Time, Being and Becoming: Cognitive Models of Innovation and Creation in English (Interfaces)

Cognitive linguistics provides tools to discuss identity as a process. Identity depends on the underlying conceptualisation of the present, while innovation and creation are borderline phenomena in epistemology. The two may be seen as generalised accounts of causation as a process: open-ended and closed, where time is conceptualised as real or figurative. Aristotle’s epistemology builds on the conceptualisation of a subject manipulating objects in the visual field. Saint Augustine and Plotinus conceive of time and identity as real and contingent or figurative and necessary. William of Ockham builds on a simple conceptualisation of a time-point matrix as opposed to a duration matrix. British National Corpus findings relate to and comment on these expert philosophical conversations through the medium of cognitive models of «innovation» and «creation», instruments of thought and reason in English. Table of contents 7 Acknowledgements 11 Preface 13 Summary and Overview 17 Chapter 1. Formal solutions of identity: the substantive identity 23 Chapter 2. Non-formal solutions of identity: identity as process 33 Chapter 3. Identity and the present. Towards a cognitive model of the present 47 Chapter 4. ‘Innovation’ and ‘creation’ within the Cognitive Model of the Present 75 Chapter 5. ‘Innovation’ and ‘creation’ as principles in institutional management and aesthetics 97 Chapter 6. Cognitive models of ‘innovation’ and ‘creation,’ human thought and perceptual modality 117 General Conclusion 127 References 131 List of Figures 137 Cognitive linguistics offers tools to discuss philosophical problems of being and becoming (identity) as necessary or contingent. Major positions on these questions can be explained based on human counterfactual thought. Conceptualisations of "innovation" and "creation" in English (as instantiations of being and becoming) build on construal of time as actually experienced or figurative.