What is time?
Physics offers many answers: time as a dimension, time as a parameter, time as a thermodynamic gradient, or time as an emergent illusion. But none of these views address what time means — not in the linguistic sense, but in the fundamental sense of meaning as enactment.
In a relational ontology, time is not a container for events or a backdrop for motion. It is a semantic structure — the direction in which coherence unfolds.
From Flow to Integration
We often speak of time as “flowing,” but this metaphor obscures more than it reveals. What flows, in relational terms, is not a substance or a sequence. What evolves is the integrity of construal.
Each moment — each cut — enacts a perspectival configuration of the system. But these cuts are not isolated snapshots. They are integrative acts, resolving tension among potentialities and coordinating meaning across perspectives.
Time, then, is not a series of moments. It is the systematic unfolding of coherence — a directed movement from open potential toward mutually constraining intelligibility.
Temporal Direction as Constraint Accumulation
Thermodynamics associates the arrow of time with increasing entropy. But from a relational standpoint, the directionality of time reflects increasing semantic integration: each cut inherits constraints from previous ones, while shaping the horizon of those to come.
This is not a causal chain in the classical sense. It is a relational gradient: a shift in how much possibility is available at each cut, and how much structure is required to maintain coherence.
Thus, “past” and “future” are not temporal coordinates. They are positions in a system of semantic consistency.
Duration as Semantic Thickness
We tend to imagine time as a metric line, divided into instants. But instants are not ontologically primary — they are artefacts of measurement.
What matters, relationally, is not duration per se, but the thickness of construal: how much potential a given cut integrates, how many relational threads it gathers and transforms.
A fleeting glance and a long deliberation may span the same seconds — but semantically, one may carry far greater weight. In this model, time is not length, but depth — the density of meaningful possibility actualised at each moment.
Becoming as Coordinated Construal
If time is integration, then becoming is not the passage from one state to another. It is the co-construal of many cuts into a system that holds together.
What gives rise to the sense of time’s passage is not motion, but semantic tension: the felt asymmetry between what is settled and what is still open, between what has already been integrated and what remains unstructured.
This tension drives the continual reconfiguration of the field — not in search of equilibrium, but in pursuit of coherence.
Time and Meaning Are One
In the end, to speak of time in a relational ontology is to speak of meaning. Not linguistic meaning, but the systemic structuring of possibility.
Time is not a variable. It is a mode of construal — the enactment of coherence in the face of potential. It does not flow. It articulates. It does not pass. It unfolds.
We do not live in time. We participate in its ongoing articulation — cut by cut, perspective by perspective, meaning by meaning.
No comments:
Post a Comment