What is time? Did it have a beginning? What makes it appear to flow? Why is there a directionality or 'arrow' of time, and can it ever be reversed? It time travel possible? And might the universe be older than we thought?

The puzzles and paradoxes of time have dazzled the world's finest thinkers and throughout the ages philosophers have wrestled with the tensions between time and eternity, linear time and cyclicity, being and becoming. When Einstein formulated his theory of relativity early this century, it brought about a revolution in our understanding of time, yet also presented a new set of mysteries. Einstein's time can be warped, leading to bizarre possibilities such as black holes and time travel, while making nonsense of our perception of a 'now' and a division of time into past, present and future. In relation to quantum physics, time takes on even stranger aspects.

In this, his latest book, acclaimed physicist and writer Paul Davies confronts the tough questions about time, including the weird relationship between physical time and our psychological perception of it. He gives straightforward descriptions of topics such as the theory of relativity, time dilation and Hawking's 'imaginary time'. Davies concludes that despite decades of progress in unravelling the mysteries of time, the revolution begun by Einstein remains tantalizingly incomplete.

Because they list all the public holidays and pagan festivals of the age, calendars provide unique insights into the culture and everyday life of ancient Rome. "The Codex-Calendar of 354" miraculously survived the Fall of Rome. Although it was subsequently lost, the copies made in the Renaissance remain invaluable documents of Roman society and religion in the years between Constantine's conversion and the fall of the Western Empire. In this richly illustrated book, Michele Renee Salzman establishes that the traditions of Roman art and literature were still very much alive in the mid-fourth century. Going beyond this analysis of precedents and genre, Salzman also studies "The Calendar of 354" as a reflection of the world that produced and used it. Her work reveals the continuing importance of pagan festivals and cults in the Christian era and highlights the rise of a respectable aristocratic Christianity that combined pagan and Christian practices. Salzman stresses the key role of the Christian emperors and imperial institutions in supporting pagan rituals. Such policies of accomodation and assimilation resulted in a gradual and relatively peaceful transformation of Rome from a pagan to a Christian capital.

"Only a wayfarer born under unruly stars would attempt to put into practice in our epoch of proliferating knowledge the Heraclitean dictum that men who love wisdom must be inquirers into very many things indeed.'" Thus begins this remarkable interdisciplinary study of time by a master of the subject. And while developing a theory of "time as conflict," J. T. Fraser does offer "many things indeed"--an enormous range of ideas about matter, life, death, evolution, and value.

An enjoyable and compelling ride through one of life's most fascinating enigmas
"What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know," St. Augustine of Hippo lamented. "But if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not."
Who wouldn't sympathize with Augustine's dilemma? Time is at once intimately familiar and yet deeply mysterious. It is thoroughly intangible: We say it flows like a river -- yet when we try to examine that flow, the river seems reduced to a mirage. No wonder philosophers, poets, and scientists have grappled with the idea of time for centuries.
The enigma of time has also captivated science journalist Dan Falk, who sets off on an intellectual journey In Search of Time. The quest takes him from the ancient observatories of stone-age Ireland and England to the atomic clocks of the U.S. Naval Observatory; from the layers of geological "deep time" in an Arizona canyon to Albert Einstein's apartment in Switzerland. Along the way he talks to scientists and scholars from California to New York, from Toronto to Oxford. He speaks with anthropologists and historians about our deep desire to track time's cycles; he talks to psychologists and neuroscientists about the mysteries of memory; he quizzes astronomers about the beginning and end of time. Not to mention our latest theories about time travel -- and the paradoxes it seems to entail. We meet great minds from Aristotle to Kant, from Newton to Einstein -- and we hear from today's most profound thinkers: Roger Penrose, Paul Davies, Julian Barbour, David Deutsch, Lee Smolin, and many more.
As usual, Dan Falk's style combines exhaustive research with a lively, accessible, and often humorous style, making In Search of Time a delightful tour through a most curious dimension.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Physical Relativity explores the nature of the distinction at the heart of Einstein's 1905 formulation of his special theory of relativity: that between kinematics and dynamics. Einstein himself became increasingly uncomfortable with this distinction, and with the limitations of what he called the "principle theory" approach inspired by the logic of thermodynamics. A handful of physicists and philosophers have over the last century likewise expressed doubts about Einstein's treatment of the relativistic behavior of rigid bodies and clocks in motion in the kinematical part of his great paper, and suggested that the dynamical understanding of length contraction and time dilation intimated by the immediate precursors of Einstein is more fundamental. Harvey Brown both examines and extends these arguments (which support a more "constructive" approach to relativistic effects in Einstein's terminology), after giving a careful analysis of key features of the pre-history of relativity theory. He argues furthermore that the geometrization of the theory by Minkowski in 1908 brought illumination, but not a causal explanation of relativistic effects. Finally, Brown tries to show that the dynamical interpretation of special relativity defended in the book is consistent with the role this theory must play as a limiting case of Einstein's 1915 theory of gravity: the general theory of relativity.
Physical Relativity is an original, critical examination of the way Einstein formulated his theory. It also examines in detail certain specific historical and conceptual issues that have long given rise to debate in both special and general relativity theory, such as the conventionality of simultaneity, the principle of general covariance, and the consistency or otherwise of the special theory with quantum mechanics. Harvey Brown's new interpretation of relativity theory will interest anyone working on these central topics in modern physics.

Two systems of timekeeping were in concurrent use in Venice between 1582 and 1797. Government documents conformed to the Venetian year (beginning 1 March), church documents to the papal year (from 1 January). "Song and Season" defines the many ways in which time was discussed, resolving a long-standing fuzziness imposed on studies of personnel, institutions, and cultural dynamics by dating conflicts. It is in this context that the standardization of timekeeping coincided with the collapse of the "dramma per musica" and the rise of scripted comedy and the "opera buffa," Selfridge-Field discloses fascinating relationships between the musical stage and the cultures it served, such as the residues of medieval liturgical feasts embedded in the theatrical year. Such associations were transmuted into lingering seasonal associations with specific dramatic genres. Interactions between culture and chronology thus operated on both general and specific levels. Both are fundamental to understanding theatrical dynamics of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.

One Time Fits All provides the first full framework for understanding attributes of civil time, which is used throughout the world today. It focuses on three components of uniform time all linked to the prime meridian at Greenwich-the International Date Line, the worldwide system of Standard Time zones, and Daylight Saving Time (Summer Time)-tracing the story of their beginnings and eventual acceptance from original sources in Europe, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. The book concludes with an examination of the recent changes in America's Daylight Saving Time that are scheduled to take effect in 2007.

The articles here are not only about time, they are investigations from a specific temporal perspective: the calendrical event of the millennium. This arbitrary marker has provided a challenge and focus to the International Society for the Study of Time and to thinkers in all disciplines to take stock of what has gone before and what lies ahead, approaching the event of the millennium from the standpoint of time itself, and asking critical questions about the nature and experience of time.

Divided into six areas, including literature and language, music, psychology, sociology, history, and marking time, the collection is specific in content and broad in implication. Each article makes a contribution to scholarship within an individual discipline, and yet each transcends the bounds of discipline in its approach to broader issues involving the study of time. There is no other source like The Study of Time series that focuses so intensely on the nature and experience of time from diverse perspectives in all academic disciplines. This volume reveals the range and magnitude of intellectual endeavor in interdisciplinary research inspired by the enduring human fascination with time.

The ancient Romans changed more than the map of the world when they conquered so much of it; they altered the way historical time itself is marked and understood. In this brilliant, erudite, and exhilarating book Denis Feeney investigates time and its contours as described by the ancient Romans, first as Rome positioned itself in relation to Greece and then as it exerted its influence as a major world power. Feeney welcomes the reader into a world where time was movable and changeable and where simply ascertaining a date required a complex and often contentious cultural narrative. In a style that is lucid, fluent, and graceful, he investigates the pertinent systems, including the Roman calendar (which is still our calendar) and its near perfect method of capturing the progress of natural time; the annual rhythm of consular government; the plotting of sacred time onto sacred space; the forging of chronological links to the past; and, above all, the experience of empire, by which the Romans meshed the city state's concept of time with those of the foreigners they encountered to establish a new worldwide web of time. Because this web of time was Greek before the Romans transformed it, the book is also a remarkable study in the cross-cultural interaction between the Greek and Roman worlds.
Feeney's skillful deployment of specialist material is engaging and accessible and ranges from details of the time schemes used by Greeks and Romans to accommodate the Romans' unprecedented rise to world dominance to an edifying discussion of the fixed axis of B.C./A.D., or B.C.E./C.E., and the supposedly objective "dates" implied. He closely examines the most important of the ancient world's time divisions, that between myth and history, and concludes by demonstrating the impact of the reformed calendar on the way the Romans conceived of time's recurrence. Feeney's achievement is nothing less than the reconstruction of the Roman conception of time, which has the additional effect of transforming the way the way the reader inhabits and experiences time.

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.

In 1900 a group of sponge divers blown off course in the Mediterranean discovered an Ancient Greek shipwreck dating from around 70 BC. Lying unnoticed for months amongst their hard-won haul was what appeared to be a formless lump of corroded rock, which turned out to be the most stunning scientific artefact we have from antiquity. For more than a century this 'Antikythera mechanism' puzzled academics, but now, more than 2000 years after the device was lost at sea, scientists have pieced together its intricate workings. In Decoding the Heavens, Jo Marchant tells for the first time the story of the 100-year quest to understand this ancient computer. Along the way she unearths a diverse cast of remarkable characters - ranging from Archimedes to Jacques Cousteau - and explores the deep roots of modern technology not only in Ancient Greece, the Islamic world and medieval Europe.