The Nobel laureate in literature, Henri Bergson, famously argued (Prigogine 1996: 14) that the role of time in nature is to prevent the simultaneous incidence of all events. He viewed time as a
“Vehicle of creativity and choice" ”. The measurement process in physics (more precisely, a succession thereof) tells us that Bergson is precisely correct in his assertion. The measurement process is the process by which the abstract variables in the differential equations (i.e. equations of motion) through which the laws of physics are expressed are assigned concrete or particular values. Prior to the measurement process in physics, the laws of physics are in a sort of timeless limbo without actual contact with what would be the observable universe (Prigogine 1996: 157). That is to say (to echo Bergson), physical laws are so general of application (they represent the simultaneous incidence of all events within their descriptive embrace) that they find no particular application unless and until the measurement process selects a particular dynamic permitted by them for propagation in the actual universe. The mathematician and philosopher, Willard Van Orman Quine, was entirely correct when he wrote (Ayer 1972: 58): “ "To be is to be the value of a variable." ”
At its most fundamental, this measurement process consists of a measuring or subject system (an environment or context) that exerts a selective effect upon an object system (Pattee 2001: 15, 19). This selective effect is implemented through what are called, in physics, as boundary conditions or more complicated boundary constraints (i.e. the range of admissible values to the variables at issue). The object system may be considered a reservoir of dynamics and may be identified with the laws of physics, in the abstract (that is, particular or concrete values to the variables in the differential equations through which physical laws are expressed have not been assigned). The subject system (which need not involve cognitive human beings and their instrumental extensions but may simply be natural systems) selects a particular dynamic from the object system for expression in itself as a record in a material structure, such as a gene; or as a modulated action (Pattee 1988: 73-74), such as enzyme catalysis.
When the imposed boundary constraint in the measurement process is sufficiently strong to permit several selections from the same parameter values, chance alone determines the selection (i.e. the selection is not determined by physical law) of particular dynamics for propagation. In this way, the exercise of genuine choice, including ethical choice by sufficiently sophisticated systems such as human beings in particular cultural contexts, becomes possible. The intimate connection of such ethical choice with the passage of time is reflected in the fact that the choices made by the ethical entity (or for that matter, by natural systems without the power of ethical choice) imbue the system “with a historical dimension in the sense of a critical event that will influence subsequent system behavior. Such historically determined behavior is called hysteresis” (Nicolis and Prigogine 1989: 14, 24). Hysteresis is the necessary condition responsible for the observable complexity (including “life, culture, and the arts”) of the universe (Prigogine 1996: 72). The role of hysteresis, as already noted, in permitting ethical choice was eloquently articulated (Rifkin and Howard 1989: 288) by the physical chemist and Nobel laureate, Wilhem Ostwald, as follows: “ "The responsibility for every act has sense only if the act cannot be repeated, if what is done is done forever".”
Hysteresis, however, is what the traditional idea of science, as shaped by physics, has wanted to avoid. (The aim was and is to avoid as few concrete measurements as possible and calculate everything from first principles.) This is transparently revealed by the confession of a neoclassical economist (neoclassical or mainstream economics, the reader should know, was explicitly patterned to be the behavioral science equivalent of classical mechanics in physics) as follows (Mirowski 1990: 291):
'[neoclassical economists] naturally tended to think of models in which things settle down to a unique position independently of initial conditions. Technically speaking, we theorists hoped not to introduce hysteresis phenomena into our model, [thereby taking] the subject out of the realm of science and into the realm of genuine history.'
In other words, traditional science (as shaped by physics) has favored equilibrium models featuring bi-directional time (time indifferent to forward or backward flow, hence the reference to time-symmetric or time reversible laws, particularly in physics) as opposed to the unidirectional time of human experience, irrevocably moving from past, present, to future. This is confirmed by Gilbert N. Lewis, “the most renowned thermodynamicist of his day”, when he wrote (Prigogine 1996: 61): “ "We shall see that nearly everywhere the physicist has purged from his science the use of one-way time … alien to the ideals of physics.”
