Time in history and culture

pp. 137-159

in: Klaus Mainzer, The little book of time, New York City, Copernicus, 2002

Abstract

Historical cultures, like individuals, developed different internal times in the course of their evolution. As a result, philosophers of history have offered different temporal models to explain the birth and demise of historical cultures. The theory of complex system also allows us to model the dynamical development of social, economic, and cultural systems. In this chapter, we will learn that at least some aspects of irreversible temporal developments in human society may be analyzed by methods analogous to those used for physical and biological processes. But this does not imply a naturalistic reductionism. In historical and technological cultures, time represents the emergence of a new phase of biological and socio-cultural evolution.