The Ever-Present Origin - Michael Goodnight - Editor

More documents

Recommendations

Info

temporal aspects enumerated. We are not dealing with incongruentphenomena but with varied aspects and manifestational modalities of abasic phenomenon devoid of any spatial character. In other words, apredominantly categorical evaluation is not appropriate here. Everycategorical system is an idealized ordering schema by which actualphenomena are fixed and absolutized; as such it is a three-dimensionalframework with a static and spatial character. Such categorical systemsare able to deal with the world only within a three-dimensional andconceptual world-view.We shall have to become accustomed to recognizing acategoricatelements and the pre-eminent acategorical magnitude, "time," as anintensity. Its binding and integrating function is expressed in itsacategorical efficacy. Our previous and strictly categorical mode ofthinking must be complemented by and integrated with the addition of theacategorical mode of realization. We will have no success with' masteringthe tasks given to our epoch unless we have the courage to supersede themerely three-dimensional, spatially conceived systems.This is not to say that we must reject them, only that they be reduced tothen proper magnitudes and extensities. Intensities—hitherto spatializedand fixed—demand their own mode of arrangement, systasis. Whereverwe are able to perceive acategorical effectualities as such and not ascategorical fixities, the world will become transparent. We are then nolonger tied to the spatial structure of systems but will be able to seethrough them systatically (integratively). The transparently (diaphanously)emerging space will then no longer be a three-dimensional but already afour-dimensinal reality.With the terms "four-dimensional," and particularly "fourth dimension"'—the form in which "time" is manifest in a physical sense—we have touchedupon a key in a certain sense that can be of aid in clarifying ourpredicament. The fact that the vast complex "time," encompassing and coconstitutingthe world, has been ignored for centuries, even excluded fromknowledge, or at best falsely spatialized, has left us unprepared to copewith the extraordinary implications of the phenomenon of time just whenmodern knowledge thrust it on our attention. As long as the epoch paidtribute to the three-dimensional world conception, time remained asuppressed force, and as such appeared with a vengeance when it wasfinally freed (or freed itself).Like any suppressed or repressed force, when first released it overpowers,frightens, and confuses us in a destructive manner and seems to hold theupper hand. Because we were accustomed for generations to the oldconception, we thought ourselves able to dominate it with our spatializingfalsification. Imprisoned in our three-dimensional conceptual world, webelieved time to be no more than an easily subdued and harmlessaccessory which could be employed with impunity merely as clock time.Since it turns out that time is much more, indeed is a world constituent,the degree of repercussions in the wake of this knowledge has been in66
proportion to the discrepancy between our previous estimation of time andits actual and enduring efficacy. But this discrepancy is so pronouncedthat we can one gradually realize that time means more than clock time.Time first irrupted into our consciousness as a reality or world constituentwith Einstein's formulation of the four-dimensional space-time continuum,that is to say at the beginning of the present century. Consciously orunconsciously the time question has played a principle role in the naturalsciences ever since. As a consequence of the new scientific theories, itsinterpretation and estimation have undergone an almost unnoticeable, butgradual year-by-year modification. Some references may shed light on thisparticularly noteworthy and fundamental state of affairs; these referenceswill also provide a brief preliminary orientation on the subject that will beexplored in detail in the course of the following chapters.Prior to the exposition of the relativity theory, which is unthinkable without.the time component, Planck advanced his quantum theory. The result wasthat linear continuity and the succession of temporal events wereabandoned in favor of individual temporal impulses. This was followed byN. Bohr and the wave mechanics of de Broglie and Schrödinger, whichgave validity to the principle of complementarity. According to theprinciple of complementarity, both matter and light are to be understoodas being corpuscle as well as wave. They become visible in a sense bothas a spatial magnitude, as it were, and as a temporal element.In biology, the mutational theory of de Vries implicitly demonstrates timeas an intensity; and mutation theory, together with quantum theory, wavemechanics, and the theory of relativity, form the four cornerstones of ourpresent-day natural sciences. In addition, psychoanalysis makes it possiblefor us to speak today of a time phenomenon that could be called timecondensation,which occurs in psychic events and is manifest, forexample, in dreams. And finally, technology outdoes itself from year toyear in shrinking space by mastering time and temporally condensinggreat distances, either by supersonic aircraft or by narrowing them towardthe temporal zero-point via radio and television.We meet up with this same preoccupation in art: the introduction of timein painting destroys the pictorial content or—admittedly less frequently—shapes it according to different laws, as in the work of Juan Gris, Braque,and Picasso. And leaving aside other disciplines like philosophy, we canobserve in poetry how the scenes and acts unfold in the plays of ThorntonWilder and Ferdinand Bruckner in utter disregard of clock time, creatingexpressive possibilities for truly "fourdimensional" time. In all of theseexamples time-freedom has already come into view.The completely novel foundations of the new theories in science and of themeans of expression in the arts rest on the inclusion of the time factor intothe rigid, materialistic, and spatially conceived systems prevalent until1900. Yet the incorporation of time into our reality is far from complete;even today there are far-reaching attempts being made toward67
Page 5 and 6:
deficient forms which have become a
Page 7 and 8:
they could not reach their intent w
Page 9 and 10:
identity, or with his being equated
Page 11 and 12:
was especially influential on Greek
Page 13 and 14:
anticipated by Pope Sabinus, who in
Page 16 and 17: discovery of Augustine's words. "I
Page 18 and 19: concretion of space, our epoch is c
Page 20 and 21: While plumbing the hidden depths of
Page 22 and 23: With Leonardo the perspectival mean
Page 24 and 25: perspective, had become common prop
Page 26 and 27: not an avenue. Although man's horiz
Page 28 and 29: order to obtain a sequential view o
Page 30 and 31: the truly unrepresentable become ev
Page 32 and 33: apparent in the development of aper
Page 34 and 35: characteristics of the structures,
Page 36 and 37: Structureaugmentation, a loss or a
Page 38 and 39: "silenced music" of which St. John
Page 40 and 41: meantime the integral perception an
Page 42 and 43: homogeneity of the viscera, as well
Page 44 and 45: Archaic — OriginaryMagicempathy a
Page 46 and 47: IntegralCreed)Method(Divinity)(Eteo
Page 48 and 49: that structure itself. Orestes' act
Page 50 and 51: in its silent meaning, for he dedic
Page 52 and 53: directed way, and to a mythical dem
Page 54 and 55: Even though we may be unable to do
Page 56 and 57: of arational possibilities which ar
Page 58 and 59: chapters 5, 6, and 7, we would like
Page 60 and 61: presupposes in any event the mental
Page 62 and 63: capability is being formed in him w
Page 64 and 65: At the moment when consciousness be
Page 68 and 69: understanding the phenomenon of tim
Page 70 and 71: temporal forms which co-constitute
Page 72 and 73: crystallizing in a new perception o
Page 74 and 75: dream-like and somnolent aspects an
Page 76 and 77: ealization now manifesting itself a
show all

The Ever-Present Origin - Michael Goodnight - Editor

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?