Time, Conflict and Human Values

Reviews / Votes

"Framing an interdisciplinary synthesis of the many scientific and literary studies of time cannot be an easy task, but achieving such a synthesis has captured the attention and energies of J. T. Fraser across a decades-long series of studies... With ascetic patience, he shows that he is at home in the literature of time and change in such fields of inquiry as physics, biology, neurophysiology, psychology, drama, myth, and philosophy. He is a polymath in the best sense of the term... [Fraser] has sifted through otherwise discordant disciplinary voices to find a theoretically concordant classification of the main types and levels of temporality... Fraser's theory of value emphasizes the evolutionary conditions and outcomes of truth, goodness, and beauty." -- Bertrand P. Helm, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy "Combining new scientific and mathematical discoveries with the ancient wisdom embedded in philosophy and literature, Fraser creates a brilliant new synthesis for the Information Age. His clearly written, if sometimes demanding, book is packed so full of insights that anyone who reads it will emerge with a clearer understanding of time and how it affects our values." -- Paul Lake, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette "A marvel of erudition, observation, and insight into human affairs and behavior. That alone makes it worth reading -- and more than once... A treasure trove of imaginative scholarship and wisdom of a kind so rarely seen as to be almost extinct." -- George M. O'Har, Technology and Culture "Fraser has authored a book that deserves some serious attention. His almost encyclopedic approach to his topic continually draws information and insights from a host of disciplines such as philosophy, literature, physics, art, and religion." - Choice "Fraser is the time scholar's Father Time, the most prolific, comprehensive author and editor of writings on time and the originator of a naturalistic ... theory of time... This book, humane spirited, knowledgeably inclusive as it is, will be of interest to any reader and of special use to those who believe that time is a natural product rather than a manifestation of human transcendence and who want to see how this view plays out in the human world of values." -- Eva Brann, ISIS ADVANCE PRAISE "I can't imagine counting myself educated without this marvelous book ... as well ask a Christian of his or her world without the bible. We are all born into, and of, time, but we don't begin to understand its mysterious nature, the eternal enigma of this universal common medium, until we have followed the substance of Fraser's thought and feelings. They are indispensable and I most warmly recommend the book to all our world, which is so bogged down in Stone Age times and attitudes."-John Fowles "Every field boasts one or two scholars who, by dint of their intellectual prowess, are able to help the rest of us define the meaning of our times more clearly. J. T. Fraser has done exactly that in the field of time studies. He has become, for the rest of us, a guide to the many temporal worlds we inhabit. In an era where much of scholarship has become facile and narrow, Fraser remains one of the few who is still willing to tackle the larger questions relating to the metaphysics of our existence. He has done so beautifully in his new book Time, Conflict, and Human Values and in the process provided the rest of us with a fresh lens to better examine the social fabric for our lives."-Jeremy Rifkin "Time, Conflict, and Human Values integrates into a single vision the natural sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts. Fraser has answered a large part of the riddle of time itself, the core problem of philosophy that is at the heart of any attempt at a philosophical account of epistemology, referentiality, phenomenology, consciousness, and scientific ontology. Like Aquinas, and like Aristotle before him, he has created the very arena within which philosophy will be conducted for the next few decades, perhaps centuries."- Frederick Turner, author of Beauty: The Value of Values