In the late fifteenth century, clocks acquired minute hands. A
century later, second hands appeared. But it wasn't until the 1850s
that instruments could recognize a tenth of a second, and, once
they did, the impact on modern science and society was profound.
Revealing the history behind this infinitesimal interval, "A Tenth
of a Second" sheds new light on modernity and illuminates the work
of important thinkers of the last two centuries.
Tracing debates about the nature of time, causality, and free
will, as well as the introduction of modern
technologies--telegraphy, photography, cinematography--Jimena
Canales locates the reverberations of this "perceptual moment"
throughout culture. Once scientists associated the tenth of a
second with the speed of thought, they developed reaction time
experiments with lasting implications for experimental psychology,
physiology, and optics. Astronomers and physicists struggled to
control the profound consequences of results that were a tenth of a
second off. And references to the interval were part of a general
inquiry into time, consciousness, and sensory experience that
involved rethinking the contributions of Descartes and Kant.
Considering its impact on much longer time periods and featuring
appearances by Henri Bergson, Walter Benjamin, and Albert Einstein,
among others, "A Tenth of a Second" is ultimately an important
contribution to history and a novel perspective on modernity.
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