Conversations About the End of Time

by Gould, Stephen Jay; Eco, Umberto; Carriere, Jean-Claude; Delumeau, Jean

• ISBN13: 9780880642651
• ISBN10: 0880642653
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-01
• Publisher: Fromm Intl

Summary

Four intellectuals and scientists--Stephen Jay Gould, Umberto Eco, Jean-Claude CarriFre, and Jean Delumeau--share their reflections on millennial conciousness, probing the origins of apocalyptic fascination, prehistoric cataclysms like the extinction of the dinosaurs, and religious views on the subject. Reprint.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Time Scales and the Year 2000
The Delights of the Calendar	p. 4
The Oddities of Zero	p. 7
A Thousand Years are as One Day	p. 12
The Ravages of Hope	p. 15
The End of Time Has Already Taken Place	p. 18
What Evolution Teaches Us	p. 27
The Threats to Our Existence	p. 33
A New Vision of the Past	p. 39
In Search of Other Life Forms	p. 42
Back to the Apocalypse
The Test of Time	p. 49
Evil and Suffering	p. 53
The Judgement of the Individual and the Last Judgement	p. 58
Jesus's Inauguration of the End of Time	p. 64
A Thousand Years of Happiness on Earth	p. 70
Millenarianism's Finest Hours	p. 78
The Fear that the World Would End	p. 87
The Regaining of Hope	p. 91
Answering the Sphinx
The Time of Kali	p. 99
Vishnu's Sleep	p. 104
Getting Ready for the Night of Nights	p. 107
The Dizzying Perspectives of Time	p. 115
The End of Time, or the End of Times?	p. 121
Oedipus at the Gates of Thebes	p. 127
The Blind Man and His Daughter	p. 130
The Watchmaker's Secret	p. 137
The Age of Lawyers	p. 140
Withdrawing from the World	p. 143
Space and Time: A Very Old Couple	p. 151
The End of the Human Race is Not the End of the World	p. 158
In Praise of Slowness	p. 164
Dreams are Our Real Victory over Time	p. 167
Signs of the Times
The Myth about the Panic Terror of the Year 1000	p. 173
Paranoiac Visions	p. 175
All Men are Mortal	p. 179
Time is an Invention of Christianity	p. 184
The Millennium Bug	p. 187
Funes or Memory	p. 189
The Myth of the Tabula Rasa	p. 197
'If I Were an Elephant, I Would Have Tusks'	p. 199
The Time of Repentance	p. 203
For an Ethics of Negotiation	p. 205
Tragic Optimism	p. 213
Conclusion	p. 217
Conclusion	p. 220
Conclusion	p. 223
Conclusion	p. 226
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.