Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown

Stephen Jay Gould

3.7/5 ( ratings)

In this new edition of Questioning the Millennium, best-selling author Stephen Jay Gould applies his wit and erudition to one of today's most pressing subjects: the significance of the millennium.

In 1950 at age eight, prompted by an issue of Life magazine marking the century's midpoint, Stephen Jay Gould started thinking about the approaching turn of the millennium. In this beautiful inquiry into time and its milestones, he shares his interest and insights with his readers. Refreshingly reasoned and absorbing, the book asks and answers the three major questions that define the approaching calendrical event. First, what exactly is this concept of a millennium and how has its meaning shifted? How did the name for a future thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ on earth get transferred to the passage of a secular period of a thousand years in current human history? When does the new millennium really begin: January 1, 2000, or January 1, 2001? And why must our calendars be so complex, leading to our search for arbitrary regularity, including a fascination with millennia? This revised edition begins with a new and extensive preface on a key subject not treated in the original version.

As always, Gould brings into his essays a wide range of compelling historical and scientific fact, including a brief history of millennial fevers, calendrical traditions, and idiosyncrasies from around the world; the story of a sixth-century monk whose errors in chronology plague us even today; and the heroism of a young autistic man who has developed the extraordinary ability to calculate dates deep into the past and the future.

Ranging over a wide terrain of phenomena--from the arbitrary regularities of human calendars to the unpredictability of nature, from the vagaries of pop culture to the birth of Christ--Stephen Jay Gould holds up the mirror to our millennial passions to reveal our foibles, absurdities, and uniqueness--in other words, our humanity.

Language: English

Pages: 224

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Crown

Release: August 24, 1999

ISBN: 0609605410

ISBN 13: 9780609605417

Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown

Stephen Jay Gould

3.7/5 ( ratings)

In this new edition of Questioning the Millennium, best-selling author Stephen Jay Gould applies his wit and erudition to one of today's most pressing subjects: the significance of the millennium.

In 1950 at age eight, prompted by an issue of Life magazine marking the century's midpoint, Stephen Jay Gould started thinking about the approaching turn of the millennium. In this beautiful inquiry into time and its milestones, he shares his interest and insights with his readers. Refreshingly reasoned and absorbing, the book asks and answers the three major questions that define the approaching calendrical event. First, what exactly is this concept of a millennium and how has its meaning shifted? How did the name for a future thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ on earth get transferred to the passage of a secular period of a thousand years in current human history? When does the new millennium really begin: January 1, 2000, or January 1, 2001? And why must our calendars be so complex, leading to our search for arbitrary regularity, including a fascination with millennia? This revised edition begins with a new and extensive preface on a key subject not treated in the original version.

As always, Gould brings into his essays a wide range of compelling historical and scientific fact, including a brief history of millennial fevers, calendrical traditions, and idiosyncrasies from around the world; the story of a sixth-century monk whose errors in chronology plague us even today; and the heroism of a young autistic man who has developed the extraordinary ability to calculate dates deep into the past and the future.

Ranging over a wide terrain of phenomena--from the arbitrary regularities of human calendars to the unpredictability of nature, from the vagaries of pop culture to the birth of Christ--Stephen Jay Gould holds up the mirror to our millennial passions to reveal our foibles, absurdities, and uniqueness--in other words, our humanity.

Language: English

Pages: 224

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Crown

Release: August 24, 1999

ISBN: 0609605410

ISBN 13: 9780609605417

More books from Stephen Jay Gould

Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time

3.8/5 ( ratings)

The Mismeasure of Man

The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Dinosaur in a Haystack

4.1/5 ( ratings)

The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin

3.9/5 ( ratings)

The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Volume I

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

4.1/5 ( ratings)

The Hedgehog, the Fox & the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap Between Science & the Humanities

3.6/5 ( ratings)

The Richness of Life: The Essential Stephen Jay Gould

4.2/5 ( ratings)

I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Dance of the Tiger: A Novel of the Ice Age

3.7/5 ( ratings)

An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas

3.8/5 ( ratings)

The Dechronization of Sam Magruder

3.7/5 ( ratings)

The Book of Life: An Illustrated History of the Evolution of Life on Earth

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Rate this book!

Write a review?