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The Story of Time
Exploring this elusive and often controversial subject, Umberto Eco, Sir Ernst Gombrich, and others contributes essays and reflections on the meaning of time.
- GenresHistorySciencePhilosophy
304 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1999
5 people are currently reading
105 people want to read
About the author
Kristen Lippincott
23 booksDr. Kristen Lippincott is a Director and founding member of The Exhibitions Team, a consortium of museum professionals specializing in heritage consultancy, project management, curatorial and conservation issues, and 2-D and 3-D design. Until 2006, she was Deputy Director of the National Maritime Museum for six years; and, before that, she was the Director of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.
She came to the museum world with a strong academic background, having received her doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1987. She has published extensively on subjects relating to art history, cultural history, the history of science, and on scientific instruments. She has been awarded a series of prestigious academic awards and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship, and two Samuel H. Kress Fellowships.
In the academic year 2003/2004, she was a Visiting Professor at Harvard University’s Center for Renaissance Studies at the Vila I Tatti in Florence. She is currently completing a book on celestial mapping and the changing iconography of the constellations from antiquity to the Renaissance.
She came to the museum world with a strong academic background, having received her doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1987. She has published extensively on subjects relating to art history, cultural history, the history of science, and on scientific instruments. She has been awarded a series of prestigious academic awards and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship, and two Samuel H. Kress Fellowships.
In the academic year 2003/2004, she was a Visiting Professor at Harvard University’s Center for Renaissance Studies at the Vila I Tatti in Florence. She is currently completing a book on celestial mapping and the changing iconography of the constellations from antiquity to the Renaissance.
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June 2, 2015
I came across this excellent encyclopedia when I was living in Mexico City. The title was "El tiempo a través del tiempo" - a much better title than the English one.
The encyclopedia is lavishly illustrated with paintings, photos, documents, quotations, woodcuts, models and other diagrams investigating time as a philosophical, literary, anthropological, and scientific phenomena. The National Maritime Museum and JP Morgan commissioned this book and the quality is apparent. My favorite sections were The Creation of Time, The Depiction of Time, The Experience of Time, and The End of Time. There is a technical (large) middle section of the Measurement of Time that I found a bit dull since models of chronometers are best appreciated spatially. We are dealing with the fourth dimension and reading in two dimensions is too much compression as it is.
Everyone's favorite Italian semiotician Umberto Eco has an introductory essay analyzing the semiotics of time..."The future should be a place where we will go, not something that will come to us were we are now." The art historian E.H. Gombrich writes another essay on The history of anniversaries: "Only an anniversary gives a community certainty that achievements can defy mortality." There are others including The Japanese/Indian/Chinese/Inuit/Mesoamerican/Egyptian/Arabian Experience of Time. I didn't know that the Japanese thought "there is a sense that time can be 'folded' or manipulated according to need" or for the Inuit "accurately estimating time in the dark mornings of winter was a priority". An amazing book.
The encyclopedia is lavishly illustrated with paintings, photos, documents, quotations, woodcuts, models and other diagrams investigating time as a philosophical, literary, anthropological, and scientific phenomena. The National Maritime Museum and JP Morgan commissioned this book and the quality is apparent. My favorite sections were The Creation of Time, The Depiction of Time, The Experience of Time, and The End of Time. There is a technical (large) middle section of the Measurement of Time that I found a bit dull since models of chronometers are best appreciated spatially. We are dealing with the fourth dimension and reading in two dimensions is too much compression as it is.
Everyone's favorite Italian semiotician Umberto Eco has an introductory essay analyzing the semiotics of time..."The future should be a place where we will go, not something that will come to us were we are now." The art historian E.H. Gombrich writes another essay on The history of anniversaries: "Only an anniversary gives a community certainty that achievements can defy mortality." There are others including The Japanese/Indian/Chinese/Inuit/Mesoamerican/Egyptian/Arabian Experience of Time. I didn't know that the Japanese thought "there is a sense that time can be 'folded' or manipulated according to need" or for the Inuit "accurately estimating time in the dark mornings of winter was a priority". An amazing book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review