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4 J. Soc. Phil. 293 (1938-1939)
Time Perspectives

handle is hein.journals/jsocphur4 and id is 297 raw text is: TIME PERSPECTIVES LAWRENCE K. FRANK I T HE quest for certainty in a precarious and ambiguous world has everywhere led man to believe his ideas and values were permanent, unchanging truths. Time, of necessity, has been conceived as the enemy of man, forever threatening his most cherished possessions and, para- doxically, as his greatest sanction for these treasured beliefs. Only recently has time become the focus of sustained inquiry and reflection as we have begun to realize that time is not merely a variable in scien- tific study but is also a process, a multi-dimensional and highly variable continuum, with a relativity no less than space. Indeed, it is already evident that for years to come we will be confronted with the task of clarifying the many and far-reaching implications of the more recent conceptions of time. The conception of a four-dimensional manifold in which occur the events that are now becoming the focus of scientific thinking has brought space-time as the successor to the preceding conception of three-dimen- sional space and single dimensional time. This space-time is not merely three dimensional space, with an added dimension of time, but an inte- gral fusion of space and time, since three dimensions of space, to exist anywhere, must exist in a time continuum. It would indeed be equally appropriate to speak of time, with three-dimensional space as further characteristics of existents, but it is more desirable to consider space- time as the four dimensions of every existent. Moreover, this space-time is not absolute and unvarying but changeable, according to the frame of reference used, so that both space and time are relative. The gradual recognition of this altered conception will bring far-reaching changes in scientific theory and investigations, especially in biology where static structures have been for so long the preoccupation of morphology, with little or no apparent relation to functional activity. The space-time con- 293

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