On the Nature of Time: A Biopragmatic Perspective on Language, Thought, & Reality (Studia Slavica Upsaliensia, Band 48)

This book is a synthesis of more than three decades of research into the concept of time and its semiotic nature. If traditional philosophy - and philosophy of time should be no exception - in the shadow of advancing biology can be said to have reached an impasse, one important reason for this, in harmony with Wittgenstein's vision, appears to have been its lack of appropriate tools for explicating language. The present theory of time proceeds, accordingly, from the exploration of temporal expressions in language as an evolutionary fact. It derives in a hypothetical, coherent feedback process of hierarchically ordered distinctions the semantics of time from its biologically dictated perceptual and cognitive-pragmatic origins. The corresponding abductive-regulative model is anchored in the assumption of biological rhythmization as the very foundation of perception and mental/physical action. Understood to originate in space and spatial perspective, time reveals itself as an instrument f