Perhaps an Other Time

In this article it is argued that conceptions of time have important cognitive and behavioural effects on historical agents, and that in ancient China at least one such conception tied fundamentally with the traditional Chinese calendar, the Stems and Branches system, is significantly different than the worldwide dominant modern conception of time in ways that deserve wider acknowledgement and exploration. The article relies on cognitive science literature, Takayama’s method of uncovering ancient cognition, and Bradd Shore’s Cultural Models Theory, to make its case. By examining the underlying qualitative and calculative structures of the calendar(s) in use by the humans we study, we can begin to see just how potentially different these views of time were and are in ways so fundamental to being in the world as to warrant new (re)considerations of historical actors cognizing about in and about their respective conceptual frameworks of time and the behaviours they engage in as a consequence.