Time as a Phenomenon in Science and Culture: the Reflection of the Historian .......... 217

TIME AS A PHENOMENON IN SCIENCE AND CULTURE: THE REFLECTION OF THE HISTORIAN

In this essay the ontological and epistemological aspects of historical time are scrutinized. The author outlines main stages of the time socialization. Myth and epic consciousness are considered as an original form of time perception. Cyclical concept of time, with circle as its main symbol, was dominant for Antiquity. Theological time perception was formed in the Middle Age with the earthly life of Christ in its center. New concept of historical time emerged during the Renaissance. It included three tenses: past, present, and future. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the phenomenon of time played an important role in Newton’s philosophy, and in the natural history of the Enlightenment. For the industrial society, the dominant symbol of time became an arrow. Today, the network society develops a new image of time, featuring multiplicity of temporal flows. Besides, compression of space and time has become the basis of globalization processes. Time implosion in the modern globalizing world is a direct consequence of technological and social revolutions of the 20th century. The author also sheds some light on the particularities of time perception in the cultural traditions of Eastern and Western Europe. In the 19th century, time phenomenon was explored in historical studies by Romanticism and Positivism proponents. As a result of the scientific revolution in the beginning of the 20th century, the image of time-space phenomena changed dramatically. These changes were reflected in the concepts of “chronotop” (M. Bakhtin) and “memory cultures” (J. Assmann).