Temporalization

Temporalization should mean here: generation of a difference of past and future.

If there were only past for the system, or: if the present of the current operating were only repetition of past, the system would reproduce itself as it is. Conversely, if there were only future, the system would have to understand itself as an ongoing deviation from its own state, for example, as purpose, and it would enter into a deviation from deviation from deviation. The system gains a self-organization capable of existence and learning only if it orients itself to a difference of past and future and generates time in exactly this sense.

Time is then not gained by copying external movements or their measurements into the system, for example in the form of Clocks. That this is also possible is not to be denied, but a need for it already presupposes time. Also, time is not, as in the occidental tradition, to be read off from a difference of moving and non-moving, because this would not lead to a world-universal concept of time.

But time arises from a purely temporal endowment of the present with two endless horizons which meet and tie together in the present: that of the past and that of the future. And the reason why we speak of endless horizons is that now one can neither think of an origin before which nothing was, nor of a final purpose after which nothing will follow. Boundaries, also time boundaries, always refer to another side.

Here, too, we can first refer back to Spencer Brown's calculus of forms, to whose innovative introduction of time into mathematics Heinz von Foerster pointed out early on. Time is not only of importance here as a scheme of the sequence of operations or as time for the gradual building up of complexity. After the introduction of the re-entry of the distinction into itself, the calculus, in order to continue, must be able to have a memory function and an oscillator function.

For purely mathematical operations in the imaginary space of second order functions a limited meaning is sufficient. The calculus must determine the state into which it has placed itself in order to be able to proceed from there; and it must, because it must allow for Indeterminacy, let its indications oscillate between marked and unmarked space. […]

PENROSE, Roger, 2011. Cycles of time: an extraordinary new view of the universe. 1st U.S. ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-224-08036-1.

“A groundbreaking book providing a new take on three of cosmology’s most profound questions: What, if anything, came before the Big Bang? What is the source of order in our universe? What is the universe’s ultimate future? Current understanding of our universe dictates that all matter will eventually thin out to zero density, with huge black holes finally evaporating away into massless energy. Roger Penrose--one of the most innovative mathematicians of our time--turns around this predominant picture of the universe’s ‘heat death,’ arguing how the expected ultimate fate of our accelerating, expanding universe can actually be reinterpreted as the ‘Big Bang’ of a new one. Along the way to this remarkable cosmological picture, Penrose sheds new light on basic principles that underlie the behavior of our universe, describing various standard and nonstandard cosmological models, the fundamental role of the cosmic microwave background, and the key status of black holes. Intellectually thrilling and accessible, Cycles of Time is another essential guide to the universe from one of our preeminent thinkers”--Provided by publisher