Today’s ecological relevance of Bergson-Einstein debate on time
G. Longo
Abstract
The reflections on the nature of time in Relativity Theory will be hinted in reference to the new bridgesr ecentlyp roposed by Connes and by Rovelli's perspectival approach, two major steps towards au nification of quantum, thermodynamicala nd relativistic times. The so-called "time of philosophers",atime of the cognizing ego, from Saint Augustin to Husserland Bergson, is based on adifferent,b ut relevant perspective and it has been traditionallyo pposed to the "time of physicists".I nb etween these twoa pproaches, we discuss ap roper time of phylogeny and ontogeny,inbiology, with their ownrhythms and specific irreversibility.Ont he one side, biological time needs to be scientificallyobjectivised as an invariant of the knowing subject and thus move, as in physics, from the subjective-absolute to the objective-relative (Weyl'sa pproach, extended to time). On the other,wepropose a "geometry" of life'srhythms and an "extended present" thatr adicallyd iffer from the prevailing spatialization of physical time that Bergson soundly criticizes. The proper irreversibility and the central, "operatorial",role of time in biologywill be stressed,asnothing in biologycan be understood except in the light of atemporalperspective,both evolutionary and organismal. In particular, today'seco-systemic changes bring to the limelight some disruptions of the evolutionary fine-tuning of biological rhythms and physical clocks thatmay be better understood by highlightingtheir theoretical differences as well as their environmental interactions.