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. 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 ecological ethics on a human scale; Umberto Eco, novelist, medievalist, and Web fanatic, on the brave new world of cyberspace and its likely impact on memory, cultural continuity, and access to knowledge; screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere on "the art of slowness" and attitudes toward time in non-Western cultures; and Catholic historian Jean Delumeau on how the Western imagination has always been haunted by ideas of the Apocalypse.
Description
Includes bibliographical references.
Table of Contents
Times scales and the year 2000 / Stephen Jay Gould -- Back to the Apocalyse / Jean Delumeau -- Answering the Sphinx / Jean-Claude Carriáere -- Signs of the times / Umberto Eco -- Conclusions.