5 comments about Synchronicity, Science, and Soulmaking: Understanding Jungian Syncronicity Through Physics, Buddhism, and Philosphy.

1. I bought this book based upon the excellent reports others gave it. I cannot be so generous. I found the book to be an exercise in the authors intelligence making the book almost unreadable to me. I just wanted to know what this subject was and how it applied to the world. I'm still reading and have not found out.

   Jimmy




2. This is perhaps the best thought-out analysis of synchronicity that I've read. The author (a professor of physics and astronomy) interweaves quantum physics, depth psychology, and Buddhism into a most satisfying explanation. All the world about us is a creation of mind- matter is not directly knowable, and space and time are outright creations of our mind. We are cocreators of reality (or at least our higher Self is) which explains how such impossible but meaningful coincidences can occur. He holds that our conventional materialist world view is the cause of our spiritual crisis and bankruptcy in the West- as do I.
   This is an extraordinary book- as good or better than the _Tao of Physics_.



3. There are few topics that have generated as much heat - and as little light - as the concept of synchronicity, or meaningful coincidences. The subtitle to Carl Jung's original paper introducing the concept, was "An acausal connecting principle," implying that two or more events may be linked without any kind of force binding them together. Since we live in a world in which we can see causal links every day that can be a hard concept.
   
   On the one hand, many proponents of synchronicity tell us that everything in the universe is meaningful and connected; while opponents say that they have "magical thinking" or do not understand mathematical chance.
   
   Part of the problem has been that many writers have not tried to tackle Jung's work in the original German, and some of what he had to say has been "editorialized."
   
   Victor Mansfield's book is exceptionally good. He is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Colgate University who has had long-standing interests in Buddhist philosophy and in the work of Carl Jung. Here he weaves together these three strands - physics, Jungian psychology and Buddhism - into a superb synthesis in which he proposes that "synchronicity is soul-making in action." There have been a great many books about synchronicity, but this is one of the most critical and creative.
   
   One of the unusual things about the book is the way in which Victor inserts remarkable "synchronistic interludes" into the text. It took me a few pages to "get it." These interludes introduce a remarkable living experience into a book that could otherwise have been a little dry.
   
   The central idea of the book is that there are correlations between our inner psychological states and events in the "external" world. What this book does is to develop that concept to show that a distinction between "inner" and "outer" is artificial. A great many popular books would now start talking about the mind causing changes in the material world. Although that may happen, that is not what Jung or the author of this book means. They are instead talking about linked events, in the same way that a clock tells us the time, but nobody thinks that the hands on the clock create time. Both writers warn against over-interpreting trivial events as "manifestations."
   
   Victor traces the development of this false split between "internal" and "external" to the last middle ages, and believes that work in physics, psychology and in brain sciences is putting subjectivity back into our worldview. He finds a great deal of support for his position in Middle Way Buddhism where emptiness represents the lack of any independent existence. He also brings in the work of the English philosopher Paul Brunton and his teacher Ramana Maharshi.
   
   In closing, Victor examines some of the consequences of the key issues raised by synchronicity: acausality, meaning, transcendence of space and time and the essential unity of the whole of creation.
   
   This is a well-written and engaging book that I recommend highly.



4. This book is truly one of my favorites! It is a great exploration of three divergent philosophies on life: Jungian Depth Psychology (especially, of course, Jung's concept of synchronicity - "meaningful coincidence), Buddhism, and Quantum physics (especially the Copenhagen interpretation and its basic tenets of non-local effects, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and complementarity). I highly recommend this book as an introduction to each of these three fascinating fields of knowledge.



5. This product was delivered in a timely manner and was just as the description had listed... Positive purchase experience.

4 comments about Aztec Calendar Handbook.

1. Grammatical aside, there is no other treatise on pre-Columbian America and the Aztec Calendar as complete, concise and thought provoking as this one. I didn't notice the grammatical error until the fellow from Tejas spotted it. I was too amazed at having my perception of Native America shattered. After reading many books on the Aztecs, I bought this book and was favorably impressed by the depth, continuity and treatment of the entire subject matter. There is so much information in this book its astounishing. The bibliography contains over 200 sources. Direct eyewitnesses from the 16th century are quoted. The Time-Line is great. I will be referring to this book for years to come.



2. This book is clear, non-technical, and easy to read and understand. People interested in the subject will find it useful.



3. Tlazo'camati, my book came nicely packed & secured and in no time I had it in my hands. Great service. Thank You.



4. This book is the first of its kind. all in one book. before you would have to purchase several books. thanks to the writers research you only need this one book. i recommend if you are studying the calendar. you will not be disappointed...!!!!!

5 comments about A Sideways Look at Time.

1. As with most things that we read, our reception to a work is governed in advance by the attitude we take toward it. If I pick up a novel by John Grisham I don't expect to find a long treatise about the philosophy of law; if I pick up Ronald Dworkin, I don't expect to be told a good story. Neither should I really expect Dworkin to be a storyteller; if I expect a good story from him, I don't really have the right to be disappointed when he doesn't deliver.
   
   Griffths is not really a theorist or a philosopher: she's a writer. Granted, the distinction nowdays between philosophers and (literary) writers is blurred, but the point is that there's no reason to expect Griffths to give us something in the way of a well-reasoned and argued thesis. This is for two reasons. The first and most obvious is that "A Sideways Look at Time" is not meant to be an academic treatise. Sure it's got a bibliography and an index, which you wouldn't find in most novels, but to say that Griffths is arguing a 'thesis' is, I think, inaccurate. Sure she has a fundamental point she wants to get across, but it's nothing like a 'thesis' in any strict sense of the word. Griffths is more like a novelist, essayist, or critic.
   
   On the other hand, Griffths' style is a direct result of her feminism, for which she has been criticized by many reviews on Amazon. Whatever one might think about feminism, as with anything else, a proper understanding of it would seem to be necessary before rejecting it out of hand.
   
   As I granted before, Griffths is not a theorist. She seems to show no real or deep interest in feminist theory, particularly in such cases that are obviously related to her own viewpoint such as the 'women's time' of Julia Kristeva (who is not mentioned in Griffths' book), the 'wild zone' of Elaine Showalter, or, what is even closer to Griffths herself, the writings of Helene Cixous. Her bibliography lists some dubious sources, but Griffths' work has close affinities with many of these kinds of writers.
   
   For one, feminist theory makes a very clear distinction between terms like "feminine", "female", "woman", and even "feminism" and "gynocentrism". Feminist theory (unless you're got severe pathological issues like Valerie Solanas) is not about 'male-bashing'. If people like Griffths are critical of "masculine logic" or "patriarchal systems", this has less to do with the physical domination of (biological) women by men than with a certain way of looking at various aspects of language, thought, and behavior. For better or worse, feminist theorists (at least a lot of them) are standing on the shoulders of the work done by Derrida whose critique of "logocentrism" has been appropriated by feminists as "phallologocentrism". This is, I think, a ridiculous word, but essentially the point is that the "patriarchal system" is less about physical or political domination by men (i.e., it's not just a matter of electing a woman president), but the way in which we use language and in the way we think. The rigorous logical form of academic essays, for example, where one's thoughts are controlled by being manipulated into a particular form (introduction, thesis statement, supporting paragraph #1, etc) is a "masculine" use of language. This is more obviously true of things like Aristotelian categorical logic or modern symbolic logic. "Masculine" language is a language of control and domination in the sense that "control" is a generally masculine trait. A "feminine" practice of writing (a la Cixous) is one that resists trying to 'control' language. "Feminine" writing is not necessarily about women, and neither is it necessarily about bashing men: it's about a certain way or style of writing. Read someone like Rachel Blau DuPlessis or perhaps Collette (or Griffths for that matter) and you'll see an example of a "feminine" style of writing. Now, most feminist theorists would probably say that Griffths is not the best feminine writer, but what I'm trying to get at is that her style is part of her point, and if you're going to praise her point while denigrating her style, it's not apparent to me that you really understood her point in the first place. The repetition, the lack of usual logical form, and so on, are deliberate attempts to let "language speak" instead of the author "speaking language".
   
   (Incidentally, I should say that I've been describing SOME aspects of feminist theory. There are a lot of women writers and feminists who think this is all silly (Ruth Barcan Marcus and Martha Nussbaum come first to mind), but they have taken the time to take postmodern feminism seriously enough to have intelligent reasons for disliking it other than the fact it's "outmoded male-bashing".)
   
   That being said, I don't want to make it sound as if I'm trying to say this is the greatest thing ever written. But I think Griffths effectively does what she set out to do: i.e., to make her readers re-think certain ideas and preconceptions about time that are essentially constraining for men and women alike, because time is not, really, a masculine or feminine matter but a quintessentially human one. A more philosophically fruitful way to think about Griffths and the formal aspects of her work (e.g., her style) in relation to her point about time is actually not so much as a feminist work, but rather as one that has interesting affinities to the philosopher Henri Bergson and his conceptions of mathematical and real time (duration or duree).



2. At the first instance let me issue a warning : You are bound to get caught in the tornado : `A Sideways Look at Time'. Any page will get you hooked.
   
   The new literary genre invented by Jay Griffiths is splendid, wide-ranging and illuminating. Shapeless concerns are articulated spontaneously and you will get fascinated with your new outlook in life. Sift through this compendious book for strands of gold.
   
   The author may be self-indulgent but her arguments are irresistible and provocative.
   
   Analyze and enjoy the following nuggets of wisdom from her book :
   
   1) It is not that time passes, but ourselves. Time is always there... as long as there is life to use it.
   2) Time has immediacy and radiance. It is a sensual perception and not a notation.
   3) Time is not inert. We live with the past and present altogether. The past lives in the present spiritual values.
   4) We live forwards but we understand backwards.
   5) Have just a few hours everyday that are inviolate.
   6) Children live in the heart of the ocean of time itself, in an everlasting Now. A child's eternal present is present-absorbed, present-spontaneous and present-elastic. Children have a dogged, delicious disrespect for punctuality.
   7) Speed is deceptive and alluring, cruel, adrenaline-pounding and fascistic. Language too is driven faster and faster. Markets become super/hyper markets. Words are pressed from text to hypertext, not to supersede but to hypersede themselves.
   8) In prostitution alone, the phrase `Time is money' is almost true.
   9) The earth is sacred. It is not for violation, exploitation or negotiation. It is to be cared for, to be conserved.
   10) With industrial agriculture, genetic engineering and biotechnology, time is reduced to a sequence of numbers without the vibrancy of natural seasons. Divorcing time and nature makes an artifice of Time and artifact of Nature.
   11) Particularity is lost on the Information Super Highway. Being a virtual everywhere is an actual nowhere. It is a Teflon place, wiped clean of muddy, earthly reality. Every act in virtual time is final, finite and finished. No human act is.
   12) Computinglish, the type of language dominant today -overweighing command structures and undervaluing language's playful, seductive and gainsaying subtleties, its ambiguities and nuances, disagreements and disobediences.
   13) The word `Will' is not innocent. What will be is not in the lap of some-God-of-the-future, but is an act of will, an act of power, the will of today. When the will is infinite in its grasp, the only possible result is tragedy. Will must be tempered with respect. This will could be a present, an act of care and generosity.
   14) In this age of `rights', there should surely be Time Rights, fighting any attempts at the metaphysical enslavery of people's time, arguing for a humane clock, for an integrity of time and respect for the dignity of the individual's hours.
   15) Trees do not just last passively over time, they create time by creating breathable air. They are oxygenating lungs of the Earth, vital to the ecosystem and home to millions of species. Time is different in a treescape.
   16) India has its `vessel above time', always full to overflowing, a notion of eternity transcending any temporality.
   17) The mythic moment is where the profane present meets a sacred eternity.
   
   Delve deeply into the following chunks of messages which embrace Dharma, Poetry and Philosophy.
   
   TIME
   
   This fantastic book is a broadside against all the misuses of time. It is a manifesto for time to be seen extraordinary, strange, and sensual. Scientists today use femtoseconds, a millionth of a billionth of second. Time has been increasingly divided and subdivided. Everything is timed. Quality time is quantitative, counted and accounted. The fullness of time is over emptied of its grace and generosity. In femtoseconds and cesium atoms, modernity's time is divided but not distinguished.
   
   Chronos and Kairos were different Gods for time's different aspects. Chronos was the God of absolute time, linear, chronological and quantifiable. Kairos was the god of timing, of opportunity, of choice and mischance, the auspicious and the not-so-auspicious. If you sleep because the clock tells you it is way past your bed time, it is chronological time. If you sleep because you are tired, that is kairological time. Kairological time is the spirit of the particular moment. It is a concept, time enlivened and various, time elastic and fertile.
   
   
   WOMEN
   
   If man has seven ages, women in contemporary Western society has only one. One young one. One fixed one. Time must be stayed, for women, like plastic - with plastic. HRT, cosmetic industry, and the cosmetic surgery all help towards this goal.
   
   Female faces are plasticized into facile facsimile face-lifts. The face's whole meaning is a page to write your character on; the whole purpose of having a face is to show emotion in motion - the mobility at the heart of expressiveness. Obstetricians speed up labor with vacuum extraction or caesarian section. In its wise etymology, what does obstetrics mean? `To be present', to `stand at'. Not to speed up labor but to be present at it. Not to force a woman but to stand by her.
   
   PROGRESS
   
   Progress is only an idea, a mental construct, but it is treated as if it had the status of concrete fact, as if the march of progress had a sort of absolute inevitability and preordained certainty. Progressing into the future appeals because it claims an optimistic mobility while the whole idea of sustainability can be characterized as stasis.
   
   Progress is a specific idea; western, money-oriented, and technologically biased. But it pretends to a universality, so that all peoples must be made to define and embrace progress in exactly the same way. Progress is two-faced; it has a lovely smile for the powerful and a cruel sneer for the poor and underprivileged.
   
   Jay's holistic view of time resolves the modern dilemma - a meaningless existence and the Subtle Trap of Counterfeit Meaning. The Search For Meaning is vital precisely because without it, you fall prey to the lure of "counterfeit" meanings. If you make no effort to discover the meaning of your individual life, you thereby play host to an existential vacuum at the very core of your being. Thank the author Jay Griffiths and read her magnum opus with wonder and reverence. You will find the real meaning of your life. You can hear the language speaks instead of the author.



3. I found this book on a lark, exploring the dreary and predictable college composition readers and handbooks presented on the temporary display tables and shelves of the College Composition and Communication Conference in Chicago this past March. My eye was caught not by the cover or the graphics, both of which seem unfortunately sophomoric--a parking meter, for goodness' sake--but by an epigraph by poet Gary Snyder that appears at the bottom of the cover: "An exercise indeed in Dharma, Poetry, and Philosophy."
   
   Caught up in the no-time of academia and all of its poses and posturings, and rummaging through the publishers' offerings in a kind of post-modern numbness and frenetic despair to fill up the hour before we could herd ourselves to the next session, I picked up this book and started randomly reading. I was hooked immediately. The prose had integrity. Every spot I landed on seemed wet with thought. I DO need a book on time, I thought, and so I scarfed it up for $5 on the last day of the conference, when they strike the displays and the booksellers cast off their offerings so they can fly home unburdened by their wares.
   
   The book has since not disappointed me.
   
   I have taken my time (NPI) reading this. Author Jay Griffiths delights in her sideways thinking, pausing to think about time in deliciously new ways and imagining how we have imagined time in different eras, different historic moments, different cultures. Linear time boxes us in with some powerful assumptions and constructs that we are too often unaware of or resist considering. We need to consider time so as to understand what we are doing in time and what time is doing to us.
   
   At times (NPI) this book seems an eclectic natural history, reminiscent of Annie Dillard or Diane Ackerman. Perhaps the witty hybrid of these writers. Griffiths is extraordinarily play in her carnival-like juggling of concepts and phrases and language. At times she ascends to hilarious spates of alliteration. At times she unravels a string of puns, mostly poking fun of patriarchal concepts and sacred Western ideologies. She's riding a jet ski through the history and philosophy of time, and most of the leaps and dives and cavortings are pregnant with thought, delightful, and at times deliriously funny.
   
   This is an odd book, a wonderfully eclectic book, one to carry with you and read at odd pick-up times when you need a shot of fun and thought. At the airport. On the bus. While eating lunch.
   
   This book, and Griffiths' musings, will reward you. You will find yourself reading passages out loud and marveling at her cleverness and her invitations to shift your awareness of what we too often take, well, for granted.



4. Jay Griffiths does some good work in places pointing out some less obvious results of and evidence for the quickening/ cheapening of our culture, but her text is fairly rambling (sometimes in a good way, but generally not, with points being made over and over with little further elucidation) and there's irrational male-bashing pretty frequently. The book is mostly a catalog of the differences in concepts of time, ownership, history, etc. between western and non-western cultures, and it gets stretched thin in most places.
   My main objection, however, is her constant science-bashing. After the first few chapters, you'd think that Newton was responsible for all of the suffering and exploitation in the world; she demonizes the process and results of science, calling atomic clocks and the like "silly" - but I'm sure that she wouldn't turn up her nose at a GPS receiver or computer! It's obvious that she doesn't understand science at all, but instead takes an outsider's critique of concepts and processes that she has only the vaguest conception of. (OK, one example: she quotes the 'ridiculous' speed of computers as being some high number of "gigaflops per second." 7 gigaflops is 7 billion floating point operations per second [FLoating point OPerations per Second], so gigaflops per second is a ridiculous and nonsensical unit.)



5. "An exercise indeed in Dharma, poetry and philosophy." - Gary Snyder
   
   "This is smart, edgy work, from an original and exciting mind. Jay Griffiths' voice is a light beam in the fog of twenty-first century debate." - Barry Lopez
   
   "A fascinating, highly original meditation on time." - Fritjof Capra
   
   "Jay Griffiths has produced nothing short of an original opening of the human mind, a study of what makes us tick. Her book touches nature and language and us with an enlightening spirit, and it demonstrates that we have been in the thrall of a concept of our own invention, one that we have barely acknowledged, much less understood. Her book is cleverness in the service of genius." Citation on winning the Barnes and Noble "Discover" award for the best new non-fiction writer in the USA, 2003
   
   "Like the seminal socialist, feminist and ecological works, Pip Pip articulates what thousands have felt but no-one has been able to put into words. Suddenly, shapeless concerns are brought into focus. Outrage takes the place of confusion, fascination displaces complacency. Cheeky, intelligent, always gripping, Pip Pip re-introduces us to a dimension we've utterly neglected. It will be the opening salvo in a new battle over the human spirit." - George Monbiot, activist, author and columnist for The Guardian
   
   "A mine of ideas, of anecdotes, connections, angles" - Ivan Illich, author of Deschooling Society and Tools for Conviviality
   
   "A truly brilliant and wonderful book, beautifully written. This is one of the best books I've read in years." - Vandana Shiva, author of Monocultures of the Mind
   
   "A wonderful, delightfully humourous polemic against everything that's wrong with the way we deal with time today" - The Independent, Books of the Year
   
   "An irresistibly provocative and political analysis of time... Her wittily enthusiastic thesis is that time has too long been used as a tool to power: as a manifesto, it could cause a revolution." - Iain Finlayson, The Times, Books of the Year
   
   "A whirl of a book. Any page will get you hooked." - New Scientist
   
   "A compulsively readable book cleverly combining influences as diverse as Otis Redding, Beltane and Australian aboriginals; Griffiths does for time what Robert M Pirsig did for truth-obsessed philosophy in 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. It's also a sexual, playful, intensely female book. ... Passionately written and cogently argued, it's a book you should make time to read." - Pete May, Time Out

5 comments about Space and Time in Special Relativity.

1. have to thank Dr. Mermin for being able to interpret and discuss such, in a sense, complex matters effectively and efficiently; great for beginners, like myself, to have a philosophical approach. some of the problems presented are, in fact, not easy.



2. This book was astounding. I had my share of knowledge in physics: Newtonian Mechanics, Electrodynamics and Magnetism, Optics, etc. This book took my preconceived ideas of how the Universe worked and all but threw them out the window.

   Mermin's description of why the old physical model is inadequate was very descriptive and informative - even for someone with a highschool physics background. Numerous examples and analogies bring to understanding many difficult and abstract concepts. As for the skeptic . . . well, he deals with them in the later part of the book (I was one of them).

   This book reads like a Science Fiction novel. Yet the topics presented could not be more real.

   We have Einstein to thank for the Principles and Theories of Special Relativity, and Mermin to thank for communicating them to the general population.

   I recommend this book to everybody; physicist or not. You cannot fool youself into thinking you have an understanding of the universe until you read and comprehend the topics covered in this book.

   Enjoy!




3. I'm writing this review based on my impressions of this book when I read it 9 years ago as an undergraduate physics major at Berkeley. We used it in an honors sophmore-level physics class for physics majors. I'm know a physics grad-student at UCSB. I want to dissavow the impression you might have that this is just a light-weight, pop-science book. This book is very axiomatic and it really tries to "prove" relativity to the reader. The beginning chapters will motivate the postulates of special relativity (eg: "the speed of light is the same in all reference-frames"), and you will learn how to DERIVE the Lorentz transformations from them. (...which is the major thrust of the book. On a side note: topics like why E=mc^2 aren't discussed until the end.) This is why we used it in our class. The students taking the regular Berkeley physics class only memorized the Lorentz transformations and plugged them in blindly. I felt we learned a great deal more than they did. I think this book is billed as a descriptive introduction to relativity for non-specialists because it's clear and easy to read (although perhaps a bit verbose), and because doesn't use any fancy math, just basic geometry (right-triangles, the pythagorean theorem). This doesn't mean it should be shuned by specialists-to-be. This was my first introduction to relativity and at the time, I felt completely satisfied with my understanding of the material after reading it.



4. And that includes Epstein's "Relativity Visualized" and Wolfson's "Simply Einstein". My impression is that Mermin is truly intelligent and a good teacher. I found some of the other books talked down to me or spent time explaining how Michelson (or was it Morley) was abused as a child instead of sticking to the subject. I intend to buy Mermin's other book on the subject "It's About Time".
   
   I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a reasonably technical mind and wants to get a firm grasp on this subject.



5. For anyone who wants to understand special relativity, even those who may not be particularly adept at physics or higher math, this is the book. I spent months searching for a clear resolution of the "twin paradox" (aka, "clock paradox") without success. This is the *only* book I've ever found that accomplishes it, no other physics text I could find (and I examined 23 of them at the UCSD S&E library) provided a comprehensible explanation.
   
   This is nothing short of a spectacular piece of work. There is no way to go wrong with this book if you have any interest in the topic at all. I'm confident that even well-experienced professional physicists could find a good many new and useful insights in it. And the best part is, this book is easily accessible by practically anyone having even entry level scientific awareness. It's a genuine classic.

3 comments about The Concept of Time.

1. The `Concept Of Time' is a lecture Heidegger delivered to the Marburg Theological Society in July of 1924. Heidegger introduces his `ontological' way of asking the question `what is time?' Heidegger's way of asking and answering the question of time is not physical `clock-time', theological or cognitive. Rather, time is rendered intelligible through existence - Dasein. Heidegger distinguishes between authentic time as running back from the future and the inauthentic spatialization of time as a now point `t' next to spatial coordinates `x,y,z'.

   Many readers are highly intimidated by Heidegger's masterwork `Being and Time' because of its lenghth, breadth of thought and fusion of language. `The Concept of Time' is a very short and clear piece and makes an excellent primer for `Being and Time' and his thought in general.

   Highly recommended for the beginner and any serious scholar who ignored it in the past.




2. I enjoyed pondering the book and discussing the ideas with friends. I just wanted to share one of my favorite quotes from the book: "The clock shows us the now, but no clock ever shows teh future or has ever shown the past."



3. Warning: this pre-dates "Being and Time," Heidegger's masterwork, and, by extension, late Heidegger ("Introduction to Metaphysics," "Identity and Difference"). So please don't think of this book as giving you the whole - or even a decent part - of Heidegger's thought.

   What it does give are some thoughts on time, being, and another way of looking at history that are invaluable to a student of philosophy. It is a good introduction to learning how to think like a philosopher (not that I'm any good at it, but still). Heidegger in this lecture explains how time should be thought of in the context of our death (the possibility of 'not-being' causes 'being' to think about time seriously in the first place). With that in mind, 'being' at a particular time can be thought of as future-looking, even though to look at the future such 'being' must work through the past - such a 'working through,' of course, creating the present.

   There's far more than that in the product, and I would encourage you to get a copy. It is a quick read, but Heidegger's reasoning is memorable, and his notion of what "Dasein" is, why time should not be thought of in the context of eternity, and how history should be looked at are all important for those of us who want to learn about how to think through such issues.

1 comments about Caesar's Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History (Sather Classical Lectures).

1. I'll read almost anything about ancient Rome, and the catchy title of this book certainly caught my eye. The Roman calendars before Caesar's reform was extremely cumbersome. Note that I deliberately used the word "calendars" because Rome had more than one. There was a political calendar keyed to the consuls, a sacred calendar denoting religious festivals, and a seasonal calendar keyed to agricultural activities. Too make things more confusing, the political calendar and the seasonal calendar were seriously out of synch by Caesar's time. Bringing some order out this chaos was Caesar's greatest, and longest lasting, accomplishment--though far less mentioned than his military or political exploits. As mentioned above, what made the Romans reflect so on their calendarical system was their encounter with the Greeks, a people they greatly admired. So greatly did the Romans admire the Greeks that they wanted "in", so to speak, to the Greek system of myths and measuring time.
   I won't go into details (read the book), but they eventually did this by way of the myth of the founding of the Latin people by Aeneas, a refugee from Troy. While various provinces and cities continued their use of local calendars, it eventually became the mark of a Roman citizen where ever he lived, to use the imperial calendar. The Roman calendar was adopted by the Catholic Church, although with the very useful adaptation of a seven day week (following Jewish practice), and eventually the use of numbers to designate the days of month.
   
   One of the most interesting points made in this book (and very needful since we moderns are so imbued with the idea that calendars are fixed and objective) is that the Romans even had to deal with the basic question of when the year begins. At one point in their history it began with the Kalends (1st) of March and because they were using a lunar calendar, this did not mesh with the solar calendar. Every year they had to add extra days or even months to make things come out right. Very confusing. Anyway they eventually settled on January, though even in Augustus's time poets like Ovid were critical of this decision, considering the advent of spring a more suitable time. If you are at all interested how our calendar was invented, you'll like Caesar's Calendar.

1 comments about The Philosophy of Time (Oxford Readings in Philosophy).

1. This is an excellent collection of readings on the philosophy of time. The contents include twelve essays by twelve different philosophers (including the editors of the volume) -- the very first of which is taken from the famous thirty-third chapter of John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart's _The Nature of Existence_. (Originally entitled "Time," the chapter is here retitled "The Unreality of Time.")

   I remarked in my review of that book that McTaggart's argument has been tried and found wanting, but one important partial exception is featured in this volume: D.H. Mellor's piece "The Unreality of Tense." Mellor does not, indeed, accept McTaggart's conclusion that time itself is "unreal," but he does take McTaggart to have provided a successful argument for a "tenseless" theory of time. (Mellor's piece is a revision of chapter 6 of his book _Real Time_ -- the first edition, I presume.)

   The other essays range over a wide variety of topics, from David Lewis's "The Paradoxes of Time Travel" to Michael Dummet's "Bringing About The Past," from whether time really "passes" or not and whether the nature of time is a philosophical or an empirical question to whether time has a beginning and whether change is real. I shall not try to comment on them all.

   But the selections are excellent and the collection as a whole is very thorough. In short, this a fine set of readings for anyone with time on his hands.

5 comments about Breaking the Time Barrier: The Race to Build the First Time Machine.

1. If you're fascinated with the science of light and time travel but not a physicist or mathematician, this book is a great read. It's written in easy to understand language, backed up by appropriate research. Jenny Randles is excellent at writing these kinds of books and I recommend her other recent publications.



2. I adore books like this, stretching one's concepts beyond their comfort zone to consider new possibilities. At the same time, however, I feel compelled to approach such works as "Breaking the Time Barrier" with a healthy measure of skepticism. Of course, most people believe that crossing boundaries of time is impossible, although from a theoretical perspective it appears possible at the same time that it is unlikely. Jenny Randles, a British science writer, tracks in "Breaking the Time Barrier" efforts beyond science fiction and wishful thinking to crack that barrier. There are enormous challenges, probably insurmountable ones at least for the projected future, in overcoming the speed of light, understanding and moving beyond of three dimensions into higher dimensionality, and navigating the space-time continuum of a black hole.
   
   Recent investigations undertaken by serious scientists may yield answers to at least some of these questions. The result might be a workable time machine in some distant unimaginable era. Then watch out, fascinating possibilities exist. Read and enjoy, but don't rush out and invest money in a company offering time travel vacations immediately. It will be quite a while before we see that.



3. I have read many books pertaining to time travel and I must say this is one of the best. It is a "must read".



4. Have not read the entire book yet, but what I have read has been written very well. Not a big fan of most female authers as I notice a different writing style from that of men, but this woman has done an execellent job of creating a book that is both interesting and factual. It is printed in what I would say is 1 1/2 spaced lines so it makes for an easy and enjoyable read. Just let your imagination go and visualize the future with such possibilities, the potential is enormous! We can already travel in time in a limited way, get up in the morning and relive the afternoon all over again in the same day, but what is suggested may be around the corner is mind blowing. Buy the book!



5. I bought "Breaking The Time Barrier" as a companion to the most excellent "Time Traveler" by Ronald Mallett, and if you are after a good book with time travel science in it, get Mallett's book.
   
   I found Ms. Randles book a disappointment on two levels. First, it's filled with "gee whiz!" statements that upon further reading are discounted. Examples:
   
   p. 102: "He (Frank Tipler) was the first modern scientist to design a time machine that could be constructed in the laboratory ... ". Later, on p.104, Ms. Randles backs away from that stating that, "Tipler's time machine was a worthy effort but is not likely for the foreseeable future ...". Because it would require a super dense cylinder over 60 miles long.
   
   p.107 "The photo of Christ was a fake and the chronovisor did not work - but the device was built and the theory behind it was sound."
   
   Antigravity experiments of Podkletnov are discussed (p. 174- 176). "Tests followed and many further experiments revealed the remarkable truth. Gravity was being reduced in the area above the floating superconductor." Then (p. 176) "But Podkletnov's research proved disappointingly difficult for others to verify."
   
   Secondly, Ms. Randles, although seemingly familiar with modern physics ideas, sometimes misinterprets them. Example:
   
   (pp. 77 - 78) Ms. Randles misunderstands Einstein Rosen bridges to mean that particles themselves travel through the bridges rather than quantum information.
   
   If you do not have a science background and you are interested in time travel ideas then this could be a good starting book. For those who have had exposure to science there are a few jewels in the book such as the (brief) discussion of the delayed choice experiment.

5 comments about Calendrical Calculations.

1. The book explains the structure of 14 calendars, and gives easily comprehensible formulae for the conversion of a date in any of these calendars into a day count, and back to the calendar date. It also includes many holidays for these calendars.

   Rather than on the history of calendars or their cultural background, the focus is on a lucid, correct, and complete exposition of their functional principles. Extensive bibliographic references are given to the primary sources for each calendar.

   A highlight is the complete specification of several calendars depending on fairly precise timings of astronomical phenomena (Chinese calendar and some Hindu religious calendars).

   To make it self-contained, the book explains the necessary mathematical and astronomical background. The astronomical models are taken from the classic 1991 book "Astronomical Algorithms" by Jean Meeus.

   I especially like the presentation of the calendrical formulae in an essentially non-algorithmic manner, using normal mathematical notation. This makes it easy to further analyze these formulae.

   For instance, if one wants to know how good an approximation to the spring equinox is March 21 in the Gregorian calendar, one finds from the formula on page 36 in the book that midnight of March 21 in Gregorian year Y is exactly

   Y·365.2425 - (Y mod 4)·97/400 + (floor(Y/4) mod 25)·3/100 - (floor(Y/100) mod 4)/4

   days after midnight of March 21 in Gregorian year 0, which ranges from Y·365.2425 - 1.4775 up to Y·365.2425 + 0.72. Thus, even assuming the Gregorian approximation of 365.2425 days to the tropical year, spring equinoxes are distributed over at least three dates in March in the Gregorian calendar.

   Such reasonings would be very difficult if the book specified the calendars only in terms of programming language code.

   The formulae are designed so that it is easy to incorporate them into code written in the programming language of your choice. This use is further supported by a set of test dates in an appendix. Another appendix lists an example implementation of all the formulae, in the programming language Common Lisp. This code (intended for personal use) can also be downloaded from the internet.

   But this book is much more than a collection of programming recipes for many calendars -- it makes you understand the structure of those calendars. Ambitious readers can even find the data and the methods to construct their own calendrical formulae.

   What would I like to be changed in the book? Not much. Some of the calendrical formulae could be further simplified, the astronomical terminology could be modernized in places, and perhaps some additional historical information could be added. And, of course, even more calendars! For instance, some of the proposed reformed calendars, a more widespread version of the Persian calendar, or an historic Japanese calendar.

   This book is a must for everybody wanting reliable and highly readable information on the functional principles of the world's calendars.

   Michael Deckers




2. An excellent book on the history and workings of various calendars. But dont use the source code! The licensing agreement is a trap. Use the code in GNU Emacs from the Free Software Foundation distributed under the General Public License. It does everything the authors code does (except for two obscure calendars) and it's free and always will be.



3. The reason why these people use the code in Emacs is that they wrote it. The authors virtually created the field of computerised calendaring, and then published the algorithms in two landmark papers in SPE in 1990 and 1993.



4. This is an interesting little book that provides a unified algorithmic presentation for more than two dozen calendars of current and historical interest. The book gives precise descriptions of each calendar and makes accurate calendar algorithms available for computer programmers. The complete workings of each calendar are described in verbage and then mathematically. Working computer programs are included in an appendix and on the accompanying CD.
   
   The one thing I didn't care for was the choice of Lisp as the implementation language in appendix B. However, this isn't too big of a problem since equivalent Java programs are on the book's website along with the Lisp implementations. Also, since the mathematical equations of conversion are clearly given, you can choose your own implementation language with few problems. The following is the table of contents:
   
   1. Introduction
   
   Part I. Arithmetical Calendars:
   2. The Gregorian calendar
   3. The Julian calendar
   4. The Coptic and Ethiopic calendars
   5. The ISO calendar
   6. The Islamic calendar
   7. The Hebrew calendar
   8. The Ecclesiastical calendars
   9. The Old Hindu calendars
   10. The Mayan calendar
   11. The Balinese Pawukon calendar
   12. Generic cyclical calendars
   
   Part II. Astronomical Calendars:
   13. Time and astronomy
   14. The Persian calendar
   15. The Baha'i calendar
   16. The French Revolutionary calendar
   17. The Chinese calendar
   18. The modern Hindu calendars
   19. The Tibetan calendar
   20. Astronomical lunar calendars coda
   
   Part III. Appendices:
   A. Function, parameter, and constant types
   B. Lisp implementation
   C. Sample data.



5. I am amazed by the clarity and "simplicity" of the text in the book.
   Calendars are not simple at all, but the approach taken by the authors makes the algorithms involved very accessible. I also appreciated the decision to focus on clarity rather then performance.

1 comments about Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks, and Cultures.

1. Aveni's book is a fascinating portrait of the rhythms and roles of time keeping in a variety of cultures including the Aztec, Inca, Maya, and ancient Chinese. A fascinating exploration of a topic we all too often don't bother to consdier.