The clock mirage : our myth of measured time

The clock mirage Our myth of measured time

Joseph Mazur

Book - 2020

What is time? This question has fascinated philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists for thousands of years. Why does time seem to speed up with age? What is its connection with memory, anticipation, and sleep cycles?0Award-winning author and mathematician Joseph Mazur provides an engaging exploration of how the understanding of time has evolved throughout human history and offers a compelling new vision, submitting that time lives within us. Our cells, he notes, have a temporal awareness, guided by environmental cues in sync with patterns of social interaction. Readers learn that, as a consequence of time's personal nature, a forty-eight-hour journey on the Space Shuttle can feel shorter than a six-hour trip on the Soyuz capsule, t...hat the Amondawa of the Amazon do not have ages, and that time speeds up with fever and slows down when we feel in danger. 0With a narrative punctuated by personal stories of time's effects on truck drivers, Olympic racers, prisoners, and clockmakers, Mazur's journey is filled with fascinating insights into how our technologies, our bodies, and our attitudes can change our perceptions. Ultimately, time reveals itself as something that rides on the rhythms of our minds. 'The Clock Mirage' presents an innovative perspective that will force us to rethink our relationship with time, and how best to use it.

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Subjects
Time.
Time > Philosophy.
Time perspective.
Published
New Haven : Yale University Press [2020]
Language
English
Main Author
Joseph Mazur (author)
Physical Description
xiv, 254 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780300229325
  • Preface
  • Part 1. The Measures
  • 1. Trickling Waters, Shirting Shadows (Telling Time)
  • Interlude: Olympic Racer Wins by One Hundredth of Second
  • 2. Ringing Bells, Beating Drums (Use of Time)
  • Interlude: A Clockmaker Thinks about Time
  • 3. Eighth Day of the Week (Cycles of Time)
  • Part II. Theorists, Thinkers, and Opinions
  • 4. Zeno's Quiver (The Stream of Time)
  • Interlude: Prison for Life without Parole
  • 5. The Material Universe (Philosophers' Time)
  • Interlude: Prisoners in Texas and Oklahoma
  • 6. Gutenberg's Type (Time in the First Information Age)
  • Interlude: Time Locked into the Present
  • 7. Enter Newton (Absolute Time)
  • Part III. The Physics
  • 8. What Is a Clock? (Time beyond the Observed)
  • Interlude: Time on the International Space Station
  • 9. Simultaneous Clocks (Calibrated Time)
  • Interlude: Another Time on the International Space Station
  • 10. Braced Unification (Space-Time)
  • Interlude: A Curious Dialogue
  • 11. Another Midnight in Paris (Traveling through Time)
  • Part IV. The Cognitive Senses
  • 12. The Big Question (The Sense and Place of Time)
  • Interlude: Time Is with Me
  • 13. Where Did It Go? (Acceleration of Time in Aging)
  • Interlude: The Slowest Clock in the World
  • 14. Feeling It (A Sense of Time)
  • Interlude: Undercover at an iPhone Assembly Plant in China
  • Part V. Living Rhythms
  • 15. The Master Pacemaker (The Eyes of Time)
  • Interlude: Time on the Trading Floor
  • 16. Internal Beat (Clocks in Living Cells)
  • Interlude: Long-Haul Truckers
  • 17. 1.5 Million Years (Circadian Synchronization)
  • Interlude: Time in the Sky
  • 18. Distorted Senses and Illusions (The Temperature of Time)
  • Interlude: My Strange View of Time
  • 19. Exoplanets and Biorhythms (Environmental Synchronizers)
  • Epilogue
  • Notes
  • Acknowledgments
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Mazur (Fluke: The Math and Myth of Coincidence), a Marlboro College professor emeritus of mathematics, takes readers on a thought-provoking voyage through various scientific and philosophical questions surrounding time. Ambitiously attempting to "answer the question of what time is," Mazur begins by reviewing how it has been measured throughout history, starting with the Babylonian empire, which introduced hours, and ending in the present, where sports results differing by hundredths of a second can decide winners and losers. The book then shifts to ideas about time, ranging from the Greek philosopher Zeno, who pictured a series of "discrete units, like a string of beads," through Newton's theory of "absolute" time existing independently of external factors such as human perception, to Einstein's physics-based contention that no distinction exists between past, present, and future. Mazur grounds these complex theories with "interludes" concerning how time is experienced by different people--for example, prison inmates, who inhabit an "eternity of ceased time," or airline pilots, for whom flight-time mostly moves slowly, but accelerates during crises. Mazur's stimulating exploration leaves his audience with the intriguing suggestion that "time is possibly nothing more than an updating of the present, a memory of the past, and an anticipation of the future." (Apr.)

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