (2) with (1) can
lead to what, relative to linear chronology, are anticipations, in which
present cogent moments that extend into the future relative to the units on
faster scales appear anticipatory with respect to linear time.
3. Internal heterochrony, or distributive developmental time. A new
perspective on development in which the probability distribution of
behaviors in a cumulative and anticipatory repertory changes so as to come
to more closely resemble the collective distribution of the community,
rather than there being a linear movement through characteristic stages.
(This is new work-in-progress, presented at two conferences, and maybe soon
to appear in a new form on my website.) It really takes a diagram and some
exposition to make the point.
JAY.
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JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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