(20) What is time?

Before we look more at relations it is worth pausing to note that relations always exist in time. This leads us to a perennial philosophical question. “What is time?” asked Augustine, “If nobody asks me I know; but if I want to explain it to somebody who asks, I do not know” (Confessions 11.14). This well-known comment on time points us to an intriguing phenomenon. On the one hand, time is our natural element. We are immersed in time. We experience the passing of hours, days and years, and of the countless changes that take place in them. We remember past times and have a sense of expectancy for what the future holds, all the time dealing with the pressing concerns of the present. Everything that exists in reality, every state of affairs, is involved in a course of events, in a process of be-coming and be-going. We name this coming and going transience and acknowledge its pervasiveness.

On the other hand, when we begin to think theoretically about time, when we seek to grasp it in a concept, the mystery of time highlighted by Augustine returns. We can see this if we start by asking what is the present. Augustine himself raised this issue by asking whether the present is so instantaneous as to be practically non-existent. No sooner have we pointed to this moment now, then it has gone into the past. Andre Troost has helpfully discussed the issues this raises. He writes “[i]n this … approach the present is comparable to a mathematical point without extension, an imaginary point that moves continuously towards the future, but remains always, at least in theory, suspended between past and future. In the moment of the “now” the past perpetually moves up towards the future, which becomes the past in almost the same moment. In this theory, the “now” has in effect become a shadowy nothing, a pure idea and no longer a reality.”  This naturally leads to doubt about the reality of time since if the present does not exist then neither does the past or future. Time is understood as a succession of point-like nothings. And a thousand times nothing is still nothing. This idea of time as a sequence of “nows” also means that time loses both its datability and significance, for how can one ‘now’ be any different from any other? Despite the familiarity we seem to have with time, in this approach it has become detached from my practical activities and concerns.

What should we do, faced with this conundrum? Should we stick to what we experience of the reality of time, or should we follow the argument where it leads and accept that time is unreal? I hope that by now you will be ready to identify that the problem arises from failing to acknowledge and take stock of the fact that in our reasoning we have lifted time out of the context of cosmic reality. By isolating time as something in and of itself, we have turned it into nothing. It is important to repeat that our ability to abstract elements of our experience is very good and helpful, but its limits need to be carefully acknowledged. In particular it is important to be aware of what we are doing. Now in our attempt to understand time better through theoretical abstraction, we discover that it is intimately interwoven with cosmic reality. This is evident in the way that abstraction takes us away from time just as it takes us further from cosmic reality in its fullness. As Troost concludes, “Not a single atom of reality exists apart from time, and literally everything in our concrete experience of reality has a specific duration, is involved in the all-pervasive and all-encompassing “flow” of time, in short: exists in time.”

The cosmos is fundamentally temporal.  That is the position of reformational philosophy. Despite what might seem like an overemphasis on structures in our analysis so far, it would be a mistake to think that reformational philosophy sees reality as static or in structuralistic terms.  Dooyeweerd understood his theory of time to be central to his philosophy and went as far as to say that “The idea of cosmic time constitutes the basis of the philosophical theory of reality in this book.” (NC I.28).   Cosmic reality is fundamentally dynamic and temporal: “all structures of temporal reality,” he wrote, “are structures of cosmic time” (NC I 105).  Such a position places reformational philosophy in a critical relation towards those philosophical positions, dating back to Parmenidies, that view reality in purely structural terms and see time and change as negative characteristics of our experience of the world.

We have seen how the modal aspects, although mutually irreducible, are inter-dependent; they presuppose and refer to each other.  Every modal aspect contains within its modal structure a reference to all other aspects and so cannot be understood outside of this unbreakable coherence of meaning. The coherence of reality is a “temporal order and connection of all the aspects” which is expressed by the anticipations of the earlier aspects to the later aspects and the retrocipations of the later aspects to the earlier (NC II.49-54).  This referring forwards and backwards is indicative of, and expresses, the meaning character of reality.

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(19) Diversity and Coherence between the modes

There is a danger that modal aspects are viewed as parts that make up reality, however this is not accurate.  Reality does not split up into 15 separate sections like a cake.  Here it is important to repeat that the special sciences investigate their object through the perspective of a modal aspect, they do not investigate the modal aspect itself.  We now need to say something about how each aspect is intimately related to all the others.  This can be done by introducing the notion of analogies.  Through analogies each aspect refers to all the others.  

We can distinguish two types of analogies, those modes that are earlier than other modes can refer towards the later modes, this is called anticipations, and the later modes refer back to the earlier modes in retrociptations.

The first modal aspect is that of number whose meaning is found in discrete quantity as expressed in so called rational or natural numbers.  The spatial aspect is irreducible to that of number, nevertheless in irrational numbers we find an anticipation of spatial figures within the numeric modal aspect.  For example π.

In referring to the number of dimensions in space we find an intrinsic element of space that refers back to that of number, this is a retrocipation.  The notion of causality, which finds its origins in the physical aspect, is an analogical concept that has its place in the different modes of experience: we talk of historical causality while resisting a reduction to the physical kind of causality.  Likewise we require a notion of legal causality in order to hold a criminal legally accountable for their crime, a notion of logical ground to move from premises to conclusion and so on.

These analogies are very important when interpreting theories and concepts within the different disciplines.  The religious impulse to find the meaning and coherence of our world from within this world leads inevitably to reductionist views of the nature and character of the diversity we experience.  In their conceptual expression these reductionist views continually distort the analogical character of our concepts which leads to serious theoretical problems and paradoxes.

Examples in modern sociology

Aspects	Analogies in social aspect	One-sided emphasis
Sign Aspect	Social symbolism and interpretation	Symbolic interactionism/Post-modernism
Historical Aspect	Social power, control and authority	Historicism/Post-modernism
Logical Aspect	Social identification and distinction	Social consensus and conflict theories
Sensitive-psychical Aspect	Social sensitivity/solidarity	Psychologistic approaches
Biotical Aspect	Social differentiation and integration	Organicistic trends/ Functionalism
Physical Aspect	Social change and dynamics	Physicalistic trends
Kinematical Aspect	Social constancy/persistence	Status quo trends
Spatial Aspect	Social totality/wholes and parts	Universalism/holism – emphasis on systems and sub-systems
Arithmetical Aspect	Social unity in multiplicity	Individualism/society as a collection of individual actors

Source D.F.M. Strauss Reintegrating Social Theory p.11

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(18) Outline of the modal spheres

In this section we will give a brief outline of each of the modal aspects, however it is important to make one final point.  The modal spheres are not just abstract categories of what exists as if what exists lack any intrinsic meaning or value. Modern thought has disenchanted the world into ‘bare facts’. Calvin Seerveld has expressed well that the modal aspects are channels of God’s love and blessing towards us and call us to a loving response. All the modal aspects find their unity in love. Here it is worth quoting Dooyeweerd at length:

“Man, created in the image of God, should direct all the temporal functions and powers of his existence and those of his whole temporal world unto the service of God. This he was to accomplish in the central unity of his ego by loving God above all.  And because, in the order of creation, every human ego in this central religious sense was united with every other human ego in a central communion of the service of God, the love for the neighbour was included in the love of God.  We cannot love God without loving His image, expressed in the ego of ourselves and that of our fellow-men.  Therefore, the entire divine Law for God’s creation displays its radical unity in the central commandment of love, addressed to the heart … Just as all the aspects of our temporal experience and existence find their central reference point in the human ego, so the commandment of love represents the central unity of all God’s different ordinances for the temporal world” (Dooyeweerd Twilight, 123)

As we have said before a great danger facing Christianity is the view that this world is a passing and insignificant phase before the soul is taken to heaven.  In contrast we must affirm that we cannot live close to God if we deny God’s creation.  We serve God not alongside or apart from creation, our service is here in our everyday lives in all we do (Colossians 3:12-25 esp vv.17 & 23).  The closer we move in genuine love to all God’s creatures, the closer we come to God’s self.  And the closer to God, the more we will be concerned about his world – a world which He loved so much that his own Son died for it to be redeemed.

It is important to be reminded that human beings never act on a modal aspect as such.  Human acts are always concrete acts within relationships and institutions and upon things.  Modal aspects are always only aspects of concrete existents (things, events, and relationships).  This will be especially important later when we come to look at how to understand history and cultural development.

Here are the modal spheres identified by Dooyeweerd with the nuclear moments in brackets.

Numeric (discrete quantity): The numeric aspect is the domain of magnitude and discrete quantity. It involves more or less, and is represented by numbers. When considering number there is no need to assume anything regarding any of the later modal aspects. Once humans take number into account as part of their responsibility we can speak of too much, too little, or the right amount.

Spatial (Continuous extension): This aspect is investigated by geometry. In the number of dimensions and the measurement of them we must presuppose number. Every part of space is connected in principle to every other as part of the whole hence ‘continuous extension’. The notions of ‘whole’, ‘part’ and ‘coherence’ find their home in the spatial aspect. Anticipating human responsibility things may be “out of place” or find their niche.

Kinematic (Movement): It is a dimension we can understand in terms of inertia: the tendency of matter to remain at rest, or, if moving, to keep moving in the same direction, unless affected by some outside force.

Physical (Energy): This involves forces and interaction. It is familiar to us in the phenomenon of mass, force, matter, atomic and molecular structure.

Biotic (Life): The primary dynamic functions of growth, reproduction, metabolism, restoration, birth, maturation. It involves the integration of a whole where all parts work together to generate growth and so continually generates and regenerates all its parts for its own continued development and existence. If the link with human responsibility and the realities of good and evil are less clear in the earlier modes at least here it makes sense to talk of health and disease, flourishing and decay, vigorous and frail.

Psychic/Sensitive (Feeling or Emotion): this is the mode of goal directed behaviour, in animals and humans, that is primarily of a sensitive (feeling, emotional) kind, includes drives, instinct, stimulus-response, and perception. Humans can be sensitive and well disposed, or insensitive and suffering.

Analytic/Logical (Analytic Distinction): [here or after the formative given that animals create artifacts, do they distinguish?] This mode has to do with the ability to distinguish and identify differences in their context, to identify and compare things. Animals are able to distinguish prey and predators, food etc. but they are unable to develop and formulate these distinctions into concepts where formative control and language is necessary. Humans maybe thoughtful and lucid, or scatterbrained and muddled.

Formative/Historical (Mastery or Control): The mode of freely making, crafting, creating, building, producing where choice and responsibility direct the forming. As it points back to the earlier modes it involves skill and mastery over objects. As it opens up to later modes it involves culture and history as the basis for communication and interaction with others. This is the origin of the means-ends relationship. Animals too make things, but only in the restrictive sense. Within the context of human cultural development there is the essential elements of creativity and responsibility. The development of science and technology in particular allow humans to design and make new things in order to better the world in far reaching and unexpected ways. In this way humans transcend the animal kingdom and make possible the disclosure of cultural forms such as language, education, the arts, society, market relations, juridical institution and so on. Skilful or incompetent.

Aesthetic (Harmony): Dooyeweerd placed this modal sphere after the economic and emphasized harmony, however Calvin Seerveld has long argued that the aesthetic dimension is better understood in terms of suggestion-rich, allusivity and imagination. As a consequence of this and a number of other consideration Seerveld places the aesthetic modal aspect after the formative mode and before the lingual mode. Imaginative or unimaginative.

Lingual/Sign (Symbolic Signification): symbolic signification and language. Clear or vague.

Social (Intercourse): Social intercourse where the consciously practiced developed and fostering of relationships is an end in itself. Hospitality and etiquette, politeness etc. Peaceful or quarrelsome.

Economic (Frugality): The stewardship of resources. Often in the context of scarcity where frugal use must be made or in the context of a wealth of possibilities where only a few can be realized. The optimal use of resources and talents, today often requiring a network of relationships providing for the exchange of goods and services. Prosperous or deprived, generous or greedy. 

Jural (retribution): The mode of rightly weighing what is due, the call for justice. Just or unjust.

Ethical/Trothic (Love): the mode of fidelity, loyalty, intimate care and concern. Loyal or disloyal.

Pistic/Faith (Certitude): Mode of faith, trust, certitude and surrender. Faith or unbelief.

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Calvin Seerveld on the Modal Spheres

"The modal laws have authority and give good, single, multisplendored direction for every creaturely thing because modal laws are prismatic variations of God’s covenanting Word, which says, “Love me above all, respect and build up your neighbour as yourself, and take care of all the creatures I have entrusted you people with until I come back to perfect my rule of shalom."

Calvin Seerveld Normative Aesthetics

(17) Basic features of the modal spheres

To understand modal aspects it is necessary to avoid the temptation to view these modes of how existents function, with the concrete existents of which they are aspects.  For example there is no “numerical” thing such as numbers, rather there are things, such as trees, fingers, people, art works, which can be counted and “numbered”. Probably the key feature of modal aspects is that they are mutually irreducible.  This is sometimes expressed as saying they are each sovereign in their own sphere which connects the philosophical theory of the modal aspects with Abraham Kuyper’s social philosophy of “sphere sovereignty”.  Their sovereignty consists in the fact that they are spheres of law.  Dooyeweerd writes “Every modal aspect of temporal reality has its proper sphere of laws, irreducible to those of other modal aspects, and in this sense it is sovereign in its own orbit” (NC. 1:102). The sphere sovereignty of each aspect is designated by a term that indicates the core meaning of the aspect.  This core meaning is referred to as the ‘nuclear moment’ or the ‘modal kernal’.  For example the modal kernel of the physical sphere is ‘energy’, the biotic sphere is ‘life’, these will be discussed more below.

Dooyeweerd gives a detailed analysis of the internal structure of the modal spheres.  He wants to show that the modal spheres are not externally related to each other but form an intimate coherence through their internal relation.  Each mode has a core nuclear moment which governs (as in sphere sovereignty) its irreducible character.

Around the core nuclear moments are ‘analogical moments’ which refer ahead to later modal aspects or back to earlier ones. These express the dynamic coherence between the modal spheres and will be discussed later (§19). They also indicate that the modal aspects exhibit an “order of succession”.  The idea is that ‘later’ aspects rest on, or are founded on, earlier aspects.  The first aspect is the numerical and this provides the foundation for the spatial aspect which could not exist without more than one dimension and involves extension which can be divided and so measured.  While spatiality is not reducible to number it is founded on number.  Another example is the biotic which rests on the physical mode.  This can be seen in that while there can be physical things which have no active biological functions it is impossible for biological phenomena to lack a physical basis.  Working through this direction we start with the numerical aspect and work our way up showing how each successive aspect presupposes those that preceded it.  This is called the foundational direction, however the cosmic ordering of the aspects can be viewed from the opposite “transcendental” direction.  From this perspective all the aspects point forward anticipating the later modal spheres and ultimately the faith aspect.  For example irrational numbers like π point forward to the spatial dimension of reality. This direction is also associated with the way each modal aspect is an expression of a deeper unity which is called the religious root of the cosmos. 

These points are not merely intricacies of Dooyeweerd’s, for example the foundational direction can help us to understand where philosophical naturalism has gone wrong.  Many today are convinced that nothing exists outside the areas studied by the natural sciences (physics, chemistry and biology).  On this view human thought and behaviour can be understood solely on the basis of what these sciences can tell us about the brain.  The claim is often made that ultimately everything can be explained in these terms.  Let it be noted that the term “ultimately” rightly reminds us of the religious character of such thinking. The theory of the modal aspects can help us see that scientific explanations are necessarily limited by the modal aspect through which they investigate reality.  This means that explanations of human thought and behaviour based on a chemical or biological analysis of the brain are always partial and circumstantial.  As indicated by the foundational direction they lay bare the basic conditions for events that occur at a higher level.  This means that it is always possible to find correlations between the higher levels of human action and the lower chemical and biological base.  However they can never lay bare the true meaning of events that occur at higher levels.  Human thinking must follow logical laws and not merely physical and biological laws.  Klapwijk has used the example of a lie detector which may help us tell if a person is lying, but it can never tell us why the suspect lies. We should be prepared to accept that neuroscience can be incredibly helpful in elucidating the complex correlations between processes of consciousness and brain activities, however no matter how much knowledge neurologists may have of the cerebral activities upon which consciousness depends, their view is always limited to the lower modal aspects.  As such they totally ignore the normative principles of consciousness, for example the logical principles of identity and contradiction, which consciousness must obey if its content is to be meaningful (See further §30).

It should be pointed out that although the theory of the modal spheres as outlined above follows Dooyeweerd’s version. His brother-in-law and co-worker in reformational philosophy, Dirk Vollenhoven, did not agree with his account of the ‘order of succession’ in terms of time with its foundational and transcendental directions. Also more recently Dirk Stafleu has commented that it is difficult to argue for the irreducibility of the modal aspects when focusing only on the term used to designate their core meaning.  Instead he suggests that it is more illuminating to focus on how existents relate to each other at the level of one modal aspect, or what are called the subject-subject relations within the modal sphere.  This is one of the reasons why has developed an approach in terms of ‘relation frames’ in the place of ‘modal aspects’.  As an example, he argues that if we recognise that all physical subject-subject relationships are expressions of energy interaction, then it becomes more obvious why physics cannot be reduced to mathematical relationships since triangles and numbers do not interact.  Again we can see that in the biotic aspect the subject-subject relation is one of genetic relationships of descent and heredity something that clearly does not exist in physical relationships.

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