"The substance of this book derives from over three decades of research in the interdisciplinary study of time. This is a new field of scientific and humanistic undertaking that I like to describe as the work of “timesmiths.” For it consists of the mental hammering out, from theoretical and experimental material, the novel shapes of our understanding of time."
The culmination of 30 years' work, this book examines classical and contemporary theories and conceptions of time. Fraser explores an expansive range of topics: the origins of the universe, the history of timekeeping devices, the biology of ageing and death, human perception of time, dreaming vs waking reality, expectation and memory, scientists' exploration of time in the physical world, and the ways in which technological rhythms control our lives.
Author(s): Julius Thomas Fraser
Publisher: The University of Massachusetts Press
Year: 1987
Language: English
Commentary: scantailor + ocrmypdf
Pages: 389
City: Amherst, Mass.
Tags: chronosophy;time
Time: The Familiar Stranger
Contents
A Chart and an Itinerary: An Introduction
1 Shall I be gone long? The Experience and Idea of Time
The Discovery of Time: Once over Lightly
Language: A Weapon against Passing
How to Live with the Knowledge of Time: Religions
Ideas about Time: Themes and Variations
2 For ever and a day: The Reckoning of Time
The Stuff that Clocks are Made Of
Trillions of Cambridge Surprise Majors: The Scientific Measurement of Time
When Is Easter and Who Are You? Calendars and Chronologies
Cosmic Birth and Death Judged in Terms of Human Time
3 To whom there belong? The Times of Life, Mind, and Society
Biotemporality: The Cyclic Order of Life
Biotemporality: The Aging Order of Life
The Origins of Life and of Biotemporality
Nootemporality: The Brain’s Way of Minding the Body
Sociotemporality: The Socialization and Collective Evaluation of Time
4 Ask the stone to say: Time in the World of Matter
The Atemporal Kingdom of Light: Special Relativity Theory, the Physics of the Fastest Signals
The Prototemporal World of Particles: Quantum Theory, the Science of Ordered Randomness
Cosmic Time: General Relativity Theory, the Physics of the Universe
Entropy and Time
What the Stone Cannot Say about Time: Reflections on Time and Number
5 Ask my song: Man the Measure and Measurer of Time
Descent and Ascent: The Fable of Two Women
The Time-Compact Globe
Time at the Anthill Threshold: A Turbulent Act of Creation
From the Diaries of a Timesmith: The Memory of a Plan That Became This Book
Appendix 1: Time Dilation
Appendix 2: The Temporality of the Initial State of the Universe
Glossary
A Bibliographic Sampler, or Pioneers Can Have No Maps
Subject and Name Index
Illustrations
1 A Hindu Image of Eternity
2 A Greek Image of Day and Night
3 Pythagoras: Reality Is the Timeless Rule of Number
4 Plato’s Geometrization of Nature: Time Is a Mirage
5 Kepler’s Break with the Aristotelian Belief that the Heavens were Perfect
6 White Marble Sundial, Third Century B.C.
7 Chinese Incense Clock, Early Fourteenth Century
8 Su Sung’s Clock Tower, Built in 1090
9 Christian Huygens’ Improvement on the Isochrony of the Pendulum
10 “To knowe the Spring of the Dawying”: A Plenispheric Astrolabe
11 The Hands of the Celestial Clock
12 A Printed Astrolabe: Pages from the Nautical Almanac for 1986, 68-69
13 United States Primary Standard Atomic Clock
14 The Strasbourg Astronomical Clock, 82-83
15 September 1986 in the Mayan Calendar
16 A Calendar of Numbers, Gods and Burdens of Time 88-89
17 P’an Ku Chiseling the Stars and Planets from the Boulders of Primeval Chaos
18 What Is Reality? Help from the Tick via Jakob Johann baron von Uexküll
19 Reckoning the Solar Day by Biological Clocks in Plants
20 Entrainment of an Infant’s Circadian Rhythm
21 Free-Running Circadian Rhythms in an Isolated Human Subject
22 Tidal Variations
23 Return of the Native: Biological Clocks and Society
24 Everyday Chronopharmacology
25 The Spectrum of Biological Cycles
26 Hierarchical Organization of the Primate Brain
27 The Sound of an Organ Pipe
28 Edison’s Patent for the Record Player
29 Pen Recording from an Opera 164-165
30 Soundtrack of a Single Frame from a Film that shows an Orchestra of 107 Instruments Playing Ravel’s “Bolero” 166-67
31 Courtship Signals of a Species of Grasshopper
32 Collective Present of Members of Species Sharing Living Quarters
33 A Book of Hours: The Rhythm of Eternity 194-195
34 Paring off the Social Present: The Original London—Bath Mail Coach of 1784
35 Present Acts Have Long-Term Consequences: The Dame and the Devil
36 The Call of the Drummer 218-219
37 The Formula upon which the Atomic and Nuclear Bombs Are Based 226-227
38 Probability in Quantum Theory: The Perfect Report from an Unevolved World
39 Geometrical Bookkeeping in a 2-p Plane of Motion that Takes Place along a 1-D Line 260-261
40 Actual Size of the Universe at and Soon after the Instant of Creation
41 Growth and Decay Processes in the Thermodynamics of the Universe
42 The Conflict between the Entropy-Decreasing and Entropy-Increasing Aspects of the Life Process
43 The Shaker Experience of Timelessness
44 Mosaic of the “Enthusiasm of Nations” 304-305
45 The Loss of Distinct Identities
46 Islamic Prayer Watch, a Symbol of the Time-Compact Globe 338-339
47 The Challenge of Human Time: The Stage and the Actors 346-347
48 Geometrical Representation of the Lorentz Transformations, after Brehme
49 Geometrical Representations of Motional Contractions of Length
50 Geometrical Representations of Motional Time Dilations
