Time: Its Origin, Its Enigma, Its History

by Alexander Waugh

Fresh and accessible, entertaining and informative, this volume by Alexander Waugh recounts the flops and follies, triumphs and fears, crackpot theories and wondrous discoveries that have shaped the way humans have conceived of time since its dawn. His cast of characters ranging from the primitive homo erectus to modern time-explorers, from Zeno to Caesar to Pope Gregory, Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein, Waugh moves with urbanity and aplomb from the stuff of myth to the theory of relativity. Calendars, eons, minutes, eternity -- no element of time is overlooked in this delightful and enlightening tour of science and history. It reveals, for instance, that atomic clocks can now tell time with an accuracy that loses only one second every 316,000 years. On the other hand, it also discloses that in ancient Rome no one noticed for ninety-nine years that a public sundial was recording time consistently wrong.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, History

288 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1998

About the author

Alexander Evelyn Michael Waugh (born 1963) is an English eccentric, businessman, writer, critic, journalist, composer, cartoonist, record producer and television presenter. He is best known for his biography of the Wittgenstein family (The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War) published in 2009.

He was a founding director and Chairman of Xebras Management Ltd, the now-dissolved digital media company. He has also served on the boards of Concert Agency, Manygate Management Ltd, and of the award winning Travelman Publishing Ltd. He is currently an independent Non-Executive Director of Millennium & Copthorne Hotels plc and Chairman of the Remuneration Committee.

Reviews

[Ryn McAtee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book. Waugh was able to take a complex, fairly dry subject and present it as entertaining, as well as informative. The one thing that disappointed me though was the lack of women present in the text. Yeah yeah, I know about women's historic role in the Church and in science, but I feel there were some real missed opportunities to have said, "Maybe a man didn't do this." A perfect example would have been for the chapter entitled "Menses" (for God's sake). The Ishango bone was a tool from the Upper Paleolithic era; it's characterized by tally marks in three columns. It's not really known exactly what it was used for, but take this quote from Claudia Zaslavsky: "Originally described as a record of prime numbers and doubling, Alexander Marshack later concluded, that it represented a six-month lunar calendar. The dating of the Ishango bone has been reevaluated, from about 8000 B.C.to perhaps 20,000 B.C. or earlier. Similar calendar bones, dating back as much as 30,000 years, have been found in Europe. Thus far the oldest such incised bone, discovered in southern Africa and having 29 incisions, goes back about 37,000 years. Now, who but a woman keeping track of her cycles would need a lunar calendar? When I raised this question with a colleague having similar mathematical interests, he suggested that early agriculturalists might have kept such records. However, he was quick to add that women were probably the first agriculturalists." It just feels like a huge missed opportunity not to include this. Perhaps Waugh will publish a revised edition one of these days.

[Dillon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alexander Waugh has written a book about a topic which is grand in scope and he has done a good job of exploring such a common, but at the same time barely understood concept. From the point of view of History TIME is a well-written book. He entertainingly explores the concept of time through history with many enjoyable anecdotes and examples. The Science is well-explained, allowing those of us without PhDs to grasp the more esoteric ideas relating to Time. Waugh is prone to wandering off-topic on an aside which is usually interesting and sometimes distracting. But his greatest failing is his thinly veiled antipathy towards religion - especially Christianity. Waugh takes every opportunity (and sometimes forces the issue) to ridicule religious beliefs, from ancient pagans to modern Catholics, be seems to discuss the pagans with a small hint of respect that is absent when he discusses Christians. At times he seems to go out of his way to share his opinion on the foolishness of Christianity, an opinion which often seems to be based upon ignorance and misunderstanding. This left me with a sour taste after reading this book, which is a shame because if TIME had been written without this bitterness it would have been a very entertaining read.

[Raz · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject matter of this book is really fascinating, it's laid out in a very reader-friendly format, and I definitely came away knowing some fun facts and having picked up some rabbit holes to lose myself in next time I get bored online. There's a particularly good chapter where Waugh breaks down the Theory of Relativity into easily digestible terms.

The reason I didn't give this book any more that two stars is because the author's writing style falls on the side of smugness a little too much; he's a bit insufferable at times.

He's also weirdly invested in constantly bringing up how the political correctness of today (bearing in mind this book is now 25 years old) would be looked down on by people in the past, and he never misses an opportunity to bash religion. I'm an atheist and it's not like I have any great love for the Catholic church, but it gets distracting at points reading him ramble on about how DUMB and ILLOGICAL religions are...we get it, they suck, can you maybe give us more than a token line about the Javanese method of measuring weeks though because that sounded kinda interesting.

[Samuel]

A diverting selection of tangents on the theme of units of time, particularly in the latter half of the book, once the specific history of the second, minute, day, month, and year have been dealt with. A few of the scientific references, particularly on the End of Time, are a bit outdated, and there is a fairly strong anti-religious opinion which resurfaces throughout, but an author is entitled to that.

[Pam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very interesting subject matter which the author Alexander Waugh handles with a literary style of writing. This is a style I do not like nor one that I think fits scientific based subjects. I found Waugh's wordy delivery bogged down the great information he had to present.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

This gets a bit dry and "textbooky" in parts, but the author spices it up with a good bit of irreverent humor. I liked the philosophical sections more than the historical ones. Overall, a quick and enjoyable read.

[Chancellor Clay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Time was a very scholarly read that explored the concept of time and its development throughout the ages. The book covered the cultural, historical, and philosophical importance of time to the major societies throughout human history.

[Albert · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't take non-fiction book seriously on topic like this which doesn't have an index.

[Peter]

One of those books you can read again and again!: ...The sort of book you want to read again and again!
The is is an extraordinary book - not just because of all the fascinating things that it tells you about time, but because of the way the author plays the reader. He lets you suppose one thing and changes tack, telling you that what you had just learned was not in fact true. The reader needs to stay on his toes, not be fooled by this ingenious method, the author seems to be telling us not to take anythnng for granted. The style is witty and entertaining, but the book also manages to impart a huge amount of condensed information and makes this complicated subject extremely interesting in all of its cultural, historical and scientific dimensions. I was so impressed that I have read it now three times.
I have read twenty or so books on time but this one is by far and away the most appealing. Waugh's theory on the derivation of the seven-day week beats them all!

[Ron · Rating 2 out of 5]

A strange way to talk about how our time systems came to exist the way they are now. With the exception of the Day, Month and Year, all of our other time frames are human manufactured, and the way that they came to exist is fascinating. This book describes in minute detail every time component from the second up to the Millenium, and then jumps into some high-level physics and talkes about relativity and quantum mechanics.

[Sherwood Smith]

This sprightly, delightful book is just the sort of read for an idle afternoon, running through the history of time keeping, with some side jaunts into the mathematics of time. There are also reveries on time according to various individuals, as well as cultures. (I would have loved more of this, and less of the math, which just taxes my dyslexic brain, but others might relish the number talk.)

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A witty history of time... everything from how we ended up with a 7-day week, and why our fascination with decades is just as absurd as the Gnostic's belief in the spirituality of numbers... to how physicists define space-time. The writer's smart and conversational. It's also a good book to read in stages... I read it in fits and starts over the course of several months.

[Amanda Witt]

Well written, with a chapter devoted to each of the units of time that we know now - starting with seconds, and going all the way up to a millenium. The last few chapters deal with complex time and eternity.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

If this book was not filled with Waugh's very unfunny attempts at humour this book would have been worth 5 stars.

[Kent]

incomplete - got halfway through it, but cant read much any more - buh-bye book

[Charlie Schroeder · Rating 4 out of 5]

What wit and research. The historical parts are fascinating, the science was hard to grasp. Probably just my small frontal lobe that couldn't grasp it.

[Eric Bruen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I give up - I'm bored, I don't care and I don't care for his writing style. I need fiction. I'm still giving it three stars because it isn't bad, just isn't for me.

[Russell L]

Interesting discussion of the history of the measurement of time with some discussion of the philosophy of time

[Abel Caine fiji · Rating 4 out of 5]

Totally enjoyable book about humanity's attempts to measure and try to stop time

[Sarah Jowett · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all time favorites ever, you will never look at time the same way again