Socially prevailing notions of time are therefore strongly influenced by the scales of measurement used. The linearized, homogenized continuum of mobile sequences which became the basis of the scientific measurement of time does not remain confined to physics, however. All other processes of measurement return to it. It is built into machines and technological equipment, and it is linked with the idea of measurement per se. And a great deal is measured: from the number of votes cast to the gross national product, from events recorded in the Guinness Book of Records to detailed budget expenditure. The idea of a linearized and homogenized scale of measurement has also seized hold of history. Its chronology is regarded as the final authoritative reference point for the course of all events in the human calendar per se. In his critique of chronological time, Siegfried Kracauer attributes the uncritical acceptance enjoyed, in his view, by the conception of flowing time among historians to an irresistible desire to translate the formal quality of irreversible flowing into content. It is the desire to be able to grasp the historical process as a whole, in order to be able to ascribe particular qualities to it as a whole. These may consist in the development of inherent possibilities, or in the idea of progress in the direction of a better future. Neither Hegel nor the comparatively more realistic Marx, nor many others, were able to resist the temptation to try to unfold, tackle and conceive the course of history in its entirety. Chronology is thereby given a material' importance of the first order.21 But the time of the calendar is an empty time, a vessel with no contents.
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From the Future to the Extended Present