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Books > Science & Mathematics > Astronomy, space & time > Time (chronology) > General
In this encyclopedia, some 200 international scholars in 360
articles explore subjects such as physics, archeostronomy,
astronomy, mathematics, time's measurements and divisions, as well
as covering other scientific and interdisciplinary areas: biology,
economics and political science, horology, history, medicine,
geography, geology and telecommunications.
The arrow of time refers to the curious asymmetry that
distinguishes the future from the past. Reversing the Arrow of Time
argues that there is an intimate link between the symmetries of
'time itself' and time reversal symmetry in physical theories,
which has wide-ranging implications for both physics and its
philosophy. This link helps to clarify how we can learn about the
symmetries of our world; how to understand the relationship between
symmetries and what is real, and how to overcome pervasive
illusions about the direction of time. Roberts explains the
significance of time reversal in a way that intertwines physics and
philosophy, to establish what the arrow of time means and how we
can come to know it. This book is both mathematically and
philosophically rigorous yet remains accessible to advanced
undergraduates in physics and philosophy of physics. This title is
also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This pack contains a book and CD-ROM. "The Chronology of the Old
Testament" has one goal to accomplish: to demonstrate that every
chronological statement contained in the Sacred Writ, is consistent
with all other chronological statements contained therein. The
author carefully and thoroughly investigates the chronological and
mathematical facts of the Old Testament, proving them to be
accurate and reliable. This biblically sound, scholarly, and
easy-to-understand book; will enlighten and astound its readers
with solutions and alternatives to many questions Bible scholars
have had over the centuries. Were there 66, 70, or 75 'souls' in
Egypt when Jacob arrived? Were the Hebrews in Egypt for 430 years,
or a shorter length of time? How long did Jacob have to wait before
marrying the first of Laban's daughters, and how long did he wait
for the second? What year was Christ born? With reliable
explanatory text, charts, and diagrams; this book provides a
systematic framework of the chronology of the Bible from Genesis
through the life of Christ. Wall-sized chronological charts are
also included on the CD-ROM.
For thousands of years, people of all cultures have made and used
clocks, from the city sundials of ancient Rome to the medieval
water clocks of imperial China, hourglasses fomenting revolution in
the Middle Ages, the Stock Exchange clock of Amsterdam in 1611,
Enlightenment observatories in India, and the high-precision clocks
circling the Earth on a fleet of GPS satellites that have been
launched since 1978. Clocks have helped us navigate the world and
build empires, and have even taken us to the brink of destruction.
Elites have used them to wield power, make money, govern citizens,
and control lives-and sometimes the people have used them to fight
back. Through the stories of twelve clocks, About Time brings
pivotal moments from the past vividly to life. Historian and
lifelong clock enthusiast David Rooney takes us from the unveiling
of al-Jazari's castle clock in 1206, in present-day Turkey; to the
Cape of Good Hope observatory at the southern tip of Africa, where
nineteenth-century British government astronomers moved the gears
of empire with a time ball and a gun; to the burial of a plutonium
clock now sealed beneath a public park in Osaka, where it will keep
time for 5,000 years. Rooney shows, through these artifacts, how
time has been imagined, politicized, and weaponized over the
centuries-and how it might bring peace. Ultimately, he writes, the
technical history of horology is only the start of the story. A
history of clocks is a history of civilization.
Following one of the most inspiring and fascinating stories linked
to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, this book centres on the life
and achievements of John Harrison - designer and builder of the
first accurate marine chronometers. Inspired by the official prize
offered in 1714 to anyone who could solve the problem of finding
longitudinal position at sea, Harrison produced his four famous 'H'
timepieces. In doing so, he helped revolutionise sea travel, saving
many thousands of lives. John Harrison and the Quest for Longitude
is the intriguing account of one man driven by the need to solve
one of the greatest practical problems of his time.
From the patristic age until the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582,
computus -- the science of time reckoning and art of calendar
construction -- was a matter of intense concern. Bede's The
Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione) was the first comprehensive
treatise on this subject and the model and reference for all
subsequent teaching discussion and criticism of the Christian
calendar. It is a systematic exposition of the Julian solar
calendar and the Paschal table of Dionysius Exiguus, with their
related formulae for calculating dates. But it is more than a
technical handbook. Bede sets calendar lore within a broad
scientific framework and a coherent Christian concept of time, and
incorporates themes as diverse as the theory of tides and the
doctrine of the millennium.
This translation of the full text of The Reckoning of Time
includes an extensive historical introduction and a
chapter-by-chapter commentary. It will interest historians of
medieval science, theology, and education, Bede scholars and
Anglo-Saxonists, liturgists, and Church historians. It will also
serve as an accessible introduction to computus itself. Generations
of medieval computists nourished their expertise in Bede's orderly
presentation; modern scholars in quest of safe passage through this
complex terrain can hope for no better guide.
The concern with time permeates Freud's work, from Studies on
Hysteria to Analysis Terminable and Interminable, which point out
to a network of concepts that indicate Freud's complex theories on
temporality. Indeed no other psychoanalytic thinker has put forward
such revolutionary vision on the dimensions of time in human
existence. This volume brings together some of the most important
papers written on the topic by members of the British
Psychoanalytical Society. In the richness of the detailed clinical
discussions the ways in which patients deal with time and memory
are viewed as crucial indications about their internal world and
ways of relating to their objects. Disorientation regarding time
tends to reflect levels of disruption to internal object
relationships, inability to mourn or to experience guilt. Examples
from literature and history are considered in order to examine the
power of the repetition compulsion - Nachtreglichkeit - as well as
how the impossibility of bearing the mental pain can lead to the
creation of a timeless world.
Gender in Real Time brings gender into the realm of time. Weston introduces the temporality concept, looking at the ways that gender exists and can be measured in units of time. Her use of time, and the concept of the 'zero' allow us to conceive of a genderless world free of current academic debates surrounding the number of genders in existence.
"Time" is the most common noun in the English language yet
philosophers and scientists don't agree about what time actually is
or how to define it. Perhaps this is because the brain tells,
represents and perceives time in multiple ways. Dean Buonomano
investigates the relationship between the brain and time, looking
at what time is, why it seems to speed up or slow down and whether
our sense that time flows is an illusion. Buonomano presents his
theory of how the brain tells time, and illuminates such concepts
as free will, consciousness, space-time and relativity from the
perspective of a neuroscientist. Drawing on physics, evolutionary
biology and philosophy, he reveals that the brain's ultimate
purpose may be to predict the future-and thus that your brain is a
time machine.
In a unique volume, Contested Futures brings together a group of
scholars to examine the relationships between social action and the
future. Rather than speculating upon what the future might bring,
the volume interrogates the metaphors and practices through which
the future is mobilized as an object of present day action and
agency. The book shifts the analytical gaze from looking into the
future to looking at the future as a sociological phenomenon in its
own right. Futures are thus contested in as much as they register
differences of interest, time frame or organizational and political
form. Contestation is also evident in the ascendancy of certain
discourses, languages and metaphors which foreclose some futures
whilst facilitating others. But futures are far from being simply
linguistic abstractions, and in fact can often be seen to harden
into material entrenchment as expectations become scripted into
'path dependency' and 'lock in'. Contested Futures is an invaluable
analysis for both academics and policy actors seeking a better
understanding of the ubiquity of futures-discourse in the context
of today's uncertainties.
Series Information: One World Archaeology
An invaluable resource for working programmers, as well as a fount
of useful algorithmic tools for computer scientists, astronomers,
and other calendar enthusiasts, The Ultimate Edition updates and
expands the previous edition to achieve more accurate results and
present new calendar variants. The book now includes coverage of
Unix dates, Italian time, the Akan, Icelandic, Saudi Arabian Umm
al-Qura, and Babylonian calendars. There are also expanded
treatments of the observational Islamic and Hebrew calendars and
brief discussions of the Samaritan and Nepalese calendars. Several
of the astronomical functions have been rewritten to produce more
accurate results and to include calculations of moonrise and
moonset. The authors frame the calendars of the world in a
completely algorithmic form, allowing easy conversion among these
calendars and the determination of secular and religious holidays.
LISP code for all the algorithms is available in machine-readable
form.
An invaluable resource for working programmers, as well as a fount
of useful algorithmic tools for computer scientists, astronomers,
and other calendar enthusiasts, The Ultimate Edition updates and
expands the previous edition to achieve more accurate results and
present new calendar variants. The book now includes coverage of
Unix dates, Italian time, the Akan, Icelandic, Saudi Arabian Umm
al-Qura, and Babylonian calendars. There are also expanded
treatments of the observational Islamic and Hebrew calendars and
brief discussions of the Samaritan and Nepalese calendars. Several
of the astronomical functions have been rewritten to produce more
accurate results and to include calculations of moonrise and
moonset. The authors frame the calendars of the world in a
completely algorithmic form, allowing easy conversion among these
calendars and the determination of secular and religious holidays.
LISP code for all the algorithms is available in machine-readable
form.
The prophet Muhammad and the early Islamic community radically
redefined the concept of time that they had inherited from earlier
religions' beliefs and practices. This new temporal system, based
on a lunar calendar and era, was complex and required
sophistication and accuracy. From the ninth to the sixteenth
centuries, it was the Muslim astronomers of the Ottoman, Safavid
and Mughal empires who were responsible for the major advances in
mathematics, astronomy and astrology. This fascinating study
compares the Islamic concept of time, and its historical and
cultural significance, across these three great empires. Each
empire, while mindful of earlier models, created a new temporal
system, fashioning a new solar calendar and era and a new round of
rituals and ceremonies from the cultural resources at hand. This
book contributes to our understanding of the Muslim temporal system
and our appreciation of the influence of Islamic science on the
Western world.
In a universe filled by chaos and disorder, one physicist makes the
radical argument that the growth of order drives the passage of
time -- and shapes the destiny of the universe. Time is among the
universe's greatest mysteries. Why, when most laws of physics allow
for it to flow forward and backward, does it only go forward?
Physicists have long appealed to the second law of thermodynamics,
held to predict the increase of disorder in the universe, to
explain this. In The Janus Point, physicist Julian Barbour argues
that the second law has been misapplied and that the growth of
order determines how we experience time. In his view, the big bang
becomes the "Janus point," a moment of minimal order from which
time could flow, and order increase, in two directions. The Janus
Point has remarkable implications: while most physicists predict
that the universe will become mired in disorder, Barbour sees the
possibility that order -- the stuff of life -- can grow without
bound. A major new work of physics, The Janus Point will transform
our understanding of the nature of existence.
Originally published in 1926, this book contains a general history
of the measurement of time now known as the week. Colson begins
with the seven-day cycle devised by the Jews and examines how
different theologies gave rise to different names and systems of
measurement for each day of the week and how the week eventually
became standardised. This book will be of value to anyone with an
interest in ancient astronomy and the history of time keeping.
A history of the innovation and effects of the French Republican
Calendar. The French Republican Calendar was perhaps the boldest of
all the reforms undertaken in Revolutionary France. Introduced in
1793 and used until 1806, the Calendar not only reformed the weeks
and months of the year, but decimalisedthe hours of the day and
dated the year from the beginning of the French Republic. This book
not only provides a history of the calendar, but places it in the
context of eighteenth-century time-consciousness, arguing that the
French were adept at working within several systems of
time-keeping, whether that of the Church, civil society, or the
rhythms of the seasons. Developments in time-keeping technology and
changes in working patterns challenged early-modern temporalities,
and the new calendar can also be viewed as a step on the path
toward a more modern conception of time. In this context, the
creation of the calendar is viewed not just as an aspect of the
broader republican programme of social, political and cultural
reform, but as a reflection of a broader interest in time and the
culmination of several generations' concern with how society should
be policed. Matthew Shaw is a curatorat the British Library,
London.
Originally published in 1921, this book provides a concise guide to
the Western Calendar. Information is provided on its origin and
development, the principles of its construction, the purposes for
which it is employed, its deficiencies and the means by which these
deficiencies can be amended. The text also contains a list of
authorities on the calendar and a table of astronomical data in
mean solar time. This book will be of value to anyone with an
interest in the Western Calendar and the measurement of time in
general.
On April 6, 1922, in Paris, Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson
publicly debated the nature of time. Einstein considered Bergson's
theory of time to be a soft, psychological notion, irreconcilable
with the quantitative realities of physics. Bergson, who gained
fame as a philosopher by arguing that time should not be understood
exclusively through the lens of science, criticized Einstein's
theory of time for being a metaphysics grafted on to science, one
that ignored the intuitive aspects of time. The Physicist and the
Philosopher tells the remarkable story of how this explosive debate
transformed our understanding of time and drove a rift between
science and the humanities that persists today. Jimena Canales
introduces readers to the revolutionary ideas of Einstein and
Bergson, describes how they dramatically collided in Paris, and
traces how this clash of worldviews reverberated across the
twentieth century. She shows how it provoked responses from figures
such as Bertrand Russell and Martin Heidegger, and carried
repercussions for American pragmatism, logical positivism,
phenomenology, and quantum mechanics. Canales explains how the new
technologies of the period--such as wristwatches, radio, and
film--helped to shape people's conceptions of time and further
polarized the public debate. She also discusses how Bergson and
Einstein, toward the end of their lives, each reflected on his
rival's legacy--Bergson during the Nazi occupation of Paris and
Einstein in the context of the first hydrogen bomb explosion. The
Physicist and the Philosopher is a magisterial and revealing
account that shows how scientific truth was placed on trial in a
divided century marked by a new sense of time.
This comprehensive collection of calendars could only have been assembled by the authors of the definitive text on calendar algorithms, Calendrical Calculations. Using the algorithms outlined in their earlier book, Reingold and Dershowitz have achieved the near impossible task of simultaneously displaying the date on thirteen different calendars over a three-hundred year period. Represented here are the Gregorian, ISO, Hebrew, Chinese, Coptic, Ethiopic, Persian, Hindu lunar, Hindu solar, and Islamic calendars; another three are easily obtained from the tables with minimal arithmetic (JD, R.D., and Julian). The tables also include phases of the moon, dates of solstices and equinoxes, and religious and other special holidays for all the calendars shown. These beautifully-produced tables will be of use for centuries by anyone with an interest in calendars and the societies that produce them.
From Stonehenge to beyond the Big Bang, an exhilarating scientific
exploration of how we make time Time is the grandest conception of
the universe that we humans have been able to imagine – and its
most intimate, the very frame of human life. In About Time,
astrophysicist and award-winning writer Adam Frank tells the
scientific story of this wonderful and tyrannical invention. A
Palaeolithic farmer moved through the sun-fuelled day and
star-steered night in a radically different way than the
Elizabethan merchants who set their pace to the clocks newly
installed in their town squares. Since then, science has swept time
into increasingly minute and standardized units – the industrial
efficiency of ironworks’ punch clocks; the space-age precision of
atomic fountains and GPS satellites; the fifteen-minute increments
of Outlook’s digital revolution. And in the past decade,
string-theory branes, multiverses, and “clockless” physics have
begun to overturn our ideas about how the universe began – the
Big Bang – in ways that will completely rewrite time and our
experience of it. Weaving cosmology with day-to-day chronicles and
a down-to-earth style, About Time is both dazzling and riveting as
it confronts what comes next.
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