Synopses & Reviews
There is nothing special about the year 2000, yet the start of the third millennium proved a focus for many deep anxieties and expectations. Here four of the world's boldest and most celebrated thinkers offer a vast range of insights into how we make sense of time:
Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould on dating the Creation, evolutionary 'deep time' and the need for an ecological ethics on a human scale.
Novelist, mediaevalist and Web-fanatic Umberto Eco on the brave new world of cyberspace, and its likely impact on memory, cultural continuity and access to knowledge
Catholic historian Jean Delumeau on how the Western imagination has always been haunted by ideas of the Apocalypse
Screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere on 'the art of slowness' and attitudes towards time in non-Western cultures.
About the Author
Stephen Jay Gould is the author of The Panda's Thumb and Umberto Eco of The Name of the Rose. Jean Claude Carrière has written screenplays for Milos Forman and Luis Buñuel. Jean Delumeau teaches history at the Collège de France.