Over time

In his book About Time, Norbert Elias describes the development of time consciousness in the context of his civilization theory, which he first presented in his work About the Process of Civilization (1939).

Some observations about time

The historical development of time determiners - calendars and clocks - as well as the inseparable development of the human experience of what we call “ time ” today - time awareness - is part of the process of civilization. "... as a means of social diagnosis, the occurrence of the time constraint, of which you can read more in the text of the book, and the behavior of" society "and" individual ", which one encounters in this context, is particularly instructive . " To counteract the metaphysical aftertaste that is often ascribed to "time", here is a definition by Elias: "The word" time ", ..., is a symbol for a relationship that a group of people, i.e. a group of living beings with the biological ability to remember and synthesize, establishes between two or more sequences of events, one of which is standardized as a frame of reference or yardstick for the other. "

The development of time determiners

Time determiners are instruments that people have created for very specific purposes. They are part of the man-made symbols. The development of time regulators such as clocks and calendars is closely linked to the development of society. The more differentiated society, the more differentiated the time determiners, the more the social time determiners agree with natural time , the more people internalize social time.

The calendar

When developing the calendars , Elias shows that the social calendar year is increasingly adapted to the natural year - the solar year. There have been two major calendar reforms in Western society in history. Julius Caesar introduced the first calendar reform in 46 BC. By. Since the Julian calendar does not exactly correspond to the solar year, the Julian year is 0.0078 days too long, and Easter gradually advances over the centuries. Gregory XIII. eliminated the problem with his calendar reform in 1582 , which was used by the non-Catholic world e.g. T. was only adopted in the 20th century.

Elias sums it up as follows: "Step by step, in the course of a millennial development, the once troubling calendar problem has more or less been solved. And since calendars are hardly any more difficult today, people delete the past when they were still difficult , from her memory. " That today's calendar still causes problems - different number of days of the month, leap years , unequal number of days in the four quarters or half years and so on - is shown in the attempts at reform in our century - the last attempt at reform took place in 1953.

In addition to the current synchronization of events, calendars can fulfill two other tasks. On the one hand as an era time scale, "which enabled the living generations to precisely determine their own place in the generation sequence. The development of such a non-recurring time scale poses special problems." It was only possible "when social units such as states or churches acquired the character of a long-term continuum of change, within which living groups - usually ruling groups - considered it necessary for the sake of the functionality of their institutions to remember the continuity of these institutions in a precise manner and articulated way to keep it alive. "

The other task of the calendar as an age time scale enables every person to determine exactly how old they are today. "This assignment of temporal measures does not only serve as communication about different quantities; it only takes on its full meaning as a communicable symbolic abbreviation for known biological, psychological and social differences and changes in people."

The watches

Mechanical clocks did not spread until the last third of the 14th century. Before that, sundials and outlet water clocks ( Klepsydren ) are known. Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum suspects the development of the escapement mechanism in the monastic area, which brought about the technical breakthrough of the mechanical clock . In the monastery there is a need for precise timing, "because the monastic daily routine had a critical, daylight-independent starting time for the sequence of prescribed offices in accordance with the rules. The offices had to start after midnight, but before dawn." Before the time was determined by water clocks and later by hourglasses, this point in time was determined, for example, by the course of the stars, the burning time of calibrated candles or the crowing of the cock.

In urban life in the 14th century, acoustic signals were used to regulate and organize a lot. "The everyday acoustic backdrop of a medieval city certainly seemed like a colorful and confusing permanent bell to strangers, for the locals it was a communication system whose efficiency should not be underestimated." This communication system shows the need to synchronize the various activities of people. On the one hand, the demand is attributed to the population increase in the cities. On the other hand, this is attributed to the differentiation of life in the cities. The coexistence of people is better organized through the signal system.

The strike of the hour on the tower clock is initially just an additional signal in urban life. Italy first introduced tower clocks at the beginning of the 14th century. "The use of the modern hours follows the spread of the hour-striking tower clocks in Europe almost at the same time." But the Italian counting of the hours does not prevail because the beginning of the counting depends on the daylight and needs to strike 24 bells.

Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum lists some innovation-promoting factors for purchasing an urban watch. First of all, sovereigns and city princes are "responsible for setting up public clocks in their cities, but also for residences." If a special tax is levied, this will meet with resistance in the cities. The next factor relates to the inter-city competition for prestige. After Dohrn-van Rossum is not identify that merchants, churches or other groups of city clocks asking for their city. There is less resistance to clocks in the city than in the villages. "The farmers were not convinced of the necessity of the hourly signal everywhere and especially refused to contribute if they lived outside the acoustic range of the time signal." A different sense of time develops within the city than in the country. If Dohrn-van Rossum's assertion can be questioned that no special group within the medieval city demands the purchase of a clock, it is certain that "they (the clocks) will soon be used to regulate the working day".

Dohrn-van Rossum also points out that "the growing importance of precise time of day ... can be followed even before the appearance of the newer timepieces." Even after the introduction of public clocks, these are not decisive for diet cuts or fines for unpunctuality in city committee meetings. Here fines are only due after a quarter of an hour glass, which is used in the meetings.

Schools are an important institution for promoting a new sense of time within medieval society. "... time regulations initially limited the duration of daily lessons and set the teachers' working hours ." Because of their diverse tasks in this society, the time available to teachers can be better coordinated. Another aspect of Dohrn-van Rossum says that "the constant increase in the number of books to be read ... creates increasing time pressure". This led the humanistic didacticians of the time to the idea that "the time pressure can only be countered through order, method and planning".

The brief overview of the history of the development of calendars and clocks shows how the differentiation of urban life in the Middle Ages , with the increase in population, increased people's need for coordination and synchronization of their activities. According to Elias, this process is unplanned and unwanted, but has its own structure. Wendorff sums up the development of time determiners as follows: "The development of a need for a clear and reliable, always available time structure and time measurement will at some point be supported by new inventions. This temporal coincidence of demand and technical realization is fascinating. Clocks and calendars reinforce this Time awareness, taking days and years seriously and using them, the sense of responsibility for the practical possibilities of the future. The functional addition of clock and calendar is particularly vividly demonstrated today on the widespread pocket watch with calendar information. "

The evolution of timing

As described above, "what we call" time "is an often quite complex network of relationships ... and that determining time is essentially a synthesis, an integrating activity." The current form of determining time is "nature-centered" and is a diversion "from the older, more human-centered form of determining time ...." In many studies on "time" one finds the distinction between social and physical time, which probably express something similar should. "The difficulty is that" time "does not fit into the conceptual scheme of this dualism; like other givens, it defies classification as" natural "or" social "," objective "or" subjective ": it is both in one. " Determining time should therefore be seen as a process from a "human-centered" form to a "nature-centered" form, as a process in which man subjects nature more and more.

Elias further differentiates between passive and active timing. In earlier societies mainly passive time determination takes place and still exists today in part. With passive timing, needs are given in immediately: you eat when you are hungry and go to sleep when you are tired. Time determination becomes more active with the start of agriculture. The plants must be sown and harvested at the right time. In modern societies, people are forced to "align and discipline their physiological clock with a social clock."

Heide Inhetveen , for example, differentiates between action time and event time with peasant women. The action time shows how the passive determination of time is actively transformed by the activity as a farmer. The event time, as life is remembered as time, "which is constituted from more or less spectacular individual events: ...". Barbara Müller emphasizes, "that the extreme linearization of time in working time causes time to stand still, and the destruction of time in general." The example of a shift worker makes it clear that the attempts "to make the best of shift work" ... a struggle with time (remains), which is always a struggle for time, time to live. " At the specified point there are further examples of how not only people's passive time determination are suppressed, but also how active time determination is no longer in the control of individual people. "Linearized and homogenized time is consciously planned and planned by people and can thus - ... - be withdrawn from the immediate disposal of others. Here time itself becomes an interest-driven power factor - time becomes an instrument of power."

Primary literature

Norbert Elias: About time. Work on the Sociology of Knowledge II , Frankfurt am Main 1984
Norbert Elias: What is sociology? 3rd edition, Munich [1970] 1978
Norbert Elias: What I mean by civilization. Answers to Hans Peter Duerr . In: Die Zeit, No. 25 of June 17, 1988, p. 37f
Norbert Elias: About the process of civilization. Sociogenetic and psychogenetic studies. 2 vols., 17th edition, Frankfurt am Main [1939] 1992

Secondary literature

Wolfgang Deppert : Time. The foundation of the concept of time, its necessary split and the holistic character of its parts. Steiner, Stuttgart 1989. ISBN 3-515-05219-4 , ISBN 978-3-515-05219-1
Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum: Time of the Church - Time of the Merchants - Time of the Cities. In: Zoll, Rainer (Ed.): Destruction and Re-appropriation of Time , Frankfurt am Main 1988
Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum: Beat clock and time organization. On the early history of public clocks and the social consequences of modern hour calculation. In: Wendorff, Rudolf (ed.): In the network of time. Interdisciplinary human experience of time. Stuttgart 1989
Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum: The story of the hour. Clocks and modern time calculation. Munich / Vienna 1992
Heide Inhetveen: Good times, bad times - time experiences of peasant women. In: Rainer Zoll (ed.): Destruction and reappropriation of time , Frankfurt am Main 1988
Barbara Müller: The time regiment of band work or: The human is the break. In: Rainer Zoll (ed.): Destruction and reappropriation of time , Frankfurt am Main 1988