In a vision about thirty years ago Neville found himself in an infinite field of sunflowers whose every flower was a perfect human face moving as one chorus, and he knew that though less beautiful he was freer than all of them, returning to his body on the bed knowing he had been separated from what he once was part of.
Date (happened)
c. 1937
stated · preferred
before 13 June 1969
bound
Reasoning
The whole passage is Neville's first-person report and explicitly places the vision many years before he tells it. The containing lecture's confirmed delivery claim is 1969-06-13, supporting a before-1969-06-13 bound but no narrower occurrence date.
c. 1937
estimated · possible
Why
M7 dating pass (529; 525's readers, packet 025)
Reasoning
Passage 545791 says only 'Many years ago I had this vision.' The chronology's 16255, 'Neville sees an infinite field of human sunflowers', is dated c. 1937 from another telling; this record is that same vision, so circa 1937 is carried over with low confidence.
before 5 March 1963
bound
Source
bound from the telling lecture nid 1086 (1963-03-05)
Reasoning
The event is told in the past tense in nid 1086, delivered 1963-03-05 (that claim's confidence: certain, preferred), so it had happened by that date. This is the same premise phase4 L6a and L4.5 rest on, stated at the precision the evidence actually supports rather than as a fabricated year. It replaces nothing: the 1900 placeholder row remains, lowered, as the record of what phase3b did. `bound` is never `preferred`, so this does not change what the event displays.
c. 1937
estimated · possible
Why
M7 dating pass (529; 525's readers, packet 003)
Reasoning
Same vision of an infinite field of flower-like human faces moving in concert is dated c. 1937 in the chronology (event 16255); passage 529693 says 'many, many years ago' and 'long before it began to awaken in me'.
before 20 July 1959
bound · probable
Why
M7 dating pass (529; 525's readers, packet 003)
Reasoning
He says the vision was revealed 'long before it began to awaken in me', i.e. before the awakening of 20 July 1959.
before 1970
bound
Reasoning
v1.1/l0.5/retype/w1: type stated -> bound. The description gives only 'Many years ago' with no asserted date; the year matches the telling lecture's own date, so it is inferred from the vision predating its retelling, not stated as fact.
before 1971
bound · possible
Reasoning
Qualifying passage ids [551729] belong to telling lecture nids [2022]. Each listed lecture contributes the selected safe envelope year 1971 (MAX of its non-refuted delivery years); 1971 is the MIN across telling lectures.
Show all 17 claims
before 12 February 1971
bound · probable
Reasoning
The passage unambiguously presents the vision as a completed prior experience but supplies no independent occurrence date. Node 2022's sole delivery claim is 1971-02-12 at probable confidence. The strongest supported temporal claim is therefore an upper bound before that telling day, inheriting the carrier's probable ceiling.
before 13 June 1969
bound · probable
Why
M7 dating pass (529; 525's readers, packet 028)
Reasoning
Passage 551729 (infinite field of human flowers like sunflowers, all moving in unison, he alone free) is the vision told in passage 545791, delivered 1969-06-13 (certain). Same vision, so it predates that day.
before 1962
bound · probable
Source
bound from the telling lecture nid 2271 (1962)
Reasoning
The event is told in the past tense in nid 2271, delivered 1962 (that claim's confidence: probable, preferred), so it had happened by that date. This is the same premise phase4 L6a and L4.5 rest on, stated at the precision the evidence actually supports rather than as a fabricated year. It replaces nothing: the 1900 placeholder row remains, lowered, as the record of what phase3b did. `bound` is never `preferred`, so this does not change what the event displays.
c. 1937
estimated · possible
Why
M7 dating pass (529; 525's readers, packet 003)
Reasoning
Same vision of a field of sunflowers whose flowers are human faces is dated c. 1937 in the chronology (event 16255); 'many, many years ago' told in 1962 is consistent with that (passage 555875).
c. 1937
estimated · probable
Reasoning
The containing lecture is independently dated 1967-10-27; subtracting Neville's approximate thirty-year interval yields circa 1937. His wording is explicitly approximate, so no month or day is asserted.
before 1962
bound
Why
Conservative year-level upper bound only.
Reasoning
The explicit long retrospective interval establishes that the vision predates the 1962 telling. The passage does not supply enough information to infer a specific earlier year.
c. 1900
stated · refuted
Reasoning
|| v1.1/l1.4/sentinel1900: year 1900 here is not a date. `corpus v1 / phase3b` emitted it as a placeholder for "unknown, sometime before the telling" whenever the speaker used a vague temporal phrase — this row's own source note is the phrase. The same sentinel was identified and converged on in run v1.1/l0.5/retype/w1-conv. It carried confidence `probable`, which no evidence supported. Lowered to `doubtful`; an honest `before 1963-03-05` bound is appended alongside from the telling lecture (nid 1086). Nothing deleted, no year invented. || v1.1/l1.4/sentinel1900-refute: REFUTED. This event involves Neville himself and he was born 1905-02-19 (event 950 delta 9, `certain` + `preferred`), so 1900 is not merely unsupported — it is impossible. The event now displays no date, which is the honest state: the `before` bound appended by v1.1/l1.4/sentinel1900 remains and is what is actually known. Row kept, not deleted.
c. 1900
stated · refuted
Reasoning
|| v1.1/l1.4/sentinel1900: year 1900 here is not a date. `corpus v1 / phase3b` emitted it as a placeholder for "unknown, sometime before the telling" whenever the speaker used a vague temporal phrase — this row's own source note is the phrase. The same sentinel was identified and converged on in run v1.1/l0.5/retype/w1-conv. It carried confidence `probable`, which no evidence supported. Lowered to `doubtful`; an honest `before 1962` bound is appended alongside from the telling lecture (nid 2271). Nothing deleted, no year invented. || v1.1/l1.4/sentinel1900-refute: REFUTED. This event involves Neville himself and he was born 1905-02-19 (event 950 delta 9, `certain` + `preferred`), so 1900 is not merely unsupported — it is impossible. The event now displays no date, which is the honest state: the `before` bound appended by v1.1/l1.4/sentinel1900 remains and is what is actually known. Row kept, not deleted.
17 July 1968
estimated · refuted
Why
pm-actor-525: refuted by the M7 dating pass (529; 525's readers, packet 007): Conflicts with the independently-dated c. 1937 vision and the certain before-1962 bound; 'this night' is ambiguous between the retelling and the vision itself, per F1000's own caveat.
Reasoning
The closing line of the vision narrative uses proximal deixis ('this night') rather than the distal 'that night' one would expect for a vision recalled from the past, suggesting the sunflower vision occurred the same night as the 1968-07-17 lecture (delivery date certain per two independent claims). The reading is plausible but not conclusive since 'this night' inside a retold narrative can also refer back to the night depicted within the vision itself, so confidence is held at possible rather than probable.
Told / reported
27 October 1967
estimated
Why
Lane L7 (#2354) re-derivation. Supersedes in substance, not in storage, the refuted-date told claim(s) on this event; those rows stand per append-only.
Reasoning
Re-derived, not walked down. The existing told claim(s) on this event took their date from a delivery claim on node 1296 that the corpus has since REFUTED, so the corpus was asserting that Neville told this on a day it separately says he did not lecture. That is a contradiction rather than an over-confidence, and lowering the confidence would have hidden it instead of resolving it. The refutation stands and the told claim is the wrong side of it. Node 1296 surviving (non-refuted) claim: 1967-10-27 at `certain`. All claims on the node: 1967-10-27 certain; 1967-10-27 certain; 1969-10-18 refuted; 1967-10-27 certain (preferred). Superseded here: delta 0: 1969-10-18 at `certain` (run `corpus v1 / phase3b`). The telling is dated by its lecture, so with the refuted date removed from consideration the surviving claim is what the telling inherits, at that claim own confidence and no higher.
13 June 1969
stated
Reasoning
Passage 545791 contains the narration and its lecture has an exact, certain, confirmed 1969-06-13 delivery claim recovered from the transcript dateline and corroborated by the consolidated catalogue event.
-
c. 1970
estimated · probable
Reasoning
Passage 545791 is Neville narrating in the first person a vision of an enormous sea of human-faced sunflowers moving as one -- this is the telling. The owning lecture nid 1825 carries one delivery claim, 1970 circa/probable. The telling inherits that precision and confidence exactly.
1962
estimated
Reasoning
Passage 555875 tells this vision within lecture node 2271. The node has a probable legacy 1962 claim and an independently derived certain 1962 claim from passage 555888, so the telling year is certain. This node-sourced told claim is estimated, never stated.
17 July 1968
estimated
Reasoning
The passage recounting the sunflower vision is embedded in lecture nid 1755, whose delivery date of 1968-07-17 is certain by two independent claims (catalogue title/date match and a chrome dateline harvest); this is when Neville told the audience about the vision, regardless of when it happened.
18 October 1969
stated · refuted
Reasoning
|| v1.1/l7/told-close: the delivery claim this was derived from (nid 1296, 1969-10-18) was refuted by the L7 adjudication (#2363). The corrected told claim from the same lecture stands at 1967-10-27. This row is retired rather than deleted so the derivation history remains readable.
Sources
Source
- Love Divided From Imagination ¶1 (This night I found myself in an infinite field of beautiful flowers. They were sunflowers, as far as the eye could see, and every flower was a human face and each perfect. If one smiled, all smiled. If one bent over, all bent over.)
- God's Mystery of Christ ¶22 (Primary first-person narrative and temporal evidence for the sunflower vision.)
- The Fourfold Gospel ¶13 (As I approached them, they were not flowers. They were all rooted like a flower into the earth, but the faces, beautiful faces, human faces—everyone was a face. As I came upon them, they moved in concert as though someone led them in some orchestra.)
- God's Mystery of Christ ¶22 (I came upon an enormous sea of sunflowers, beautiful sunflowers, and each flower was a human face, beautiful faces, each flower rooted in the earth.)
- The True Freedom Manifestation ¶22 (As I saw it so clearly one night — this infinite field of human flowers, flowers like sunflowers. And yet I knew as I looked at them, and they were so beautiful, I knew that I enjoyed a far greater measure of freedom than all of them put together.)
- Unless I Go Away ¶2 (Here I was shown an enormous field of sunflowers, and every flower, the enormous flower, was the human face — but it was a flower, stationed in the earth. And I looked upon this enormous field of beautiful sunflowers and saw them move in rhythm; they mov…)
- Love Divided From Imagination ¶0
- The Pattern Man ¶43