Gibson and Time: The Temporal Framework of Direct Perception

Abstract The serious import of Gibson’s statement warning that physics “abstractions” of space and time “are not appropriate to psychology,” has not been understood. Underlying the space and time of physics is a largely unexamined metaphysic, what can be termed the “classic” (or spatial) metaphysic. This metaphysic is what Gibson implicitly rejected. His concept of direct perception, and necessarily then, direct memory, rely on, in fact, require, an alternative metaphysic of space and time for their understandability – what can be termed a “temporal metaphysic,” a framework which was explicitly developed by Bergson in Matter and Memory.