On The Heterogeneity of Social Development - Kinship Studies

21The conceptual separation of time and space dates back to theNewtonian physics wherein time was absolutely defined as flowingindependently from physical and social processes and unsusceptibleto change (Adam B. 1990: 50). This understanding was later refutedby Einstein's theory of relativity, which echoes the concepts ofprimitive cosmology. According to it, physical reality appears as the"four-dimensional existence" and not, as in Newtonian mechanics "theevolution of a three-dimensional existence" (Einstein A. 1993 (1920):150; italics in the original). The applicability of the Newtonian theoryis confined to the situations when gravitational fields are "weak" and"all masses move with respect to the co-ordinate system with velocitieswhich are small compared with the velocity of light" (Einstein A.1993(1920): 102).While sociologists have recognised the theoretical importance ofthe advances of natural sciences in the field of time-space ontology,their practical implementation within social sciences remainsproblematic."Whilst Einstein's work has no direct practical application for socialscience, we need to take note of it at the level of theory since most socialscientists understand natural time exclusively through the conceptualframework of Newtonian physics as absolute, objective, spatial and clocklike"(Adam B. 1990: 56).It is essential that the theory of relativity was produced only dueto the inclusion of the social context into the physical system ofmeasurement. Time being conceived as dependent on a certain pointof observation makes the whole Einstein's theory sociological parexcellence. Only for the social actor can time be intrinsically fusedwith space. Moreover if light is assumed to possess a velocity whichforms a barrier between the ‘time versus space’ reality and ‘timespace’reality and humans are believed to live according to the firstmodel, then the question arises as to how did they manage tocalculate this velocity. With a pardoned vulgarity, one might say thatman should have chanced to be at the source of light before the latterstarted to move, waited until the light was emitted, outrun the lightwith a sort of stop-watch in his hand and stayed waiting for the lightto finally arrive. While the human body as yet can not enjoy a ridewith a speed higher than the velocity of light, human cognition surelycan significantly exceed the latter. A conclusion suggests itself thatsocial scientists deal, as a matter of fact, with the physics of thehighest velocities - only they face up with these processes, so to say,au milieu du visage. The backwardness of the measurement system ofsocial sciences in comparison to the measurement system of naturalsciences is, then, quite understandable and proceeds from thequalities of their object. Husserl once noted that, in the case ofnatural sciences achievements, one deals with