In this text, science writer Barry Parker takes on one of the most fascinating and fantastical aspects of modern quantum theory - time travel. From the stuff of fiction to Einstein's theory of relativity and Hawking's view of the universe, time travel has captured modern man's excitement and been as much talked about as space travel.

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.

This book marks the Millenium. It contains the new simplified perpetual calendar that will replace the old 336 page Roman calendar of 2046 years, with one single permanent page.

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.

Mapping Time is an account for the general reader of the history and underlying basis of each of the most important calendars of the world, from antiquity to modern times.Containing chapters on the nature of calendars and on their astronomical background, on the history of writing and counting, on the week, and on the history of calendar reform, this fascinating and highly entertaining book is the perfect guide to understanding the background of time in the run up to the Millennium.

The adventure spans the world from Stonehenge to astronomically aligned pyramids at Giza, from Mayan observatories at Chichen Itza to the atomic clock in Washington, the world's official timekeeper since the 1960s. We visit cultures from Vedic India and Cleopatra's Egypt to Byzantium and the Elizabethan court; and meet an impressive cast of historic personages from Julius Caesar to Omar Khayyam, and giants of science from Galileo and Copernicus to Stephen Hawking. Our present calendar system predates the invention of the telescope, the mechanical clock, and the concept ol zero and its development is one of the great untold stories of science and history.

How did Pope Gregory set right a calendar which was in error by at least ten lull days? What did time mean to a farmer on the Rhine in 800 A.D.? What was daily life like in the Middle Ages, when the general population reckoned births and marriages by seasons, wars, kings'' reigns, and saints' days? In short, how did the world

The adventure spans the world from Stonehenge to astronomically aligned pyramids at Giza, from Mayan observatories at Chichen Itza to the atomic clock in Washington, the world's official timekeeper since the 1960s. We visit cultures from Vedic India and Cleopatra's Egypt to Byzantium and the Elizabethan court; and meet an impressive cast of historic personages from Julius Caesar to Omar Khayyam, and giants of science from Galileo and Copernicus to Stephen Hawking. Our present calendar system predates the invention of the telescope, the mechanical clock, and the concept ol zero and its development is one of the great untold stories of science and history. How did Pope Gregory set right a calendar which was in error by at least ten lull days? What did time mean to a farmer on the Rhine in 800 A.D.? What was daily life like in the Middle Ages, when the general population reckoned births and marriages by seasons, wars, kings'' reigns, and saints' days?

For over two and a half millennia human beings have attempted to invent strategies to "discover" the truth of time, to determine whether time is infinite, whether eternity is the infinite duration of a continuous present, or whether it too rises and falls with the cycles of universal creation and destruction. Time-Fetishes recounts the history of a tradition that runs counter to the dominant tradition in Western metaphysics, which has sought to purify eternity of its temporal character. From the pre-Socratics to Ovid and Plotinus, and from Shakespeare to Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida, Time-Fetishes traces the secret tradition of the idea of eternal recurrence and situates it as the grounding thought of Western philosophy and literature. The thinkers in this counter-history of the eternal return lingered long enough on the question of time to learn how to resist separating eternity from time, and how to reflect on the possible identity of time and eternity as a way of resisting all prior metaphysical determinations. Drawing out the implications of Nietzsche's reinvention of the doctrine of return, Lukacher ranges across a broad spectrum of ancient and modern thinkers. Shakespeare's role in this history as the "poet of time" is particularly significant, for not only does Shakespeare reactivate the pre-Christian arguments of eternal return, he regards them, and all arguments and images concerning the essence of time and Being, from an inimitably ironic perspective. As he makes transitions from literature to philosophy and psychoanalysis, Lukacher displays a theoretical imagination and historical vision that bring to the forefront a host of pre- and post-Christian texts in order to decipher in them an encounter with the thought of eternal recurrence that has been too long buried under layers of rigid metaphysical interpretation.

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.

In this second English-language edition of one of his most notable works, Miguel Leon-Portilla explores the Maya Indians' remarkable concepts of time. At the book's first appearance Evon Z. Vogt, Curator of Middle American Ethnology in Harvard University, predicted that it would become "a classic in anthropology," a prediction borne out by the continuing critical attention given to it by leading scholars.

Like no other people in history, the ancient Maya were obsessed by the study of time. Their sages framed its cycles with tireless exactitude. Yet their preoccupation with time was not limited to calendrics; it was a central trait in their evolving culture.

In this absorbing work Leon-Portilla probes the question, What did time really mean for the ancient Maya in terms of their mythology, religious thought, worldview, and everyday life? In his analysis of key Maya texts and computations, he reveals one of the most elaborate attempts of the human mind to penetrate the secrets of existence.

Our Own Time retells the history of American labor by focusing on the politics of time and the movements for a shorter working day. It argues that the length of the working day has been the central issue for the American labor movement during its most vigorous periods of activity, uniting workers along lines of craft, gender and ethnicity. The authors hold that the workweek is likely again to take on increased significance as workers face the choice between a society based on free time and one based on alienated work and employment.

Humanists, scientists, and artists collaborate to address the disjunctive temporalities of ecological crisis In 2016, Antarctica's Totten Glacier, formed some 34 million years ago, detached from its bedrock, melted from the bottom by warming ocean waters. For the editors of Timescales, this event captures the disjunctive temporalities of our era's-the Anthropocene's-ecological crises: the rapid and accelerating degradation of our planet's life-supporting environment established slowly over millennia. They contend that, to represent and respond to these crises (i.e., climate change, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, species extinction, and biodiversity loss) requires reframing time itself, making more visible the relationship between past, present, and future, and between a human life span and the planet's. Timescales' collection of lively and thought-provoking essays puts oceanographers, geophysicists, geologists, and anthropologists into conversation with literary scholars, art historians, and archaeologists. Together forging new intellectual spaces, they explore the relationship between geological deep time and historical particularity, between ecological crises and cultural expression, between environmental policy and social constructions, between restoration ecology and future imaginaries, and between constructive pessimism and radical (and actionable) hope. Interspersed among these essays are three complementary "etudes," in which artists describe experimental works that explore the various timescales of ecological crisis. Contributors: Jason Bell, Harvard Law School; Iemanja Brown, College of Wooster; Beatriz Cortez, California State U, Northridge; Wai Chee Dimock, Yale U; Jane E. Dmochowski, U of Pennsylvania; David A. D. Evans, Yale U; Kate Farquhar; Marcia Ferguson, U of Pennsylvania; OEmur Harmansah, U of Illinois at Chicago; Troy Herion; Mimi Lien; Mary Mattingly; Paul Mitchell, U of Pennsylvania; Frank Pavia, California Institute of Technology; Dan Rothenberg; Jennifer E. Telesca, Pratt Institute; Charles M. Tung, Seattle U.

"A discussion of the historical development of our ideas of time as they relate to nature, human nature and society. . . . The excellence of "The Discovery of Time" is unquestionable."--Martin Lebowitz, "The Kenyon Review"

Brings together the output of a forty-year collaborative research project that unpicked and put into practice the fine details of John Harrison's extraordinary pendulum clock system. Harrison predicted that his unique method of making pendulum clocks could provide as much as one-hundred-times the stability of those made by his contemporaries. However, his final publication, which promised to describe the system, was a chaotic jumble of information, much of which had nothing to do with clockwork. One contemporary reviewer of Harrison's book could only suggest that the end result was a product of Harrison's 'superannuated dotage.' The focus of this book centres on the making, adjusting, and testing of Clock B which was the subject of various trials at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. The modern history of Clock B is accompanied by scientific analysis of the clock system, Clock B's performance, the methods of data-gathering alongside historical perspectives on Harrison's clockmaking, that of his contemporaries, and some evaluation of the possible influence of early 18th century scientific thought.

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.

What is the origin of the universe? What was there before the universe appeared? We are currently witnessing a second Copernican revolution: neither our Earth and Sun, nor our galaxy, nor even our universe, are the end of all things. Beyond our world, in an endless multiverse, are innumerable other universes, coming and going, like ours or different. Fourteen billion years ago, one of the many bubbles constantly appearing and vanishing in the multiverse exploded to form our universe. The energy liberated in the explosion provided the basis for all the matter our universe now contains. But how could this hot, primordial plasma eventually produce the complex structure of our present world? Does not order eventually always lead to disorder, to an increase of entropy? Modern cosmology is beginning to find out how it all came about and where it all might lead. Before Time Began tells that story.

Humanists, scientists, and artists collaborate to address the disjunctive temporalities of ecological crisis  In 2016, Antarctica’s Totten Glacier, formed some 34 million years ago, detached from its bedrock, melted from the bottom by warming ocean waters. For the editors of Timescales, this event captures the disjunctive temporalities of our era’s—the Anthropocene’s—ecological crises: the rapid and accelerating degradation of our planet’s life-supporting environment established slowly over millennia. They contend that, to represent and respond to these crises (i.e., climate change, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, species extinction, and biodiversity loss) requires reframing time itself, making more visible the relationship between past, present, and future, and between a human life span and the planet’s.  Timescales’ collection of lively and thought-provoking essays puts oceanographers, geophysicists, geologists, and anthropologists into conversation with literary scholars, art historians, and archaeologists. Together forging new intellectual spaces, they explore the relationship between geological deep time and historical particularity, between ecological crises and cultural expression, between environmental policy and social constructions, between restoration ecology and future imaginaries, and between constructive pessimism and radical (and actionable) hope. Interspersed among these essays are three complementary “etudes,� in which artists describe experimental works that explore the various timescales of ecological crisis. Contributors: Jason Bell, Harvard Law School; Iemanjá Brown, College of Wooster; Beatriz Cortez, California State U, Northridge; Wai Chee Dimock, Yale U; Jane E. Dmochowski, U of Pennsylvania; David A. D. Evans, Yale U; Kate Farquhar; Marcia Ferguson, U of Pennsylvania; Ömür Harmanşah, U of Illinois at Chicago; Troy Herion; Mimi Lien; Mary Mattingly; Paul Mitchell, U of Pennsylvania; Frank Pavia, California Institute of Technology; Dan Rothenberg; Jennifer E. Telesca, Pratt Institute; Charles M. Tung, Seattle U. 

"Helga Nowotny's exploration of the forms and meaning of time in contemporary life is panoramic without in any way partaking of the blandness of a survey. From the artificial time of the scientific laboratory to the distinctively modern yearning for one's own time, she regards every topic in this wide-ranging book from a fresh angle of vision, one which reveals unsuspected affinities between the bravest, newest worlds of global technology and the most ancient worlds of myth."
--Lorraine Daston, University of Chicago

This book represents a major contribution to the understanding of time, giving particular attention to time in relation to modernity. The development of industrialism, the author points out, was based upon a linear and abstract conception of time. Today we see that form of production, and the social institutions associated with it, supplanted by flexible specialization and just-in-time production systems. New information and communication technologies have made a fundamental impact here. But what does all this mean for temporal regimes? How can we understand the transformation of time and space involved in the bewildering variety of options on offer in a postmodern world?

The author provides an incisive analysis of the temporal implications of modern communication. She considers the implications of worldwide simultaneous experience, made possible by satellite technologies, and considers the reorganization of time involved in the continuous technological innovation that marks our era. In this puzzling universe of action, how does one achieve a 'time of one's own'? The discovery of a specific time perspective centred in the individual, she shows, expresses ayearning for forms of experience that are subversive of established institutional patterns.

This brilliant study, became a classic in Germany, will be of interest to students and professionals working in the areas of social theory, sociology, politics and anthropology.

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.

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."

What is time? The 5th-century philosopher St Augustine famously said that he knew what time was, so long as no one asked him. Is time a fourth dimension similar to space or does it flow in some sense? And if it flows, does it make sense to say how fast? Does the future exist? Is time travel possible? Why does time seem to pass in only one direction? These questions and others are among the deepest and most subtle that one can ask, but Introducing Time presents them - many for the first time - in an easily accessible, lucid and engaging manner, wittily illustrated by Ralph Edney.