ABSTRACT
J.T. Fraser, founder in 1966 of ISST (the International Society for the Study of Time), developed a hierarchical theory of time based on boundaries between levels of complexity in nature. He lists five ‘nested integrative levels of nature’, each associated with ‘canonical temporalities and causations’. Fraser uses the biologist von Uexkül’s term umwelt for the spatio-temporal ‘reality’ experienced by the inhabitants of each level. The three earliest worlds of electro-magnetic radiation (atemporality), wave-particles (prototemporality) and the inorganic physical world of large matter (eotemporality), only recently understood, constitute the ‘extended human umwelt’. The evolutionarily later levels of organic life (biotemporality) and ‘human minding’ (Fraser’s term) constitute the human umwelt, earlier understood in human experience and the context for the development of human language. The evolutionary latest level of ‘human minding’ gives rise to two ‘worlds’ of human experience: the social world of the group (sociotemporality) and the mental world of the individual (nootemporality). The chapter describes some compatibilities in the work of Fraser, M.A.K. Halliday and Gerald Edelman, and briefly comments on the privileging of ‘atemporality’ in nineteenth/twentieth century philosophy (as in the discussion of ‘becoming’).
