Department of BioEngineering

Nagaoka University of Technology

Nagaoka 940-2188, Japan

An essence of the dynamics of time in time will be seen in a simple example of synchronizing clocks among three or more than three people (Leibniz, 1966, p.272). Suppose that your time read out of your watch and my time read out of mine interact conversationally. The effect of the synchronization of the two, when recognized by the third party, in turn initiates another synchronization between the watch of the latter and, say, mine. Likewise, when you come to recognize the synchronization between that third party and myself, further synchronization of watches between yourself and either the third party or myself would follow. Once a synchronization of watches between an arbitrary pair out of three or more than three people gets started, successive synchronization propagates among the people indefinitely. Time is thus seen as the sticky web of the timing experiences among the people carrying their watches.

We shall in the present article examine how material time could be envisioned in the framework of material dynamics, since time inherent to our empirical world is exclusively materialistic. For this purpose, we require a certain reference against which the intended dynamics of time in time could be figured out. The candidate we shall try is our linguistic institution itself in view of the fact that any likely discourse of the dynamics has to be practiced in our languages.

A most fundamental reference to any dynamic aspect of interaction is descriptively intended in the present progressive mode (Matsuno, 1998a). Interaction materializes in the mutual process of action and reaction in progress more than anything else. Take, for instance, two molecules that are colliding with each other. Any empirical observation of the colliding molecules presumes the presence of an observer who can describe the molecular collision in progress. The object of this description is necessarily in the present progressive mode. It is subsequently transferred into the past progressive mode with the description of the ongoing interaction. The descriptive transference from the present progressive to the past progressive tense requires a timing of interaction to be frozen in the record in the sense that interactions in the past progressive tense remain invariant in the record. The timing of the crossing from variable to invariable interactions is a temporal activity of descriptive origin. Although one may say that any changes in interaction materialize in the mode of the present progressive tense, their descriptive comprehension always takes place in the past progressive. This is due to the simple fact that speaking and comprehending the speaking cannot simultaneously be accomplished by the same speaking subject (Pattee, 1977). Insofar as one wishes to comprehend interactions descriptively, the capacity of timing the crossing from the present progressive to the past progressive tense has to be taken for granted, otherwise no changes in interaction could be comprehended (Salthe, 1993).

When two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule react and make two water molecules, one may expect that the chemical reaction process could be described in the mode of the present progressive tense. But, what we actually comprehend is through the description in the past progressive tense. The chemical reaction in progress could be extremely fast and completed almost in the order of several femto seconds. Our linguistic comprehension of such a fast reaction process however does not proceed at that fast rate in real time. Only as referring to the reaction already frozen in the record, can one figure out what was going on. The record remains unchanged even if significant changes are described there. Those changes depicted in the invariant record is, however, not the direct property of the record, but an outcome of the very nature of the interaction in progress. Even if the temporality of the present progressive tense is not directly accessible descriptively, that of the past progressive does remain descriptively invariant in the record and thus accessible to its descriptive comprehension. Consequently, interaction turns out to have the capacity of crossing two temporalities, the present progressive and the past progressive tenses. Unless this capacity is available, one cannot descriptively identify what interaction is all about (Matsuno, 1998b).

The nature of time associated with interaction having the capacity of crossing two different tenses is seen in timing of crossing between the two temporalities. Time as the capacity of timing interactions is already latent in the occurrence of interactions. Insofar as it is taken to be descriptively accessible, interaction comes to associate with itself the temporal capacity of crossing from the present progressive to the past progressive tense.

One more temporal characteristic of interaction is seen in the reverse concatenation from the past progressive to the present progressive tense. When the present progressive mode is transferred into the past progressive one, the generative capacity of interaction is necessarily lost because of the frozen nature of the latter in the record. In order to envision the recovery of the generative capacity, it has to be noted that interaction in progress carries with itself the variable capacity that was forcibly eliminated in the transference into the past progressive mode. Transference of interaction into the past progressive tense has to be supplemented by the temporal capacity to sustain interactions, the latter of which is of necessity left behind the transferred past progressive mode. The reverse concatenation from the past to the present progressive mode leads to and is saved by time as the capacity to sustain interactions (Matsuno, 1989; Gunji, 1995). When two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule react and make two water molecules, the energy released from the molecular binding process has to be dissipated toward the outside, otherwise no stable water molecules could be available in the end. This energy dissipation in turn facilitates to sustain interactions for forming water molecules and impart to the latter a temporally irreversible character (Brooks and Wiley, 1988). Time as the capacity to sustain interactions is at the least linguistically embodied in the transference from the past progressive mode to the present progressive.

Both the capacities of timing and to sustain interactions, which are attributed to time, are however not metrical. If we are interested in time as a measure instead of a capacity of doing something as is most often the case, it will also be required to elucidate the linguistic foundation otherwise we would lose the ground upon which time as a measure could descriptively be referred to. Precisely at this point, the role of the descriptive mode in the present perfect tense is focused. Once interactions in progress are transferred into the ones already completed and perfected, the descriptive transference from the present progressive to the present perfect tense comes to the surface. The present perfect tense is as a matter of fact a very special case of the past progressive tense in that the movement referred to is already completed, whereas the movement referred to in the past progressive tense could remain yet to be completed. Water molecules in their excited states, that were being formed from two hydrogen molecules reacting with one oxygen molecule, have not perfected their interactions.

In contrast, water molecules in their ground states can sustain their interaction configuration as invariant unless disturbed externally. This observation yields that the reverse concatenation from the present perfect to the present progressive tense is also a special case of the one from the past to the present progressive while maintaining completed interactions invariant. Time as the capacity to sustain interactions, when applied to the special reverse concatenation from the present perfect to the present progressive tense, leads itself to time as a measure of the duration of invariant interactions. Our linguistic practice of crossing temporalities from the present perfect to the present progressive tense provides us with the capability of associating the duration of invariant interactions with its measure. That is time as a measure.

Compared to time as the capacities of timing and to sustain interactions, time as a measure of the duration of invariant interactions can be neither agential nor causative anymore. Nonetheless, the greatest advantage of having time as a measure of the duration of invariant interactions is to guarantee and to enable us to see the global consistency of any movement in progress with its context at any moment. The presence of completed interactions is contextual, while the duration of completed interactions is individualistic in each component movement. The global consistency consequential upon the acceptance of time as a measure maintains a complete synchronization between the two processes of contextualization and individualization. Neither one of the two can serve as a causative factor to the other once time as a measure is adopted. Complete synchronization between contextualization and individualization should certainly be sought in any description of interactions because the description does presume that any individual statement has to conform to its context.

Time as a measure undoubtedly serves as a means of establishing such a global synchronization. This association of time with global contextual synchronization, however, raises a serious question of whether the adoption of time as a measure could be the sole means to guarantee the descriptive consistency of any movement in progress, though this scheme has historically been overwhelming in exercising its influence. Our observation of time as a measure simply as a derivative from time as the capacities of timing and to sustain interactions may suggest to us one more possibility of coming to terms with a descriptive consistency even if starting from time as an agency. The issue is how to relate the past to the present progressive tense in a mutually consistent manner. This is the place where the role of the present tense comes to be focused.

Time as the capacity of timing interactions associated with crossing from the present progressive to the past progressive tense is contextual in accomplishing the descriptive consistency in the latter. As the same time, time as the capacity to sustain interactions associated with the reverse concatenation from the past progressive to the present progressive tense is individualistic in driving each movement in the latter. These two capacities are integrated into time as an agency, which is in turn embodied in the present tense. This is due to our linguistic convention enabling us to let any statement in the present tense migrate into arbitrary temporalities. For instance, once we accept such a statement made in the present tense that two molecules collide with each other, the transference of the temporality into such as “are colliding”, “were colliding” or “have collided” could naturally be conceivable. The descriptive mode in the present tense guarantees a consistent transference into either the past progressive or the present progressive tense while maintaining its own descriptive consistency. Time in the present as the capacities for crossing between the past progressive and the present progressive tense in either direction certainly satisfies the condition of fulfilling its temporality in the present tense.

Time in the present tense serves as a principle of global consistency as much as the whole discourse in the present tense could be globally consistent descriptively. Nonetheless, the global consistency that time in the present tense implies is local in its own making since any activities latent in time as the principle of global consistency are concretized in the individualistic progressive mode. The present progressive mode by itself does not assume any contextual organization. Only when it is transferred into the past progressive mode, our linguistic stipulation enables us to come to terms with a contextualization of the progressive mode. This contextualization is descriptively accessible in the past progressive tense because doing and describing the doing are descriptively completely separated there. On the other hand, the associated individualization carrying the past progressive forward to the present progressive tense cannot descriptively be accessible because of the incommensurability between doing and describing the doing on the spot, but cannot be denied.

The effect of preceding individualization is descriptively approachable only through the subsequent contextualization. However, there could always be an artifact enabling us to approach the individualization process descriptively. If one can devise such a scheme that any individualization may uniquely determine its subsequent contextualization in advance, the descriptive identifiability of contextualization could also apply to the individualization. A supreme example of this type of descriptive artifacts is seen in the transference from the present perfect to the present tense. The presence of completed and invariant interaction configuration to the global extent reinforces any local participant to be completely consistent with the whole body. Complete synchronization between individualization and contextualization renders the individualization descriptively accessible. In fact, mechanistic causality based upon efficient causation driving the past progressive forward to the present progressive tense uniquely could descriptively be sanctioned only when the synchronization is guaranteed in advance. Otherwise, time as an agency descriptively identifies its activity only in the process of contextualization. The associated intrinsic impossibility in identifying the process of individualization is strictly descriptive in its origin in view of the fact that one cannot do both doing and describing the doing at the same time. Time in the present tense is and has to be necessarily indefinite in its implication. The indefiniteness is not due to the absence of individualization, but to the absence of its independence from the preceding contextualization.

Time as the principle of contextualization is unquestionably materialistic in its operation because of its constant reference to interactions of material origin. It is both formal and final in exercising its own causation. Time in the present tense is formally causative in letting the preceding context drive the subsequent contextualization. In addition, it is also finally causative in letting each individual participant as a derivative of the preceding contextualization move toward the subsequent contextualization. Time as a material cause being responsible for material contextualization thus come to precipitate both formal and final causes. Unless it is limited to a measure of the duration of invariant interactions, time can be seen internally causative in letting the material cause preside over both formal and final causes.

Empirical principle of the conservation of energy upon the process of contextualization materializes in the global descriptive consistency in the past progressive mode. In contrast, the absence of the global descriptive consistency in the present progressive mode renders the process of individualization driving the contextualization to be necessarily local. The conservation of energy thus comes to be upheld by the contextualization of a local origin. Measurement internal to the contextualization fulfills two functions at the same time. One is to participate in forming the context fulfilling the descriptive consistency, and the other is to internally identify the leftover spilled over from the preceding context and to let it be an internal cause for the subsequent contextualization (Matsuno, 1989).

Nonetheless, internal measurement to internally identify the cause of individualization is descriptively inaccessible. This inaccessibility in turn makes a globally consistent description of the conservation of energy also unattainable. Currently identifiable context of the conservation of energy is constantly accompanied by unidentifiable individualistic causation toward contextualization. State as a global descriptive attribute of the conservation of energy is not feasible, while the conservation as a process is intrinsically irreversible in that individualization driving the contextualization is local and lacks any preceding global coordination. Unless it is stipulated by state description, thermodynamics would make the second law pointing to the occurrence of irreversibility simply to be a derivative of the first law on the conservation of energy (Matsuno, 1989; Swenson, 1997). Irreversibility upon contextualization of material origin is just a manifestation of time as the capacity to sustain interactions.

The origin of life that could have taken place on our primitive earth would have been associated with the emergence of autocatalytic oligomerization or polymerization of the then available abiotic monomers, especially those of amino acids and nucleotides (Matsuno, 1982; Kauffman, 1986). In particular, an evolutionary onset of autocatalytic oligomerization is due to changes in the material contextualization that would have preceded. Endogenous variations in the material contextualization would come to be focused. In this regard, one of the most likely locales for the emergence of autocatalytic oligomers and polymers on the primitive earth has been thought to be submarine hydrothermal vents. Constant thermodynamic gradients available between hot springs from hydrothermal vents and cold water surrounding them could have driven various synthetic chemical reactions. This scenario has called our attention to a feasibility of constructing a flow reactor simulating submarine hydrothermal vents in the laboratory and examining a likelihood of synthesizing oligomers from monomers (Matsuno, 1997).

In particular, we observed that oligopeptides of glycine were synthesized from monomeric amino acid, glycine in the flow reactor even in the absence of condensing agents, templates and metallic ions, and that the oligomerization could be autocatalytic. The initial buildup of the yields of both di- and tri-glycine was found to be exponential with the elapse of time (Imai et al, 1997). The present observation of autocatalytic oligomerization of glycine indicates an instance such that submarine hydrothermal vents could provide various monomers available in the neighborhood with a material context for implementing autocatalytic oligomerizations or polymerizations among themselves. Once an autocatalytic context becomes available, it could serve as a vehicle for further contextualizations carrying the capacity of generating their variations endogenously. That is an evolutionary process.

Contextualization of material origin grounded upon time as the capacity to sustain interactions is most visible in biological motility such as bacterial chemotaxis (Hoffmeyer, 1996). A bacterium E. coli propels its body forward toward attractants, e.g, glucose, by rotating its flagella in a counter-clock wise. When the attractants are depleted, the bacterium starts tumbling its body rather randomly by rotating the flagella in a clock wise. Once it finds the body oriented toward the direction along which the concentration of attractants increases, the bacterium resumes its movement in the forward direction. What is peculiar in this movement is that the bacterium exhibits tumbling movements of its body by rotating the flagella in a clock wise even if it finds itself in the location in which the attractants are abundant, though less frequently compared to the case when attractants are depleted. This infrequent occurrence of tumbling movements points to the local nature of the underlying dynamics such that the contextualization for a bacterium to feed itself is initiated and driven by individualistic causes that lack prior coordination to the pre-existing global context. Insofar as it proceeds locally without having the guaranteed global coordination in advance, the process of contextualization could materialize only through examining whether it may be out of the context while being viewed from an arbitrary local perspective. Bacterial chemotaxis may be a concrete manifestation of how contextualization to the global extent could be established through local activities.

Bacterial chemotaxis could also be deciphered mechanistically if one can devise and implement such a global context that each individual activity may be uniquely related to the imposed context in the form of boundary conditions. Experimental artifacts facilitating complete synchronization between contextualization and individualization is methodologically always permissible so long as they are technically feasible. The linguistic counterpart is met by situational logic employing ceteris paribus in one form or another. On the other hand, however, if situational logic fails for some reasons, the associated experimental counterpart would also be questioned.

Consider, for instance, launching the Apollo Eleven by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States in July 1969. Although the maneuvering of the lunar landing craft was almost automated, captain Armstrong eventually took over the control stick at the last minute slightly before the landing. What Armstrong did was to pick up the signal which might disturb soft landing and to make it vanish as the distance from the lunar surface approached zero. This manual maneuvering was contextual in accomplishing the contextual matching between the lunar surface and the landing craft. The actual landing was different from the training which the captain practiced in Houston over one year before the actual launching (Jahn, 1997). The training on the earth followed the situational logic prescribed in the training manual as in the form of “If the situation is A, tighten the throttle valve of the reverse propulsion engine down to B and turn the attitude control lever to direction C”.

In contrast, the actual landing made captain Armstrong not to be a faithful follower of the training manual written in situational logic, but to be an agent possessing the capacity of situational agency (Hendriks-Jensen, 1996). What was responsible for the captain to carry situational agency was the impossibility for identifying the actual situation in progress to the extent that complete synchronization between contextualization and individualization could be guaranteed in advance. Even if the situation cannot completely be specified to the extent that each individual behavior may be uniquely determinate in complete conformity to the global context, a behavioral agent possessing situational agency can cope with contextualization while implementing what the external situation left unspecified, by exercising its own agential capacity. The soft lunar landing and the safe return of its crew to the earth remind us the significance of time as the capacity to sustain interactions.

Time is multifarious. What is at the least required of clarifying the sturdy issue of time is to identify the condition upon which time is inevitably employed and practiced. Insofar as it is noted that any dynamic movement first materializes itself in the present progressive mode, its descriptive stipulation has to be invoked. The incommensuarability between doing and describing the doing on the spot, however, renders the direct descriptive reference of the movement in progress to the present progressive mode unattainable. Above all, time is a descriptive device to approach the present progressive mode. If it is possible to approach the present progressive through the present perfect mode, time as a measure of the duration of completed and invariant interactions could be sanctioned. Physical sciences have based themselves exclusively upon time as a measure, even including their relativistic cousins. However, once one takes the historical perspective toward physical sciences as practiced in cosmology or in evolutionary biology, the agential capacity of time would also have to be focused. Descriptive prerequisite for appreciating the agential capacity of time is to give second thought to the time-honored practice of letting time be a measure of the duration.

One more candidate for accommodating time into our linguistic institution is to perceive it as the capacity to sustain interactions as the agency crossing from the past progressive to the present progressive mode. Although this observation has severely been under-represented in the common practice of sciences, it squarely faces the linguistic stipulation prohibiting occurrence of both doing and describing the doing on the one and the same ground. The outcome is time as the capacity to sustain the activities of doing. Appraisal of time as an agency is however accomplished only by dismissing the likelihood of direct descriptive access to the present progressive mode. Despite the extraordinary influence of letting time be a measure of the duration in conformity to the tradition of situational logic, our linguistic practice legitimately saves in time itself the capacity to move itself in the form of situational agency.

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