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Books > Science & Mathematics > Astronomy, space & time > Time (chronology) > General
Three divinatory calendars from highland Guatemala -- examples of a Mayan literary tradition that includes the Popul Vuh, Annals of the Cakchiquels, and the Titles of the Lords of Totonicapan -- dating to 1685, 1722, and 1855, are transcribed in K'iche or Kaqchikel side-by-side with English translations. Calendars such as these continue to be the basis for prognostication, determining everything from the time for planting and harvest to foreshadowing illness and death. Good, bad, and mixed fates can all be found in these examples of the solar calendar and the 260-day divinatory calendar. The use of such calendars is mentioned in historical and ethnographic works, but very few examples are known to exist. Each of the three calendars transcribed and translated by John M Weeks, Frauke Sachse, and Christian M Prager -- and housed at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology -- is unique in structure and content. Moreover, except for an unpublished study of the 1722 calendar by Rudolf Schuller and Oliver La Farge (1934), these little-known works appear to have escaped the attention of most scholars. Introductory essays contextualise each document in time and space, and a series of appendixes present previously unpublished calendrical notes assembled in the early twentieth century. Providing considerable information on the divinatory use of calendars in colonial highland Maya society previously unavailable without a visit to the University of Pennsylvania's archives, Maya Daykeeping is an invaluable primary resource for Maya scholars.
A small army of physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and engineers has joined forces to attack a classic problem, the "reversibility paradox", with modern tools. This book describes their work from the perspective of computer simulation, emphasizing the authors' approach to the problem of understanding the compatibility, and even inevitability, of the irreversible second law of thermodynamics with an underlying time-reversible mechanics. Computer simulation has made it possible to probe reversibility from a variety of directions and "chaos theory" or "nonlinear dynamics" has supplied a useful vocabulary and a set of concepts, which allow a fuller explanation of irreversibility than that available to Boltzmann or to Green, Kubo and Onsager. Clear illustration of concepts is emphasized throughout, and reinforced with a glossary of technical terms from the specialized fields which have been combined here to focus on a common theme.The book begins with a discussion, contrasting the idealized reversibility of basic physics against the pragmatic irreversibility of real life. Computer models, and simulation, are next discussed and illustrated. Simulations provide the means to assimilate concepts through worked-out examples. State-of-the-art analyses, from the point of view of dynamical systems, are applied to many-body examples from nonequilibrium molecular dynamics and to chaotic irreversible flows from finite-difference, finite-element, and particle-based continuum simulations. Two necessary concepts from dynamical-systems theory - fractals and Lyapunov instability - are fundamental to the approach.Undergraduate-level physics, calculus, and ordinary differential equations are sufficient background for a full appreciation of this book, which is intended for advanced undergraduates, graduates, and research workers. The generous assortment of examples worked out in the text will stimulate readers to explore the rich and fruitful field of study which links fundamental reversible laws of physics to the irreversibility surrounding us all.This expanded edition stresses and illustrates computer algorithms with many new worked-out examples, and includes considerable new material on shockwaves, Lyapunov instability and fluctuations.
The nature of time has long puzzled physicists and philosophers. Time potentially has very fundamental yet unknown properties. In 1993 a new model of multi-dimensional time was found to relate closely to properties of the cosmological redshift. An international conference was subsequently convened in April 1996 to examine past, current and new concepts of time as they relate to physics and cosmology. These proceedings incorporate 34 reviews and contributed papers from the conference. The major reviews include observational properties of the redshift, alternative cosmologies, critical problems in cosmology, alternative viewpoints and problems in gravitation theory and particle physics, and new approaches to mathematical models of time. Professionals and students with an interest in cosmology and the structure of the universe should find that this book raises critical problems and explores challenging alternatives to classical viewpoints.
Does time really flow, or is that simply an illusion? Did time have a beginning? What does it mean to say that time has a direction? Does space have boundaries, or is it infinite? Are our space and time unique, or could there be other, parallel worlds with their own space and time? Do space and time really exist, or are they simply the constructions of our minds? Robin Le Poidevin provides a clear, witty, and stimulating introduction to these deep questions, and many other mind-boggling puzzles and paradoxes. He gives a vivid sense of the difficulties raised by our ordinary ideas about space and time, but he also gives us the basis to think about these problems independently, avoiding large amounts of jargon and technicality. No prior knowledge of philosophy is required to enjoy this book. The universe might seem very different after reading it.
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.
How have figures of speech configured new concepts of time, space, and mind throughout history? Brian J. McVeigh answers this question in A Psychohistory of Metaphors: Envisioning Time, Space, and Self through the Centuries by exploring "meta-framing:" our ever-increasing capability to "step back" from the environment, search out its familiar features to explain the unfamiliar, and generate "as if" forms of knowledge and metaphors of location and vision. This book demonstrates how analogizing and abstracting have altered spatio-visual perceptions, expanding our introspective capabilities and allowing us to adapt to changing social circumstances.
This book brings Christian theology, creative literature and
literary critical theory into dialogue on the theme of "the end."
Where appropriate it also considers recent scientific views on the
nature of time. 'Postmodern' critical theorists and many other writers emphasize
the 'open' nature of endings, but this book suggests that the
mixture of openness and closure in Christian eschatology not only
offers a coherent sense of an ending, but may make it possible to
construct endings in the here and now. On the way to this
conclusion the book provides an exegesis of novels, plays and poems
by such writers as John Fowles, Julian Barnes, Doris Lessing,
Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and
Shakespeare. Among critical theorists, postmodern and otherwise, it
considers especially the ideas of Frank Kermode, Northrop Frye,
Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricoeur. The author also examines the main themes of Christian eschatology - such as death, parousia, resurrection, human destiny and the nature of eternity - and offers a critical view of the doctrines of the last things produced by major modern theologians, including Jurgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Through this dialogue the book aims to form an image of the eternal 'wholeness' of persons in the life of the triune God that takes seriously the deconstruction of images of domination.
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 bri
All religion and much philosophy has been concerned with the contrast between the ephemeral and the eternal. Human beings have always sought ways to overcome time, and to prove that death is not the end. This book consists then in an exploration of certain closely related ideas: personal identity, time, history and our commitment to the future, and the role of imagination in life. Warnock argues in particular that the notion of personal immortality, as it appears in Christian dogma, cannot be taken literally. Nevertheless, as a metaphor, immortality may illuminate both our relation with the past, our understanding of the present and our responsibility for the future. In the course of the argument, philosophical themes of personal identity, of history, and of values, are explored, as well as the cognitive content of the imagination.
What is time? What do we understand when we think about time? What do we mean by ‘now’? This book covers concisely all the different aspects of time with an anchoring point within the geological sciences. Here successions of strata are seen as representing successions of events in the long history of the earth; palaeontology provides a record of organic evolution through nearly the whole of these several thousand million years. The rest of the book diversifies in discussing the measurement of time both physically and biologically; our human perception of it; the ending of personal time in death; the pervading presence of time in the arts; out through astronomy to cosmology; into philosophy and religion. The idea of time is a very complex one but this book undertakes a journey to prove that it is not beyond comprehension.
"Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls" explores the evidence about the different uses of time-measurement in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Jewish texts. James C. VanderKam examines the pertinent texts, their sources and the different uses to which people put calendrical information in the Christian world. He argues that the scrolls indicate that a dispute about the correct calendar for dating festivals was one of the principal reasons for the separation of the authors of the scrolls from Jewish society.
Real Time II extends and evolves DH Mellor's classic exploration of the philosophy of time, Real Time. This new book answers such basic metaphysical questions about time as: how do past, present and future differ, how are time and space related, what is change, is time travel possible? His Real Time dominated the philosophy of time for fifteen years. Real TIme II will do the same for the next twenty. GET /english/edu/Studying_at_SU/History_of_Literature.html HTTP/1.0
"Time" is the only book that offers a comprehensive history of the
philosophy of time in western philosophy from the Greeks through
the 20th century.
Palmer deftly explains biological timekeepers in humans and animals, explaining jet lage and how to avoid it, and the wide range of effects of our biological clocks on our behaviour and health.
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.
Why does time appear to run in only one direction? We remember the past- but why not the future? We can influence the future- but could we, even theoretically, influence the past? Generations of philosophers and theologians, physicists and mathematicians have puzzles and speculated about these and the many other questions that surround the concept of time. Recent scientific work is said to explain the directionality of time. But time still contains many mysteries- black holes and big bangs, asymmetries and relativities, arrows and loops - that will doubtless continue to occupy us for centuries to come. In this impressive collection of original articles ten internationally known scholars explore and explains the nature of time, apace and now space-time. Founded on the latest developments in thermodynamics, quantum theory and cosmology, their ideas will fascinate anyone interested in Einstein's theory of relativity.
"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.
From one of our foremost thinkers and public intellectuals, a radical new view of the nature of time and the cosmos What is time?This deceptively simple question is the single most important problem facing science as we probe more deeply into the fundamentals of the universe. All of the mysteries physicists and cosmologists face--from the Big Bang to the future of the universe, from the puzzles of quantum physics to the unification of forces and particles--come down to the nature of time.The fact that time is real may seem obvious. You experience it passing every day when you watch clocks tick, bread toast, and children grow. But most physicists, from Newton to Einstein to today's quantum theorists, have seen things differently. The scientific case for time being an illusion is formidable. That is why the consequences of adopting the view that time is real are revolutionary.Lee Smolin, author of the controversial bestseller The Trouble with Physics, argues that a limited notion of time is holding physics back. It's time for a major revolution in scientific thought. The reality of time could be the key to the next big breakthrough in theoretical physics.What if the laws of physics themselves were not timeless? What if they could evolve? Time Reborn offers a radical new approach to cosmology that embraces the reality of time and opens up a whole new universe of possibilities. There are few ideas that, like our notion of time, shape our thinking about literally everything, with huge implications for physics and beyond--from climate change to the economic crisis. Smolin explains in lively and lucid prose how the true nature of time impacts our world.
Timekeeping is an essential activity in the modern world, and we
take it for granted that our lives our shaped by the hours of the
day. Yet what seems so ordinary today is actually the extraordinary
outcome of centuries of technical innovation and circulation of
ideas about time. |
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