ABSTRACT
Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) asks himself, ‘what then is time?’ and in the confusion of his famous answer points to the dual nature of human understanding: the ‘situation of knowing’ as a solitary one of self-consciousness and the ‘situation of not knowing’ as one shared with another in the exchange of language. In the nineteenth century, William James links human consciousness to temporal awareness and repeats Augustine’s wording; in the twentieth century, Gerald Edelman, describing his model of the brain in neurobiology, quotes James’ description with the echo of Augustine; this chapter gives a summary introduction to Edelman’s theory of ‘neural Darwinism’. The work of M.A.K. Halliday on language and J.T. Fraser on time is central to the argument of this book; both refer approvingly to Edelman’s theory, Halliday in relation to his concepts of phylogenesis, ontogenesis and logogenesis, Fraser in devising the terms time felt and time understood for the two types of temporality of the dual nervous system described by Edelman.
