Kern, Stephen. The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983.
Overview
Claim: Beginning of XX century has seen a change in technology that created distinctive new modes of thinking about and experiencing time and space, which resulted in transformation of the dimensions of life and thought.
Aim: To survey significant changes in the experience of time and space, including some for which I am able to identify no specific "cause."
Method: informal adaptation of phenomenological method used in psychiatry. The method involves using categorical frame of reference to reconstruct the patient's experience of time, space, causality, materiality, and other essential categories. Development of such method of analysis of history via the basic philosophical categories of time and space is also useful for general cultural history, because those two categories are comprehensive, universal and essential. The method also uses conceptual distance : comparing thoughts from different spheres through analogy and metaphor, eg architecture and philosophy (or cubism and camouflage). Some analogies, however, remain mere analogies, and although I did not discover any actual connection between their elements (8).
It also assesses situations through the relation of technology to culture. Each chapter starts from technological or institutional developments and then surveys the cultural record following traditional academic disciplines and artistic genres.
Why relevant: my project is in a way similar. It looks at two areas (industirial vs software production) and analyses the subject arcross a number of categories.
Cultural developments are analysed based on a range of subtopics: (1)The Nature of Time; The Past, The Present, The Future + Speed, (2) The Nature of Space; Form, Distance, and Direction.
Rationale for categories: subtopics are breaking down "space" and "time". "Time" is broken down according to human experience of time, and space sub-categories come from cartography. Speed is seen as a natural transition between the two, and is equally separate and related to them (3).
Last two chapters look at how time and space are reflected in diplomatic relations between nations before and at the start of World War I. Based on this, it is possible for Kern to interpret how class structures, modes of production, patterns of diplomacy, or means of waging war were manifested historically in terms of changing experiences of time and space.
Kern also describes naysayers:
1. Such interpretation is reductionistic. He explains that this reduction is necessary and allows:
- to determine larger patterns in the culture of an age
- clearer analysis, based on basic categories
- contributes to method of analysis of a broader topic, comparison of Renaissance ad Enlightenment
2. Risk of implying that cultural histories with other foci are unessential, researcher bias. Answer to that: my focal topics are more essential from a strictly philosophical point of view. Examples of three researchers who did similar projects, but with a narrower focus - greater detail, but inability to analyse the essential foundations of experience (5).
Paths not taken: analysing via traditional artistic genres and academic disciplines did not work because:
- it wasn't possible to cut the material clearly along these dividers. Philosophical concepts worked better
- sharpened the assessment of other texts
- gave fresh terms to think through the culture of the period
Relevance of his study: connects to contemporary energy crisis (8) (crisis of abundance of energy at the dawn of 20thC)