"Only a wayfarer born under unruly stars would attempt to put into practice in our epoch of proliferating knowledge the Heraclitean dictum that `men who love wisdom must be inquirers into very many things indeed.'" Thus begins this remarkable interdisciplinary study of time by a master of the subject. And while developing a theory of "time as conflict," J. T. Fraser does offer "many things indeed"--an enormous range of ideas about matter, life, death, evolution, and value.

Looks at the history of the idea of time, the origins of the universe, relativity, life, the brain's perception of time, aging, death, memory, and time keeping ...

This work represents a guided tour to the interdisciplinary, integrated study of time.

This eighth volume in the highly praised Study of Time series presents articles that fall into three broad categories: life and time as they are understood in the biological, cognitive, and psychological dimensions; the experience of time and life in words, sounds, and images; and time and life as ordered according to sociological, historical, and anthropological perspectives. The International Society for the Study of Time (ISST) is largely composed of the very academics whose early training and research have encouraged them (...) to specialized in subjects of less and less scope. But the very interdisciplinary nature of a society of heterogenous scholars from over 30 countries in more than 20 disciplines committed to the study of time is bound to broaden the perspective of those who are thus engaged. Furthermore, the insistence on delivering papers in plenary session - and in a milieu which has always proved to be a delight to the eyes, the mind, and the body - invariably encourages highly productive, jargon free, and very profitable discussions throughout the day and in smaller groups often late into the night. How does time and life apply to music, technology, philosophy, physics, film, and so much more? The pleasant pain and the resulting creative energy that derive from being obliged to view one's subject in a newer and broader perspective produced the excellent papers chosen for presentation at the conference. And that same creative energy is presented here in the more Apollonian form of the papers selected by their external readers and the editors, as Dimensions of Time and Life. (shrink)

From the world's foremost authority on the interdisciplinary study of time comes this remarkable work on the intersection of time and human values.