Julius Thomas Fraser
Encyclopedia
J. T. Fraser made important scholarly contributions to the interdisciplinary Study of Time and was a founding member of the International Society for the Study of Time. His work has strongly influenced thinking about the nature of time
across the disciplines from physics
to sociology
, biology
to comparative religion
, and he was a seminal figure in the general interdisciplinary study of temporality
. His work has been particularly influential on the work of Frederick Turner and Alexander Argyros.
, Fraser was not drafted into the military on account of his partial Jewish heritage. Following the Second World War, he emigrated to the United States. Working as an engineer and an inventor for several years, he registering at least seven US patents between 1958 and 1963. However, he already began to think about the nature of time much earlier, as early as 1945. His early training had been in physics, but he completed his Ph.D. in 1969 in the Fakultät für Geistes- und Staatswissenschaften (Faculty of Social and Political Sciences) at the University of Hannover, and his dissertation was entitled: Time as a Hierarchy of Creative Conflicts. Although this work provided a template for many of his later investigations, he had already touched on many of the core ideas in his first articles in 1966, the same year that he founded the www.studyoftime.org (International Society for the Study of time)
Fraser authored and edited many papers over the next several decades, but following the success of his 1966 edited volume of interdiscplinary articles, The Voices of Time, which remains a regularly cited classic of time studies, he oversaw editing and publication of the first ten volumes of the The Study of Time series through the www.studyoftime.org. More recent contributions include his role as a founding editor of the interdisciplinary Journal Kronoscope
.
Fraser died on November 20, 2010 in his home in Westport, CT. which he shared with his wife, Jane.
Much of his work is an interplay between these themes, whether played out in disciplinary theatres of the sciences, the arts, the humanities, and history, or as a bridging principle between fields of enquiry themselves. Arguably, the distinction between disciplines as diverse as those that epistemically belong in the natural and human spheres of knowledge find their methodological and definitional norms informed by his hierarchical theory of time. Indeed, his work fits into the emerging cosmic evolution paradigm, describing as it does how each level of reality emerges, and how that newly emergent level experiences time.
Fraser posits that the universe has emerged into levels of temporality, beginning with the pure energy of the Big Bang, which he terms atemporality (without-time). As the universe cooled, the quantum physical universe emerged, giving rise to probabilistic prototemporality. With the emergence of molecules and macrophysical objects, we get deterministic eotemporality. The emergence of living things gives rise to a more forward direction of time experience, or biotemporality, which is followed by the strongly directional time experience of human beings, or nootemporality. Fraser then goes on to posit that a sociotemporality has since emerged. Fraser posits that as each level of complexity in the universe encounters unresolvable paradoxes, a new level of complexity emerges, with its own paradoxes.
These nested levels (umwelt
s) represent qualitatively different temporalities, for both time and the perception of time have evolved. In one sense, time is physically different than it was when the universe first came into being. As the universe continues to change, so too does time change. In the humanistic sense, it is the perception of time that has changed, as humans have biologically evolved with different concepts of the world to those of our ancestral species.
This biological evolution, and the different perceptions of time that it implies, are played out in every moment in our brain. Our brain functions in one sense as a unitary organ, but evolutionarily it contains different brains: one that controls autonomic function, one that perceives the world in the moment, and one that understands the world intellectually. By this understanding, the biological self that understands only the moment is in perpetual conflict with the intellectual self that conceives of past, present, future, and the possibility of eternity. This, then, at its root is the conflict that underlies the tension of time felt and time understood. People can never resolve the fact that we live in the moment, but dream of the eternal.
Fraser builds his reasoning on an interpretation of the nature of time that permits a novel understanding of the dynamics of human values. He shows that seeking the true, doing what is right, and admiring what is beautiful, far from promoting permanence, continuity, and balance in individual and social affairs, actually perpetuate the chronic insecurity of the time-knowing species and drive its remarkable creativity and frightening destructiveness. For example let truth as a human value be defined as the recognition of permanence in reality. Its historical function has been the creation of conflicts and, through them,social, cultural, and personal change. Likewise if the quality of a feeling is such as to make one desire its perpetuation, then whatever is believed to be responsible for it is said to be beautiful. Of course the opposite is said to be ugly. The historical function of beauty has again been the creation of conflicts and consequent change.
Fraser's ideas have consequences not only for our understanding of the physical universe, but also of the emergence of the human mind (a parallel model of which was developed by the psychologist Clare W. Graves
in his model of psychosocial emergence) and for culture and the arts. For example, Fraser posits that in literature tragedy is the purest expression of the universe's emergent temporality
. Human values are instructions whose purpose is that of keeping alive the unresolvable, creative conflicts of the strange walker. One can see analogies in the writings of Karl Popper
and his evolutionary epistemology
- "All life is problem solving"- and of course Popper's First, Second and Third Worlds.
The theory of time as conflict - nested hierarchy of unresolvable conflicts.
atemporal -
blank sheet of paper,
objects travelling at speed of light,
black hole/Big Bang
prototemporal -
fragmented shaft of an arrow,
particle-waves travelling at less than speed of light,
instants may be specified only statistically
eotemporal -
shaft of an arrow,
countable and orderable without a preferred direction,
nowless time,
physical matter,
time orientable but not time oriented
biotemporal -
short arrow
future, past, present,limited temporal horizons;
organic present,
simultaneities of necessity,
organic intentionality directed toward concrete goals and serving the continuity of the organism's life
nootemporal -
long straight arrow,
"You'll come to me out of the long ago",
intentionality directed towards concrete or symbolic goals serving continued integrity of the self
sociotemporal -
A society is a group of people with a family of conflicts that defines them and distinguishes them from other societies.
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
across the disciplines from physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
to sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
to comparative religion
Comparative religion
Comparative religion is a field of religious studies that analyzes the similarities and differences of themes, myths, rituals and concepts among the world's religions...
, and he was a seminal figure in the general interdisciplinary study of temporality
Temporality
Temporality is a term often used in philosophy in talking about the way time is. The traditional mode of temporality is a linear procession of past, present, and future....
. His work has been particularly influential on the work of Frederick Turner and Alexander Argyros.
Biography
Born and raised in HungaryHungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, Fraser was not drafted into the military on account of his partial Jewish heritage. Following the Second World War, he emigrated to the United States. Working as an engineer and an inventor for several years, he registering at least seven US patents between 1958 and 1963. However, he already began to think about the nature of time much earlier, as early as 1945. His early training had been in physics, but he completed his Ph.D. in 1969 in the Fakultät für Geistes- und Staatswissenschaften (Faculty of Social and Political Sciences) at the University of Hannover, and his dissertation was entitled: Time as a Hierarchy of Creative Conflicts. Although this work provided a template for many of his later investigations, he had already touched on many of the core ideas in his first articles in 1966, the same year that he founded the www.studyoftime.org (International Society for the Study of time)
Fraser authored and edited many papers over the next several decades, but following the success of his 1966 edited volume of interdiscplinary articles, The Voices of Time, which remains a regularly cited classic of time studies, he oversaw editing and publication of the first ten volumes of the The Study of Time series through the www.studyoftime.org. More recent contributions include his role as a founding editor of the interdisciplinary Journal Kronoscope
Kronoscope
KronoScope is a peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of time, both in the humanities and in the sciences. It is published biannually under the imprint of Brill Publishers on behalf of the International Society for the Study of Time. It is indexed in Sociological...
.
Fraser died on November 20, 2010 in his home in Westport, CT. which he shared with his wife, Jane.
Central themes in his writings
Throughout his many works, two themes stand out centrally:-
- The Hierarchical Theory of Time
- The Theory of Time as Conflict
Much of his work is an interplay between these themes, whether played out in disciplinary theatres of the sciences, the arts, the humanities, and history, or as a bridging principle between fields of enquiry themselves. Arguably, the distinction between disciplines as diverse as those that epistemically belong in the natural and human spheres of knowledge find their methodological and definitional norms informed by his hierarchical theory of time. Indeed, his work fits into the emerging cosmic evolution paradigm, describing as it does how each level of reality emerges, and how that newly emergent level experiences time.
Fraser posits that the universe has emerged into levels of temporality, beginning with the pure energy of the Big Bang, which he terms atemporality (without-time). As the universe cooled, the quantum physical universe emerged, giving rise to probabilistic prototemporality. With the emergence of molecules and macrophysical objects, we get deterministic eotemporality. The emergence of living things gives rise to a more forward direction of time experience, or biotemporality, which is followed by the strongly directional time experience of human beings, or nootemporality. Fraser then goes on to posit that a sociotemporality has since emerged. Fraser posits that as each level of complexity in the universe encounters unresolvable paradoxes, a new level of complexity emerges, with its own paradoxes.
These nested levels (umwelt
Umwelt
According to Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas A. Sebeok, umwelt is the "biological foundations that lie at the very epicenter of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal." The term is usually translated as "self-centered world"...
s) represent qualitatively different temporalities, for both time and the perception of time have evolved. In one sense, time is physically different than it was when the universe first came into being. As the universe continues to change, so too does time change. In the humanistic sense, it is the perception of time that has changed, as humans have biologically evolved with different concepts of the world to those of our ancestral species.
This biological evolution, and the different perceptions of time that it implies, are played out in every moment in our brain. Our brain functions in one sense as a unitary organ, but evolutionarily it contains different brains: one that controls autonomic function, one that perceives the world in the moment, and one that understands the world intellectually. By this understanding, the biological self that understands only the moment is in perpetual conflict with the intellectual self that conceives of past, present, future, and the possibility of eternity. This, then, at its root is the conflict that underlies the tension of time felt and time understood. People can never resolve the fact that we live in the moment, but dream of the eternal.
Fraser builds his reasoning on an interpretation of the nature of time that permits a novel understanding of the dynamics of human values. He shows that seeking the true, doing what is right, and admiring what is beautiful, far from promoting permanence, continuity, and balance in individual and social affairs, actually perpetuate the chronic insecurity of the time-knowing species and drive its remarkable creativity and frightening destructiveness. For example let truth as a human value be defined as the recognition of permanence in reality. Its historical function has been the creation of conflicts and, through them,social, cultural, and personal change. Likewise if the quality of a feeling is such as to make one desire its perpetuation, then whatever is believed to be responsible for it is said to be beautiful. Of course the opposite is said to be ugly. The historical function of beauty has again been the creation of conflicts and consequent change.
Fraser's ideas have consequences not only for our understanding of the physical universe, but also of the emergence of the human mind (a parallel model of which was developed by the psychologist Clare W. Graves
Clare W. Graves
Clare W. Graves was a professor of psychology and originator of a theory of adult human development. He was born in New Richmond, Indiana.-Education:...
in his model of psychosocial emergence) and for culture and the arts. For example, Fraser posits that in literature tragedy is the purest expression of the universe's emergent temporality
Temporality
Temporality is a term often used in philosophy in talking about the way time is. The traditional mode of temporality is a linear procession of past, present, and future....
. Human values are instructions whose purpose is that of keeping alive the unresolvable, creative conflicts of the strange walker. One can see analogies in the writings of Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
and his evolutionary epistemology
Evolutionary epistemology
Evolutionary epistemology refers to two distinct topics - on the one hand, the biological evolution of cognitive mechanisms in animals and humans, and on the other hand, a theory in that knowledge itself evolves by natural selection....
- "All life is problem solving"- and of course Popper's First, Second and Third Worlds.
The theory of time as conflict - nested hierarchy of unresolvable conflicts.
atemporal -
blank sheet of paper,
objects travelling at speed of light,
black hole/Big Bang
prototemporal -
fragmented shaft of an arrow,
particle-waves travelling at less than speed of light,
instants may be specified only statistically
eotemporal -
shaft of an arrow,
countable and orderable without a preferred direction,
nowless time,
physical matter,
time orientable but not time oriented
biotemporal -
short arrow
future, past, present,limited temporal horizons;
organic present,
simultaneities of necessity,
organic intentionality directed toward concrete goals and serving the continuity of the organism's life
nootemporal -
long straight arrow,
"You'll come to me out of the long ago",
intentionality directed towards concrete or symbolic goals serving continued integrity of the self
sociotemporal -
A society is a group of people with a family of conflicts that defines them and distinguishes them from other societies.
Books
Books that he has authored include:- 1975, Of Time, Passion, and Knowledge
- 1978, Time as Conflict: a Scientific and Humanistic Study
- 1982, The Genesis and Evolution of Time: a Critique of Interpretations in Physics
- 1987, Time the Familiar Stranger
- 1999, Time, Conflict, and Human Values
- 2007, Time and Time Again: Reports from a Boundary of the Universe
See also
- Philosophy of space and timePhilosophy of space and timePhilosophy of space and time is the branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology, epistemology, and character of space and time. While such ideas have been central to philosophy from its inception, the philosophy of space and time was both an inspiration for and a...
- Powers of TenPowers of TenPowers of Ten is a 1968 American documentary short film written and directed by Charles and Ray Eames. The film depicts the relative scale of the Universe in factors of ten . The film is an adaptation of the book Cosmic View by Dutch educator Kees Boeke, and more recently is the basis of a new...
, a 1977 film in which a Fraser book makes a brief appearance - TemporalityTemporalityTemporality is a term often used in philosophy in talking about the way time is. The traditional mode of temporality is a linear procession of past, present, and future....