For an evolutionary concept of objective time

The reconstruction of the past and the projection of the future require a time concept. It is not necessary logically that this concept is an objective one, i.e. an inter-subjectively accepted one. But as the subject is interested in projects related to other human and in particular in common projects (using other persons, or being used by other persons) there is a practical need for an objective concept of time.

My hypothesis is that the objective character of the concept of time is the result of the cultural evolution. The concept of time is a conceptual resource needed to implement various human projects, an internal resource of the explanatory projects – for instance, and, ceteris paribus, it can induce the positive selection of alternative projects. This would mean that the objective (the ontic) time is relative to particular productive variables (“goals”) specific to the peculiar project involved in the process of cultural selection. The concepts of time could be different from one type of selection to another, in particular from the selection of religious discourses to the selection of theories in physics.

As models of the physical space are different, models of the ontic time would be different. The assumption that there is an “a priori” general concept of the time would be false, although relative to some types of discourses one could speak of a relatively “a priory” concept of time.

The really a priory concept of time is the phenomenological one (ontological in the Heideggerian sense). For the ontic time there is a competition between models culturally dependent.

In this framework one can ask the following question: what concept of time, if any, is needed for a Darwinian theory of selection? At what scale? With what kind of metric? Is the concept of time needed for a theory of evolution (as package of coherent theories dealing with variation, selection and transmission) homogenous over the involved theories?

I suspect that there is no need in a theory of selection for a concept of time with a scale longer than the order of the several life cycles of the selection units. In particular there is no need for an infinite time. The cultural pressure for a large scale time is coming from other theories, physical ones, and its acceptance or rejection is a matter of cultural selection. The formal structure of any theory of selection may be phenomenologically rooted, and ontologically fundamental.

The dispute between the defenders of the time frame of the creation of the world by God and those of the appearance of the Universe by Big Bang may be simply confusing apples with pears, as there is no selection pressure between religious and scientific discourses to the extent that they are part of projects with different types of productive variables (“goals”).

The objective time is a matter of thinking, of constructing discursively models of beings, of instituting regional realities with these models applied to the phenomena, and using the ideas for practical projects. The phenomenological time is a matter of being.


The objective (ontic) time is a trait of projects adapted to the structure of the world. Physical and Christian time cannot be the same, because the meaning of the term world in the two discourses is different and the purposes for which these discourses have been built are different. The ontologic time is the structuring of the world, and its formal structure is, hypothetically, one way towards interpreting what could mean "Creation of the world".


A scholarly hypothesis is that Heidegger's Sein und Zeit problematic is convergent with a theology understood in the authentic orthodox sense (i.e. as a practical enterprise),  that it has to be lived in order to be really understood, although Heidegger started from an occidental theology. More generally, phenomenology would have a strong empirical penchant, would be not just theoretical analyses, but a recovering approach of the philosophy in the original sense.