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From the earliest recorded date (4236 B.C.), people have tried to organize their lives according to the movements of the sun, moon and stars - and have, for the most part, consistently gotten it wrong. In this volume, David Ewing Duncan takes us on an extraordinary journey through man's reckoning of time, ranging from one of the earliest calendars (a series of markings gouged into an eagle bone 13,000 years ago) to the atomic clocks of today, which measure time too well for an ever slowing Earth.
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Review:
In this book, David Ewing Duncan traces the development of our modern-day calendar and describes how people's experiences are shaped by their conception of time. Duncan postulates that all this concern with time started when a Cro-Magnon man decided to mark off the days of the lunar cycle on an eagle bone. After recounting the slow evolution of the calendar through the centuries, the author laments how time oriented our society has become: "There are moments when I am hopelessly late, or cannot possibly fit anything else into my schedule, when I sigh and wish that Cro-Magnon man 13,000 years ago in the Dordogne Valley had set aside his eagle bone and gone to bed."
Review:
The book is organised in chronological order and focuses mainly on the centuries leading up to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar (our modern calendar) by the Catholic Church in 1582. Along the way, Duncan describes the ancient calendars of many cultures all over the globe, from India to Egypt to the Mayan empire. During the Middle Ages, Christian churches discouraged scientific inquiry on the theory that it was wrong to question the nature of God's creation. This severely hampered the refinement of the calendar and the advancement of many academic pursuits. By the 16th century, Europe's calendars were 11 days out of sync with the solar year, which meant Easter was being celebrated on the wrong day. An infusion of knowledge from India and the Middle East helped Europeans get back on track. Duncan profiles the many mathematicians, philosophers, and monks who made organising time their life's work. This book honours the efforts of those scholars and examines the way politics and religion influenced societal perceptions of time through the ages. --Jill Marquis, Amazon.com
“The fruitily donnish tones of Jacobi give the confident impression of a man who has understood with ease the mathematical, astronomical, theological and political complications through which the calendar was arrived at... In Ewing Duncan’s account, the developments in measuring time were central to everything, and provide a fascinating – and unifying – way of looking at world history, from the Sumerians to the Renaissance”
Sunday Times 18/10/98
“an impressive and hypnotic lecture on the history of the calendar on your wall and the watch on your wrist... Derek Jacobi is just the man to give us three hours of his time to explain.”
Ham & High 6/11/98
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherDiane Pub Co
- Publication date1998
- ISBN 10 0788197746
- ISBN 13 9780788197741
- BindingPaperback
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