A Natural History of Time available in Hardcover
- ISBN-10:
- 0226712877
- ISBN-13:
- 9780226712871
- Pub. Date:
- 06/01/2007
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0226712877
- ISBN-13:
- 9780226712871
- Pub. Date:
- 06/01/2007
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
Hardcover
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$31.00Overview
Richet begins his story with mythological traditions, which were heavily influenced by the seasons and almost uniformly viewed time cyclically. The linear history promulgated by Judaism, with its story of creation, was an exception, and it was that tradition that drove early Christian attempts to date the Earth. For instance, in 169 CE, the bishop of Antioch, for instance declared that the world had been in existence for “5,698 years and the odd months and days.”
Until the mid-eighteenth century, such natural timescales derived from biblical chronologies prevailed, but, Richet demonstrates, with the Scientific Revolution geological and astronomical evidence for much longer timescales began to accumulate. Fossils and the developing science of geology provided compelling evidence for periods of millions and millions of years—a scale that even scientists had difficulty grasping. By the end of the twentieth century, new tools such as radiometric dating had demonstrated that the solar system is four and a half billion years old, and the universe itself about twice that, though controversial questions remain.
The quest for time is a story of ingenuity and determination, and like a geologist, Pascal Richet carefully peels back the strata of that history, giving us a chance to marvel at each layer and truly appreciate how far our knowledge—and our planet—have come.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226712871 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2007 |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 400 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.40(d) |
About the Author
Pascal Richet is professor of geophysics at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris. He is the author of, among other books, The Physical Basis of Thermodynamics. John Venerella is the translator of A Naturalist's Guide to the Tropics, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
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A Natural History of Time
By PASCAL RICHET
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2007 The University of ChicagoAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-71287-1
Chapter One
Time without a Beginning?
FROM MYTHS TO THE ETERNITY ASSUMED BY THE GREEKS The contrast between day and night and the alternations of the seasons naturally gave rise to cyclical conceptions of time. From Plato and Aristotle to Hipparchus and Ptolemy, these were the predominant opinions of Greek natural philosophers. Such conceptions also lent themselves to astronomical measurements of time, which had important implications for a universe that was assumed to be eternal.
The Origins of the World
Perhaps for its malleability, that humble clay we find sticking to our feet on moist pathways has always had a prodigious destiny within the realm of cosmogony. Has there ever been a divinity who did not make use of it for modeling some one or another of his various creatures? For example, Na'pi, the Old Man of the Blackfoot Indians, found suitable matter therein, as had Yahweh, for the making of a human. At the beginning, it was Na'pi who created the animals and the birds during the course of his numerous wanderings, and who provided for the placing here and there of the rivers, mountains, and prairies. After the world had been so arranged, he got the idea one fine morning to create a woman and her child. He outlined their forms in clay, waited several days, and finally commanded them to rise and walk. Obediently, the woman and the child followed him to the bank of a river. It was there that the Old Man presented himself, and the woman asked him, abruptly: "Will we always live?" The Old Man was surprised: "I have never thought of that," he admitted, "We will have to decide it. I will take this buffalo chip and throw it into the river. If it floats, when people die, in four days they will become alive again; they will die for only four days. But if it sinks, there will be an end to them." He threw in the chip, and it floated. Gathering up a stone, the woman interjected, "No, I'll throw this stone in the river; if it floats, we will always live; if it sinks people must die, that they may always be sorry for each other." The woman cast in the stone, and the stone sank. "There," announced the Old Man, "you have chosen. There will be an end to them." It was Woman, therefore, who was responsible for Death; but above all else, her desire had been to create a sense of compassion, a trait that the Blackfoot saw lying at the heart of the human condition.
In the fascinating diversity of their expression, the cosmogonical myths testify to this constant need that societies feel to explain life and death, to establish their own origins, to grasp those of the surrounding world, or to organize a pantheon of divinities that animate nature. Few indeed are the societies in which the spectacle created by the sky—the sole source of heat and light, extending as far as the eye can see, over the immense, fertile womb of the earth—has not led people to attribute the origin of all things to majestic, cosmic couplings, or even to the gods themselves. In this spirit, the Mesopotamians left magnificent accounts, collected by J. Bottéro, such as the following Sumerian lyric poem, nearly four thousand years old, which narrates how the first Tree and Reed were born from the coupling embrace of the Sky and the Earth:
The immense platform of Earth glittered.
Verdant green was its surface!
Spacious Earth was dressed in silver and lazulite,
Bedecked with diorite, chalcedony, carnelian, and antimony,
Adorned with splendid verdure and pastures—
Something of the supreme it had!
What had happened was that august Earth, the holy Earth,
Had made herself beautiful for Sky, the prestigious one!
And Sky, this sublime god, drove his penis into
Spacious Earth.
He poured at one same time into her vagina,
The seeds of healthy Trees and Reeds.
And, entirely and completely, like an irreproachable cow,
She found herself impregnated with the rich semen of Sky!
In a somewhat less crude passage of Genesis, written a good millennium later, Elohim was satisfied simply to order: "Let the Earth bring forth greenery, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit, of every kind, each of them having its own seed in itself, on the Earth." But the relationship that can be recognized between these two texts attests to the permanence of the great questions proposed by myths, which may be different in their forms, and the permanence of the responses they elicit.
As time passed, it became apparent to the authors of antiquity that the cosmogonical accounts were strictly mythical. The Greek historian Diodorus the Sicilian (ca. 90 BC–ca. 30 BC) was conscious of this at the end of the first century BC when he described the origins of mankind in the first pages of his Historical Library. Either the earth had existed for all eternity and mankind had always inhabited it, he recognized, in summarizing the opinions of the philosophers and historians of the age, or mankind had made his appearance in a universe that had been created, one that would therefore have a limit to its existence. In the stories that dealt with this creation, every effort was made to relinquish the miraculous. To describe the origin of life, Diodorus related that, according to Democritus (fifth century BC), the sky and the earth had been separate at the time of formation of the universe because the air, which was lighter, had risen to the most elevated of regions, while all the materials that were penetrated with humidity had become concentrated into one lower location. Once they were heated by the fires of the sun, the moist parts of this earth "bubbled up, and appeared as so many pustules wrapt up in thin and slender coats and skins." Finally,
when the births included in those ventricules had received their due proportion, then those slender skins being burst asunder by the heat, the forms of all sorts of living creatures were brought forth into the light, of which those that had the most of heat mounted aloft, and were fowl and birds of the air; but those that were drossy and had more of earth were numbered in the order of creeping things and other creatures altogether used to the earth. Then those beasts that were naturally watery and moist, (called fishes), presently hastened to the place connatural to them; and when the earth afterwards became more dry and solid by the heat of the sun and the drying winds, it had not power at length to produce any more of the living creatures; but each that had an animal life began to increase their kind by mutual copulation.
Cycles of Life and Death
Taking the form of anthropomorphic or supernatural accounts, the myths of "primitive" peoples integrate mankind within the cosmos and give structure to the world by establishing intangible similarities between social order and cosmic order. Myths contribute to the stability of social order by justifying its rules, often attributing their origins to the teachings of gods or demigods; in turn, the observation of ritual prescriptions appears to be one of the requirements for the harmonious functioning of society. The myths of late antiquity respond to the same purposes, though they are more like accounts approaching the rational. They represent allegories that symbolize the "immutable physical realities, or the permanent verities of On-High," according to the formula of H.-C. Puech. But in either case, a myth must, by its very nature, be timeless. Under the guise of a sequence of events that unfolds in time, "it simulates a genesis, a becoming, in a place where, in fact, there is nothing other than eternity."
Myths are outside of time because nature, above all, is governed by cycles: day alternates inexorably with night, the moon rises and sets, and the seasons succeed one another. There is no visible trace of the irreversible: neither beginning nor end can be discerned within the circles that reproduce themselves indefinitely. Human activity linked with the hunt or the fields not only conforms to these rhythms, but it participates in another recurrence, as well: that which leads relentlessly from life to death.
Human generations are like leaves in their seasons. The wind blows them to the ground, but the tree Sprouts new ones when spring comes again,
noted Homer (late eighth century BC) in The Iliad, with a touch of melancholy. Another particularly striking example of the cycle is found in the system of counting years practiced long ago by the Egyptians that involved starting again with the beginning of each new reign. These cycles of variable duration—ranging from a single day to several decades—had the obvious point in common that they eliminated the sense of successiveness in events. "Everything begins over again at its commencement every instant," stressed M. Eliade. "The past is but a prefiguration of the future. No event is irreversible and no transformation is final. In a certain sense, it is even possible to say that nothing new happens in the world, for everything is but the repetition of the same primordial archetypes."
This point of view is perhaps most compelling for those who live among the effects of the extreme manifestations of nature. The naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), who took long journeys in South America, reported that in the region of Cumaná, to the south of the Gulf of Cariaco, near Caracas, after a long dry spell followed by repeated earthquakes in 1766–67, "prodigious downpours caused the rivers to swell; the year was extremely fertile, and the Indians, whose frail huts had easily resisted the greatest tremors, celebrated with feasts and dances, in accordance with the ideas of an ancient superstition, the destruction of the world and the coming era of its regeneration." As Eliade also noted, there exists "a conception of the end and the beginning of a temporal period, based on the observation of biocosmic rhythms and forming part of a larger system—the system of periodic purifications (cf. purges, fasting, confession of sins, etc.) and of the periodic regeneration of life."
Within a cyclical framework it is by definition impossible to conceive of history as reflecting a society's evolution. Despite changes of dynasties, or wars and their consequences—which can sometimes be dramatic for individuals—hardly any examples of evolution were recognized in antiquity because of the stability of the institutions and because the ways of life altered very slowly, if at all. In societies where the deep motives of human history are seen in glimpses, at best, anything new disturbs and troubles, because it does not conform to a past that has already been understood. The convenient remedy, then, comes in modifying the cycle so as to integrate the novelty and thus attribute to it some significance. As G. J. Whitrow reminds us, the word novus had a sinister ring in Rome, where one "greatly objected to change unless it was thought in accord with ancestral customs, which meant in practice the sentiments of the oldest living senators." This order had scarcely changed at all, in east or west, by the time philosophy and science first took flight. Fear of the unknown is hardly the mark of "primitive" humans alone; by all evidence, there remains much more of it than mere traces in our modern societies.
Chronology according to Diodorus
Independently of their ideas about the nature of time, whether finite or infinite, the Greeks showed very little evidence of any sense of history. The Trojan War of the early twelfth century BC had rather quickly revealed itself to be a myth, in which the memory of heroes was blended with the interventions of the gods. And when, in the fifth century, the germs of a nonreligious history did appear, its purpose was primarily to avoid forgetting the past, not necessarily to understand it. The insatiable curiosity of the Greeks, obvious when one considers their astonishing scientific legacy, also extended to the neighboring countries and the peoples with whom they associated, whether through pacific or bellicose ties. It was that same curiosity that gave rise to the first ethnographers among them. In the grand descriptions inaugurated by Herodotus (ca. 484 BC to ca. 425 BC), history and geography were still mingled together, providing yet another testimony of the perspective still held during the Roman age by the most eminent representatives of the Greek civilization.
As compared with Herodotus, Diodorus the Sicilian was heir to four centuries of hindsight. Upon this basis he became one of the first authors to broaden the scope of history to produce not just the history of one land or regime, but a history of the entire known world. Toward this end he established a composite chronology of antiquity, including all the noteworthy events that had occurred between the Trojan and the Gallic Wars. To justify the utility of writing such "universal histories," Diodorus affirmed that they would serve society's interests. In effect, their authors would "procure to their readers art and skill in politics above the ordinary rate, with great ease and security." But "knowledge gained by experience, though it brings a man to an aptness to be quick in discerning what is most advisable in every particular case," is attended "with many toils and hazards." In contrast, "knowledge of what was well or ill done by others, gained by history, carries along with it instructions, freed from those misfortunes that others have before experienced." And within society, history provides benefits for every age, for every state, for the common harmony:
For young men, it teaches the wisdom and prudence of the old, and increases and improves the wisdom of the aged; it fits private men for high places; and stirs up princes (for the sake of honor and glory) to those exploits that immortalize their names. It likewise encourages soldiers to fight the more courageously for their country, upon the hopes of applause and commendation after their deaths; and as a curb to the impious and profane, it restrains them in some measure, upon the account of being noted to posterity, with a perpetual brand of infamy and disgrace.
Because history increases in value as it increases in scope, it must synthesize on a vast scale, rather than describing only particular episodes. For that reason, Diodorus affirmed, "I determined to compose an entire history, from which the reader might reap much advantage, with little labour and pains; for he who endeavours, to the utmost of his power, to comprehend in his writings the memorable affairs and actions of the whole world (as of one single city), bringing down his history from the most ancient times to his own age, though he set upon a work certainly very laborious, yet he will perform that which, when finished, will be undoubtedly most useful and profitable." But Diodorus scarcely left any illusions for his own readers regarding the final lessons one could draw from such a work: by causing all of mankind to fit into one same pattern, historians acted "as if they were servants herein to the Divine Providence." And Providence, "having marshaled the stars (visible to us) in a most beautiful frame and order, and likewise conjoined the natures of men in a common analogy and likeness one to another, incessantly wheels about every age, as in a circle, imparting to each what is beforehand by fate shared out and allotted for him."
The Stars and Time
That the skies were divine in nature had been postulated ever since the beginning of Greek science. From this premise the idea was derived that the celestial bodies' movements had a determining influence upon terrestrial phenomena. Spectacular illustrations of such influence were the obvious links between the sun's height at zenith and the seasons, or the moon's position and the displacements of water producing the tides. Aristotle himself had averred that "human affairs form a circle, and that there is a circle in all other things having a natural movement and coming into being and passing away." And so, in referring to the cyclical nature of time or the influences of the stars upon human affairs, Diodorus was simply expounding ideas that had already been accepted for centuries. Two thousand years of astronomy had provided sufficient foundations for these influences. Even the great Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus, ca. 90 to ca. 168), whose geocentric system of the world reigned unconditionally until the time of Copernicus, judged them reliable enough to be a basis for his Tetrabiblos, or Quadripartite: Being Four Books on the Influence of the Stars, which still constitutes the canon of contemporary astrology. But chronology, quite apart from any idea one could have about history, was at the core of historical thought, and astronomy had long asserted that there were solid bases for it.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Natural History of Time by PASCAL RICHET Copyright © 2007 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface....................ix1 Time without a Beginning?....................1
2 On the Great Book of Moses....................24
3 Genesis as Viewed through the Prism of Natural Philosophy....................54
4 Nature's Admirable Medals....................85
5 The March of the Comets....................114
6 Heroic Age, Relative Time....................143
7 The Long History of Two Barons....................176
8 The Elasticity of Time....................206
9 The Pandora's Box of Physics....................237
10 The Sun, the Earth, Radioactivity—and Kelvin's Death....................264
11 The Long Quest of Arthur Holmes....................288
12 From the Atomic Bomb to the Age of the Earth....................320
Epilogue....................350
Appendix: Mathematical Complements....................355
Source Notes....................357
Suggestions for Further Reading and Reference....................373
Bibliography....................409
Index....................455