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.

The smooth functioning of an ordered society depends on the possession of a means of regularising its activities over time. That means is a calendar, and its regularity is a function of how well it models the more or less regular movements of the celestial bodies - of the moon, the sun or the stars. Greek and Roman Calendars examines the ancient calendar as just such a time-piece, whose elements are readily described in astronomical and mathematical terms. The story of these calendars is one of a continuous struggle to maintain a correspondence with the regularity of the seasons and the sun, despite the fact that the calendars were usually based on the irregular moon. But on another, more human level, Greek and Roman Calendars steps beyond the merely mathematical and studies the calendar as a social instrument, which people used to organise their activities. It sets the calendars of the Greeks and Romans on a stage occupied by real people, who developed and lived with these time-pieces for a variety of purposes - agricultural, religious, political and economic. This is also a story of intersecting cultures, of Greeks with Greeks, of Greeks with Persians and Egyptians, and of Greeks with Romans, in which various calendaric traditions clashed or compromised.

The subject of 'time' is currently experiencing a revival in the most diverse areas of academic discourse. Contemporary time theory attempts to relate theoretical time concepts both to one another and to everyday experience of time. This book deals with the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the chemo-physicist Iyla Prigogine (Nobel Prize for Chemistry 1977), two prominent advocates of pioneering time concepts in the 20th century. The author not only provides a transdisciplinary introduction to modern debate on the problem of time, but suggests how the basic tendencies in this debate might be pragmatically interlinked with each other.

With the advent of the new millennium, the notion of the future, and of time in general, has taken on greater significance in postmodern thought. Although the equally pervasive and abstract concept of space has generated a vast body of disciplines, time, and the related idea of "becoming" (transforming, mutating and metamorphosing) have until now received little theoretical attention.

This volume explores the ontological, epistemic, and political implications of rethinking time as a dynamic and irreversible force. Drawing on ideas from the natural sciences, as well as from literature, philosophy, politics, and cultural analyses, its authors seek to stimulate further research in both the sciences and the humanities which highlights the temporal foundations of matter and culture.

The first section of the volume, "The Becoming of the World, " provides a broad introduction to the concepts of time. The second section, "Knowing and Doing Otherwise, " addresses the forces within cultural and intellectual practices which produce various becomings and new futures. It also analyzes how alternative models of subjectivity and corporeality may be generated through different conceptions of time. "Global Futures, " the third section, considers the possibilities for the social, political, and cultural transformation of individuals and nations.

A perfect balance of science, history, and sociology, Time's Pendulum traces the important developments in humankind's epic quest to measure the hours, days, and years with accuracy, and how our concept of time has changed with each new technological breakthrough. Written in an easy-to-follow chronological format and illustrated with entertaining anecdotes, author Jo Ellen Barnett's history of timekeeping covers everything from the earliest sundials and water clocks, to the pendulum and the more recent advances of battery-powered, quartz-regulated wrist watches and the powerful radioactive "clock," which loses only a few billionths of a second per day, making it nearly ten billion times more accurate than the pendulum clock. A tour of the discoveries and the inventors who endeavored to chart and understand time, Time's Pendulum also explains how each new advance gradually transformed our perception of the world.

Richard Sorabji here takes time as his central theme, exploring fundamental questions about its nature: Is it real or an aspect of consciousness? Did it begin along with the universe? Can anything escape from it? Does it come in atomic chunks? In addressing these and myriad other issues, Sorabji engages in an illuminating discussion of early thought about time, ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Islamic, Christian, and Jewish medieval thinkers. Sorabji argues that the thought of these often neglected philosophers about the subject is, in many cases, more complete than that of their more recent counterparts.

The fascinating story of an ancient riddle?and what it reveals about the nature of time and space
Three millennia ago, the Greek philosopher Zeno constructed a series of logical paradoxes to prove that motion is impossible. Today, these paradoxes remain on the cutting edge of our investigations into the fabric of space and time. "Zeno's Paradox" uses the motion paradox as a jumping-off point for an exploration of the twenty-five-hundred-year quest to uncover the true nature of the universe. From Galileo to Einstein to Stephen Hawking, some of the greatest minds in history have tackled the problem and made spectacular breakthroughs?but through it all, the paradox of motion remains.

Bored during Mass at the cathedral in Pisa, the seventeen-year-old Galileo regarded the chandelier swinging overhead-and remarked, to his great surprise, that the lamp took as many beats to complete an arc when hardly moving as when it was swinging widely. Galileo's Pendulum tells the story of what this observation meant, and of its profound consequences for science and technology. The principle of the pendulum's swing-a property called isochronism-marks a simple yet fundamental system in nature, one that ties the rhythm of time to the very existence of matter in the universe. Roger Newton sets the stage for Galileo's discovery with a look at biorhythms in living organisms and at early calendars and clocks-contrivances of nature and culture that, however adequate in their time, did not meet the precise requirements of seventeenth-century science and navigation. Galileo's Pendulum recounts the history of the newly evolving time pieces-from marine chronometers to atomic clocks-based on the pendulum as well as other mechanisms employing the same physical principles, and explains the Newtonian science underlying their function. The book ranges nimbly from the sciences of sound and light to the astonishing intersection of the pendulum's oscillations and quantum theory, resulting in new insight into the make-up of the material universe. Covering topics from the invention of time zones to Isaac Newton's equations of motion, from Pythagoras's theory of musical harmony to Michael Faraday's field theory and the development of quantum electrodynamics, Galileo's Pendulum is an authoritative and engaging tour through time of the most basic all-pervading system in the world.

In this fascinating book, the renowned astrophysicist J. Richard Gott leads time travel out of the world of H. G. Wells and into the realm of scientific possibility. Building on theories posited by Einstein and advanced by scientists such as Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne, Gott explains how time travel can actually occur. He describes, with boundless enthusiasm and humor, how travel to the future is not only possible but has already happened, and he contemplates whether travel to the past is also conceivable. Notable not only for its extraordinary subject matter and scientific brilliance, Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe is a delightful and captivating exploration of the surprising facts behind the science fiction of time travel.

First published in 1975 and still without equal, this anthology provides a thorough overview of the concept of time in the Western philosophic tradition. Encompassing a wide range of writings, from the Book of Genesis to the work of twentieth-century philosophers such as Collingwood and McKeon, all with introductory essays by editor Charles M. Sherover, The Human Experience of Time offers a synoptic view of the changing philosophic notions of time. Updated, expanded, and with a new introduction by the editor, this volume is not only a historical overview but also a dialectical analysis displaying the diverse approaches to the continuing philosophic exploration of time.

Estudios de los Mayas/La Nueva Edad "La lectura de este libro es una experiencia impactante y electrizante; cada pagina nos permite comprender perspicazmente los misterios mas profundos de la historia humana y de la evolucion de la consciencia mundial." --Michael E. Salla, Ph.D., Centro para la Paz Mundial El calendario profetico Maya no esta ajustado al movimiento de los cuerpos planetarios, mas bien funciona como un mapa metafisico de la evolucion de la consciencia y registra como fluye el tiempo espiritual, brindando una nueva ciencia del tiempo. El calendario esta asociado a nueve ciclos de creacion, cada uno de los cuales representa uno de los nueve niveles de consciencia o Submundo presentes en la piramide cosmica de los mayas. Al utilizar investigaciones empiricas, Carl Johan Calleman muestra como esta estructura piramidal del desarrollo de la consciencia puede explicar temas tan dispares como el origen comun de las religiones del mundo y el reclamo de nuestros dias de que parece que el tiempo se mueve mas rapido. Los lectores aprenderan que en realidad el tiempo se esta acelerando a medida que hacemos una transicion entre el materialista Submundo Planetario que nos rige hoy, hacia una frecuencia nueva y mas elevada de la consciencia --el Submundo Galactico---- lo cual nos prepara para el ultimo nivel universal de esclarecimiento de la consciencia. El Calendario Maya y la Transformacion de la Consciencia da a conocer el calendario Maya como un recurso espiritual que permite una comprension mayor de la naturaleza de la evolucion de la consciencia a traves de toda la historia humana, y como este brinda los pasos concretos que podemos tomar para alinearnos con este desarrollo haciael esclarecimiento. CARL JOHAN CALLEMAN posee un doctorado en biologia fisica y ha servido como experto en cancer a la Organizacion Mundial de la Salud (World Health Organization). En 1979 comenzo sus estudios sobre el calendario Maya y ahora imparte conferencias por todo el mundo; tambien es autor de Solving the Greatest Mystery of Our Time: The Mayan Calendar. Calleman vive en Suecia.

The untold story of the religious figures, philosophers, astronomers, geologists, physicists, and mathematicians who, for more than four hundred years, have pursued the answer to a fundamental question at the intersection of science and religion: When did the universe begin?

The moment of the universe's conception is one of science's Holy Grails, investigated by some of the most brilliant and inquisitive minds across the ages. Few were more committed than Bishop James Ussher, who lost his sight during the fifty years it took him to compose his Annals of all known history, now famous only for one date: 4004 b.c. Ussher's date for the creation of the world was spectacularly inaccurate, but that didn't stop it from being so widely accepted that it was printed in early twentieth-century Bibles. As writer and documentary filmmaker Martin Gorst vividly illustrates in this captivating, character-driven narrative, theology let Ussher down just as it had thwarted Theophilus of Antioch and many before him. Geology was next to fail the test of time. In the eighteenth century, naturalist Comte de Buffon, working out the rate at which the earth was supposed to have cooled, came up with an age of 74,832 years, even though he suspected this was far too low. Biology then had a go in the hands of fossil hunter Johann Scheuchzer, who alleged to have found a specimen of a man drowned at the time of Noah's flood. Regrettably it was only the imprint of a large salamander.

And so science inched forward via Darwinism, thermodynamics, radioactivity, and, most recently, the astronomers at the controls of the Hubble space telescope, who put the beginning of time at 13.4 billion years ago (give or take a billion). Taking the reader into the laboratories and salons of scholars and scientists, visionaries and eccentrics, Measuring Eternity is an engagingly written account of an epic, often quixotic quest, of how individuals who dedicated their lives to solving an enduring mystery advanced our knowledge of the universe.


From the Hardcover edition.

What is time? Is there a link between objective knowledge about time and subjective experience of time? And what is eternity? Does religion have the answer? Does science?Internationally known scholar Antje Jackelen investigates the problem and concept of time. Her study draws on her experiences in the Continental-European science and religion dialogue, with a particular focus on the German, Scandinavian, and Anglo-American dialogues. Her analysis of the subject includes: The notion of time and eternity as it is narrated through Christian hymn books stemming from Germany, Sweden, and the English-speaking world, with insights into changes of the concept and understanding of time in Christian spirituality over the past few decadesTheological approaches to time and eternity, as well as a look at Trinitarian theology and its relation to timeThe discussion of scientific theories of time, including Newtonian, relativistic, quantum, and chaos theoriesThe formulation of a "theology of time," a theological-mathematical model incorporating relational thinking oriented toward the future, the doctrine of trinity, and the notion of eschatology