本文总结了西方社会科学背后的五种时间观，并分析了这些时间观的误区。在此基础上，本文提出了另外五种时间观——由经济和军事权力性质造就的积累性发展时间，由意识形态权力性质造就的多样性时间，具有一定主宰性的政治时间，能促使事物往反方向发展的道家时间，以及现实历史过程中所呈现的复合时间 （积累发展、多样性时间、主宰性政治时间和道家时间的复合）。本文讨论了这些时间观对于社会科学研究的意义，并进一步提出有机地结合历史学的时间序列叙事和社会学的结构／机制叙事是历史社会学的要义所在。本文认为树立具有中国特色的时间本体论是发展具有中国特色的社会科学的一个方向。

This article first summarizes and then criticizes five different understandings of time and temporalities in the Western world. It then proceeds to propose five other understandings of time and temporalities: the cumulative developmental time derived from the natures of the economic and military power, the pluralistic time arising from the natures of ideological power, the increasingly prevailing political time due to the natures of the political power, the cyclic Daoist time, and the compound time of the empirical world (compound of the cumulative developmental time, pluralistic time, prevailing political time, and Daoist cyclic time). This article discusses the empirical relevance of my five understandings of time and tries to establish two arguments: First, the essence of historical sociology is not to study past happenings, but to organically combine the chronology/time-based narrative of history and structure/mechanism-based narrative of sociology. Second, establishing a Chinese ontology of time is a way to develop social sciences with Chinese characteristics.