¹ "Time is a necessary representation that serves as a foundation for all intui tions." E. Kant, Critique de la raison pure, Paris, P.U.F., new edition, 1963, p. 61. Translated by A. Tremesaygues and B. Pacaud.

² A. Koyré, "Du Monde de l'à-peu-près à l'univers de la précision," Critique, No. 28, 1948, reproduced in Etudes d'histoire de la pensée philosophique, Paris, Gallimard, 1971, p. 353. Michel Serres takes up this idea in Passage du Nord-Ouest, Ch. "Espace et temps," Paris, Ed. de Minuit, 1980, pp. 67-83.

³ We should note that the paradox of Zeno, a fundamental problem and thus destined to remain without a definitive solution, does not aspire to demonstrating the illusory aspect of spatial division. The illusion appears, according to Zeno, when this division is put into time.

⁴ James Joyce attempted a difficult transposition: "History is a nightmare from which I try to awaken" (in Ulysses, New York, Random House, p. 35).

⁵ A. Kagame, "Aperception empirique du temps et conception de l'histoire dans la pensée bantou," in Les Cultures et le Temps, Paris, Payot, 1975, p. 112.

⁶ The Balinese use two calendars. The first is made up of ten cycles of names having a name from one to ten, the most important being those of 5, 6 and 7. The binomial conjunctions indicate the fateful dates (every 35 days for 576, every 42 days for 677, etc.) The wheel of time thus causes a sort of quantum of duration to reappear, units of 30, 35, 42 or 210 days, but there is neither a beginning nor an end to the year. The second calendar is solar-lunar. It is even more complicated and every 63 "real" days involves a curious catching-up of two lunar days for one solar day.

The Mayas superimposed three cylindrical projections: lunar, Venusian and solar. As for the Aztec calendar, it resembled that of the Mayas, with one divinatory year of 260 days that is also the result of a complex combination of several cycles. These three examples suffice to prove that the precise measurement of time is not an invention of our culture: it is something else that distinguishes it. See Les Prophéties du Chilam Bayan, a presentation of J. M. Le Clézio, Gallimard, 1976; Time and Conduct in Bali, Ch. 14, in C. Geertz, ed., Interpretation of Cultures, Selected Essays, London, Hutchinson, 1975; J. Soustelle, "Le Monde, l'Homme et le Temps," Ch. 3, pp. 122-147, in La Vie quotidienne des Aztèques, Paris, Hachette, 1955.

⁷ For other a contrario examples, S. Brandon, History, Time and Deity. An Historical and Comparative Study of the Conception of Time, London, Nuppfield, 1965; and L. W. Doob, Patterning of Time, Yale University Press, 1971.

⁸ For a recent status of the question, see H. Barreau, "Conception relationelle et conception absolutiste du temps et de l'espace-temps," Arch. de Phil. Franc., 1980, No. 1, pp. 52-72.

⁹ This misconception of the polysemy of time makes J. Attali a prisoner of an evolutionist view similar to many others, namely, that of S. Toulmin and J. Goldfield, The Discovery of Time, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1968; J. Attali, His toires du temps, Paris, Fayard, 1982.

¹⁰ A. Neher shows still more clearly than A. Heschel how the Jewish view is not soothing: there are "holes" in the world in acts, and improvisation accompanies Creation, the work of God but also that of the free man. Is there a more astonishing sentence than that which, according to Neher, the Rabbinical exegesis attributes to God at the time of Creation: "Let's hope this one holds up!" It is true that the "All-Powerful," still according to the same exegesis (Berecit Rabba, 9,4), had already tried twenty-six times and had failed each time. Cf. A. J. Heschel, Les Batisseurs du temps, Paris, Ed. Minuit, 1960, and A. Neher, L'Essence du prophétisme, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1972.

¹¹ There are innumerable writings on this theme. However, the subject is more directly treated and with more original variations by famous authors such as R. Niebuhr, Foi et Histoire, Neuchâte1, Delachaus and Niestlé, 1947; or P. Tillich, Der Widerstreit von Raum und Zeit, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. VI, Stuttgart, Evange lisches Verlagswerk, 1963.

The eternity that follows the "End of Time" is a portion of God's time; this latter is thus, here, well re-established in his omnipotence. Time is a transfinite known only to the Supreme Being. This is why interpretations such as those of Spinoza may finally result in the negotiation of human time.

¹² Following E. Grevisse, Le Bon Usage, J. Duculot Gembloux, 8th ed., 1964, p. 1079: "The subordinate introduced afterward that expresses a past fact, registered in reality…"; the subjunctive is only used for the future "before…" because it indicates an uncertainty. Does the past then only leave uncertainties? This question is one of those that arises throughout this article, but it is interesting to note how modern grammar expresses its philosophical stand.

¹³ See E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1924; G. Bohme, Zeit und Zahl. Studien Zur Zeittheorie bei Platon, Aristoteles, Leibniz und Kant, Frankfurt, Phil. Abhandlun gen, 1974.

¹⁴ St. Augustine, La Cité de Dieu, Book XXII, Ch. XXIV.

¹⁵ St. Augustine, Les Confessions, Book XI, XXVII, 35, translation P. de La briolle, Budé.

¹⁶ R. A. Nisbet, Social Change and History, New York and London, Oxford University Press, 1969.

¹⁷ For a recent scholarly commentary see P. Ricoeur, Temps et récit, Paris, Seuil, 1983.

¹⁸ B. L. Whorf, Linguistique et Anthropologie, Paris, Denoël-Gauthier, 1969, p. 96.

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 97.

²⁰ Ibid., p. 98.

²¹ Newton's definition is always surprising: "Absolute time, true and mathemati cal, without relation to anything exterior, flows uniformly and is called duration… it is quite possible that there is no perfectly equal movement… but time must always pass in the same way", I. Newton, Principes mathématiques de la philoso phie naturelle, translated by the Marquise du Chastelet, Book A, Paris, Blanchard, 1966, Vol. I, pp. 8 and 11.

²² For example, see H. Bergson in Durée et Simultanéité, Paris, P. U. F., 7th ed. "Comment la durée devient mesurable," p. 49 et seq. O. Costa de Beauregard poses it as "the first principle of the science of time," in La notion de temps, Paris, Hermann, 1963.

²³ According to F. A. Isambert, in reality it is Henri Hubert who is at the origin of this intuition. See F. A. Isambert, "Henri Hubert et la sociologie du temps," in Revue française de sociologie, No. 1, Vol. XX, 1979, pp. 183-204.

²⁴ Einstein made a relativist prophecy on this term in 1933 which unfortunately came true: "Here in Germany I am considered a German scholar and in England a Swiss Jew; if things change I will be considered a Swiss scholar in Germany and a refugee German Jew in England."

²⁵ What a strange aberration it is to define through science a transcendant Absolute and refuse to the Being that produces knowledge—that science—all trans cendental capacity! According to Merleau-Ponty, this question of the status of "universal spectator" was ably put to Einstein himself by Bergson. See M. Merleau-Ponty, Signes, Paris, Gallimard, 1960, p. 247; S. Amsterdamski, "The evolutions of Science," in Diogenes, No. 89, p. 52.

²⁶ In O. Costa de Beauregard, Le Second principe de la science du temps, op. cit. p. 133. See also the more general but very pertinent critique of D. de Rougemont, "Information is not Knowledge," in Diogenes, No. 116.

²⁷ This is what essentially distinguishes the propositions developed in the present article from those of Costa de Beauregard. See also J. Earman (ed.), Foundations of Space-Time Theories, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Minneapolis, 1977; and the theses of J.-M. Lévy-Leblond that see the invariability of the speed of light as a result of a theory and not the experimental foundation of the latter in La Recherche, No. 96, 1979; and American Journal of Physicists, No. 3, 1976; No. 47, 1973; No. 48, 1980.

²⁸ Descartes had already used this example in Les Méditations, second meditation in Oeuvres philosophiques, Paris, Garnier.

²⁹ In F. Meyer, Problématique de l'evolution, Paris, P.U.F., 1954, p. 87. This negligence on the subject and its scale, that is, of the universal spectator (Note 26) renders Eastern and Western scientisms absolutely homologous. Quite recently, a review that seems to defend the official point of view (in the East and in the West there exist a scientific and a vulgate doctrine) informs us that "one can glimpse the realization of a dream… These progresses in science reveal the Universe as beautiful and simple at the same time… Natural phenomena appear to us as the manifesta tion of principles that harmoniously control the order of things"; and, further on, "The last frontier of our knowledge may one day be extended to Time Zero, the moment of Creation itself." J. S. Tréfil, in Dialogue, No. 63, 1, 1984, Washington- /American Embassy at Paris, pp. 10 and 15.

³⁰ H. Corbin, En Islam iranien, Paris, Gallimard, 1970, p. 168. This time, representative of the gnostic model, is more precisely that of the Persian mystic Qâsi Said Qommi. To show both the essential identity of these three categories and their incommensurability, Corbin adds apropos of the third time—the most subtle-that it is to it that the verse of the Koran refers speaking of the degrees through which "the angels and the spirit mount toward him in a day whose duration is 50,000 years." (Koran, 70:4) It is also the symbolic cycle oflsmaelian theosophy. The modem conception is no doubt rooted in the Thomist trilogy tempus, aevum, aeternitas. However, this doctrine imitates the gnostic thought in order to combat it more effectively. "Absolutely subtle" time, especially, is only the unknowable duration of the pleroma that the Spirit will one day rejoin in disengaging itself from the absurd tempus. It is not always so clear, even in H. C. Puech, Le Temps de la gnose, Gallimard, 1978.

³¹ J. Pucelle, Le Temps, Paris, P.U.F., 1972.

³² G. J. Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time, London, Nelson, 1961.

³³ The author of "La Dimension Cachée, E. T. Hall, La Danse de la vie—Temps cultural, temps vécu, Paris, Seuil, 1984.

³⁴ Due in part to the work of J. Attali, La Figure de Fraser, Fayard, 1984.

³⁵ "Polychronics" may do several things at once, that is, it reunites in its present the time of diverse phenomenological series (for example attend to business, talk politics, appreciate wine). On the contrary, monochronics acts in a homogeneous time.

³⁶ E. T. Hall, op. cit., p. 38.

³⁷ John T. Fraser, Time as Conflict, Basel-Stuttgart, Birkhäuser Verlag, 1978; Jacob Von Uexkhüll, Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen, Rowolt Verlag.

³⁸ J. T. Fraser, in Of Time, Passion and Knowledge, New York, G. Braziller, 1975, pp. 438-39.

³⁹ J. T. Fraser, ibid., pp. 438-39.

⁴⁰ Aristotle, Physics, IV, 13.

⁴¹ He adds, "Death occupying all the before and all the after of this moment and a good part of the moment," (our underlining), in Les Essais, II, XII, ed. Villery.

⁴² For example Benjamin Gal-Or, after having distinguished four schools of thought on the subject of the irreversibility of time, concludes that "the problem incorporates issues in it that are far beyond our reach now as in the early days of thermodynamics." B. Gal-Or, Science, No. 4030, 1972, p. 11. See also R. Lestienne, Unité et ambivalence du temps physique, C.D.H.S., 1979, B.N. 16° R 20056.

⁴³ Even though Karl Popper has greatly weakened this condition of objective knowledge, the other condition "everything being equal" creates the necessity for a virtual experimental reproduction.

⁴⁴ See A. Gras, "Time of Evolution and the Spirit of the Times," in Diogenes, No. 108, 1979; and Sociologie des ruptures, P.U.F., 1975.

⁴⁵ R. Boudon, La Place du désordre, P.U.F., 1984. For nature, see I. Prigogine and I. Stengers, La Nouvelle alliance, Gallimard, 1980.

⁴⁶ St. Augustine, Les Confessions, Book XI, Ch. XX. E. Cassirer discusses its philosophical reasons adduced and apropos of the duration of sound, anticipates the critique of a certain historical category by explaining: "The determination of time does not enter into acts, but it concerns their intentional projection" in La Philoso phie des formes symboliques, Paris, Minuit, Vol. III, p. 194.

⁴⁷ G. Vattimo and P. A. Rovatti (under their direction) Il Pensiero debole, Feltrinelli, 1980. In France, the sociologist Michel Maffesoli represents this tendency and opposes "formism" to "formalism". See M. Maffesoli, La Conquête du présent, P.U.F., 1979; and "La démarche sociologique" in Revue européenne des sciences sociales, Cahiers Vilfredo Pareto, Vol. XIX, pp. 325-39.

⁴⁸ It is interesting to note that there were few sociologists until recently who pondered on this aspect of the imaginary construction of reality. However, P. Sorokin proposed in 1949 a critical reflection that G. Gurvitch also began in France and that in his wake G. Balandier continued. It is with a great deal of difficulty that a new comprehension of "modern time" thus emerges, finally taken as an ethnogra phic object. See P. Sorokin, Space, Time and Causality, Russell and Russell, No. 4, 1949; G. Gurvitch, La Multiplicité des temps sociaux, in La Vocation actuelle de la sociologie, Vol. II, P.U.F., 1965 (course of 1958); G. Balandier, particularly Sens et puissance, P.U.F., 1971; and Anthropo-logiques, P.U.F., 1974.