Abstract

This dissertation is a study of the effect predispositions have on interpretation generally and on our reckoning of what time is. It is specifically an examination of entailments accruing to the idea of immutability as a presupposition in thinking and in thinking about time. Thus, the essay is an exercise in hermeneutics, an appreciation of some of the forces which shape a sense of things. ;The first chapter is an inquiry into method--its contribution to meaning and understanding, and its function in directing the course of thought. The impetus is from Ivo Andric's contention that the stories we tell might possibly embody the true history of mankind, that stories are translations, that learning the truth is a secretive operation, a ferreting out of what was already there. The objective is to suggest that our everyday encounters with the world--through the naive realism and common sense which most of us use to negotiate experience--employ methods possibly suitable in some contexts but deceptive if followed strictly. Through a discussion of habit, myth, metaphor, and logic, it becomes evident that method is an imposition and, in Nietzsche's term, a lie that seeks confirmation of its own presuppositions of nomothetic consistency. Method tends to perpetuate a metaphor or myth of immutability. ;Metaphors direct thought to confined areas of interpretation. Clocks as metaphors of time reinforce prior interpretations of time while they make their own contributions to a determination of what time is. The second chapter is an exercise in phenomenology, a reading of time through clocks. Trees, hourglasses, traditional clocks, and digital watches all reflect peculiar complexions of time. Each contributes to our personal and cultural attitudes about the constitution of time. For example, the traditional clock perpetuates notions of temporal endlessness and succession. The digital watch, however, is congruent with spatialized categories, and it reinforces an image of time that is atomistic and discontinuous. Digital time is an aggregtion of concrete, immutable moments. It is a postmodern metaphor reflecting the protracted desire for the immutable in thought and in time