One can knead bread dough until it reaches the right consistency – a state recognized through instructions and experience. For baking, it remains in the oven until a test – such as tapping the crust – reveals it is fully baked. Such a procedure follows an experience-based, perception-oriented „if-then“ logic and essentially operates without reference to time.

Temporality only enters the picture when different instances of bread baking are compared – for example, if one baker finishes faster than another. This can stem from various causes: altered conditions regarding ingredient ratios or baking temperatures; the baker’s physical or mental state; greater skill, know-how, or dedication; distractions or interruptions; rivalry; expectations regarding subsequent tasks; or, more generally, social pressure. The duration of these processes can be quantified proportionally: one baker is twice as fast as the other – a comparison that may carry a value judgment, such as the faster baker being deemed superior, or the slower one producing a tastier loaf.

The defined duration of a standardized comparative process – such as the emptying of an hourglass – makes it possible to assign an independent numerical value to the individual baking process; this value designates an aspect of the process itself – time – in a manner reminiscent of Aristotle. The process aligns with time according to the measure provided by the number. The faster baker consumes less time than the slower one.

This perspective is neither self-evident nor necessary. Experience-based, perception-oriented baking is entirely sufficient for the purpose of making bread and requires no reference to time. Indeed, „time“ as such is not discernible within the act of baking itself. Only the comparison of different baking processes reveals that a distinction can be made. Clearly, there is something within these comparable processes that creates a difference. This difference can be quantitatively identified as time.

Upon closer inspection, concrete differences are easily discernible: altered conditions – such as the mixing ratio of components or the baking temperature – as well as factors like well-being, increased skill, superior know-how, greater commitment, a spirit of competition, an interest in subsequent expectations, and, more generally, a sensitivity to social pressure. Fundamentally, the concept of „time“ serves merely as an abstract, generalized summary of all these factors. All the elements that account for variations in the duration required for an action to unfold determine the process’s specific temporality – its own intrinsic time (Eigenzeit).

What is gained by this abstraction? For instance, the realization that different executions of similar processes – carried out under strictly standardized and normalized conditions – take the same amount of time. This offers the practical advantage of allowing for the predictable control of procedures that cannot be monitored through direct sensory perception. Boiling an egg is a case in point: as is well known, one cannot tell simply by looking at a boiling egg when it has reached the desired consistency – there is no „test prick“ to check it. However, if prepared under standardized and normalized conditions, the desired consistency can be ensured through timekeeping based on experience.

What, then, is time? It is a cluster of unspecified yet relevant factors – specific to each instance – that determine the execution characteristics of events of all kinds and naturally vary from case to case. Viewed in this light, time is an „empty signifier“ in the sense used by Laclau. It is a concept devoid of concrete, intrinsic meaning – a kind of placeholder capable of subsuming, in a generalized way, vastly different execution conditions depending on the context. We possess the learned competence to handle the concept of time, yet we are understandably unable to specify exactly what we mean by it: namely, everything and nothing.

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