Some communication systems represent a nice example of the impossibility of proposing time descriptions of this communication without taking space considerations into account. Cellular communication systems are theoretically related to the spatio-temporally organized chemical reaction-diffusion processes, called 'dissipative structures' by Prigogine (1980). In this paper the principle of spatio-temporal contingency of reaction-diffusion systems is further substantiated starting from a philosophical inquiry into the comprehension of the spatial and the temporal. The metaphor of music, the metaphor of a 'provocation', and the Bergsonian metaphor of 'spatialized time' play a major role in this inquiry. (Adapted from Wilfried Allaerts)