Toward a dialectical interpretation of time and change

Klaus F. Riegel

pp. 57-108

in: Bernard S. Gorman, Alden E. Wessman (eds), The personal experience of time, Berlin, Springer, 1977

Abstract

In one of his insightful though complex treatments, Piaget (1970a,b) complained that unlike geometry for the study of space, there is no formal theory available for the study of time. By proposing the term chronometry for such a theory, Piaget seems to have assigned interval properties to it. Interval properties also characterize formal operational systems of Newtonian space and the concrete operational systems of projective space. In opposition to such an interpretation and in spite of all the measurements that we are taking, I argue here that our concept of time should realize a much simpler basis; that is, it should rely on categorical or relational systems. The need for arguing in this way at all indicates how much we have uncritically subordinated our time concept to the powerful geometry of space and how little we have succeeded in exploring the philosophical basis of time in an independent manner.¹