This book is a synthesis of more than three decades of research into the concept of time and its semiotic nature. If traditional philosophy - and philosophy of time should be no exception - in the shadow of advancing biology can be said to have reached an impasse, one important reason for this, in harmony with Wittgenstein's vision, appears to have been its lack of appropriate tools for explicating language. The present theory of time proceeds, accordingly, from the exploration of temporal expressions in language as an evolutionary fact. It derives in a hypothetical, coherent feedback process of hierarchically ordered distinctions the semantics of time from its biologically dictated perceptual and cognitive-pragmatic origins.