- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (27 July 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140285148
- ISBN-13: 978-0140285147
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.8 x 1.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 461,600 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
This discussion of some millennial themes consists of interviews with the principals followed by a certain amount of mutual comment and some final conclusions. Gould does his standard act about the arbitrariness of the millennium and the importance of the growth awareness of deep time--a sense of the vast age of the world and the universe is important to that perspective which might help us behave decently to each other. Carriere, a Christian intellectual, discussed the hopeful side of the Book of Revelations and the need for loving kindness. Delumeau talks about the end of the Kali Yuga and the balance of the role of Shiva and Vishnu in Hinduism and worries about the disappearance of tenses and moods in French--arguing that something is seriously lost if we can no longer think in the subjunctive Future Perfect. Eco is the star here, and says wonderfully phrased, paradoxical, but not especially memorable, things about how right all the others are; if anyone wants to know what the brightest and best think about the millennium, this is not a bad place to start--the stress on kindness as an ultimate human value cannot but be attractive. --Roz Kaveney
Product Description
How has the Western world responded in the past to repeated claims that the end of the world is nigh? How do different religions understand what is ment by the end of the world? What have science and philosophy got to say about the end of time? Why do people suffer? What is hell? Is time cyclical or linear? These are just a few of the questions tackled by Umberto Eco, Stephen Jay Gould, Jean Carriere and Jean-Paul Delumeau in a series of conversations. Mixing the religious with the profane and the deeply profound with the humorous, the book explores anything and everything from the concept of time as embedded in language to the reasons why war become an industrialized phenomenon in the 20th century.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Four prominent figures of today's science and philosophy engage in a lucid and thorough discussion with 3 french journalists about the role of time throughout the human history. Each of the four authors, all experts in their field, presents the concepts of time and millenarianism, while attempting to provide us with an explanation about the collective belief that one day our world will end. The book is organized in four chapters and ends with a conclusion from each author. The covered subjects range from palaeontology, history, religion, even quantum mechanics. While the role of philosophy is mainly to ask questions, this collection of philosophical essays will provide one with a plethora of answers.
Format:Paperback
I bought this book for my partner quite a few years ago and I can't put it down. I've taken it away on holiday time and time again and read it over and over. It is truly fascinating. At times I found the concepts a little hard to follow but it is profound and I would highly recommend this book.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Conversations About the End of Time
19 Jun 2002
Format:Paperback
Conversations About the End of Time is a a discussion of questions and answers given by four thinkers. Stephen Jay Gould, Umberto Eco, Jean-Claude Carriere and Jean Delumeau all answer questions and are given a chapter in this book to espouse their respective answers.
Just think of a coffee table discussion, of a one on one discussion and you get to read the answers on questions of import. Each answering these questions with their respective insights and down-to-earth style. Each having their respective life experiences to draw from to unravel perplexing questions.
With fascination you read the thought-provoking answers. The answers will suprise some, others may be right inline with what you'd expect, but nerver boring... challenging, educational, lucid and erudite are more what you'd expect and you are not dissapointed.
This book reads fast and the questions are cogent with the general topic. Each respective thinker answers in a style of their own and the reader does not feel irrelevant. This is an interesting book in that questions asked make the reader think as well.
I found the book to be highly interesting and it has a fascination woven throughout the text captivating the reader.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Diversity is not all
15 Dec 2004
Format:Hardcover
This work does not really hang together very well. Each of the respective contributors does his own thing.
The work contains according to the book - jacket these essays. " Paleontologist Stephen Jay Goud on dating the Creation, evolutionary ' deep time' and the need for ecological ethics on a human scale. Novelist, medievalist and Web fanatic UmbertoEco on the breave new world of cyberspace, and its likely impact on memory, cultural continuity and access toknowledge. Catholic historian Jean Delumeau on how the Western Imagination has always been haunted by ideas of the Apocalypse. ScreenwriterJean- Claude Carriere on the 'art of slowness' and attitudes toward time in non- Western cultures.'
The work nonetheless contains much interesting information and speculative matter.
One small piece from the work, the great Paleontologist Goud is asked " How do you see earth looking in a thousand years time? '
His answer is humble and refreshing.
" I don't see it. The things one can actually predict are not very interesting. The sun will continue to shine.. But the history of human beings-and that's what your question is about - consists only of unpredictable events. What we are least weel- placed to predict is technological evolution. I can't predict what will happen in fifty years, let alone in a thousand.. Culture evolves in a Lamarckian way, in that it allows the transmission of acquired characteristics. We directly transmit what we have learned to subsequent generations, which is why technological evolution is ultra- powerful, cumulative , directional ..
The work contains according to the book - jacket these essays. " Paleontologist Stephen Jay Goud on dating the Creation, evolutionary ' deep time' and the need for ecological ethics on a human scale. Novelist, medievalist and Web fanatic UmbertoEco on the breave new world of cyberspace, and its likely impact on memory, cultural continuity and access toknowledge. Catholic historian Jean Delumeau on how the Western Imagination has always been haunted by ideas of the Apocalypse. ScreenwriterJean- Claude Carriere on the 'art of slowness' and attitudes toward time in non- Western cultures.'
The work nonetheless contains much interesting information and speculative matter.
One small piece from the work, the great Paleontologist Goud is asked " How do you see earth looking in a thousand years time? '
His answer is humble and refreshing.
" I don't see it. The things one can actually predict are not very interesting. The sun will continue to shine.. But the history of human beings-and that's what your question is about - consists only of unpredictable events. What we are least weel- placed to predict is technological evolution. I can't predict what will happen in fifty years, let alone in a thousand.. Culture evolves in a Lamarckian way, in that it allows the transmission of acquired characteristics. We directly transmit what we have learned to subsequent generations, which is why technological evolution is ultra- powerful, cumulative , directional ..
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Good guides!
17 Mar 2002
Format:Paperback
Surely, we can't talk and think enough
about the state of mankind!
But these are hazardous waters! Where should we begin
and where do we want to go from there? So, Having
Gould and Eco as guides seems like a clever start!
about the state of mankind!
But these are hazardous waters! Where should we begin
and where do we want to go from there? So, Having
Gould and Eco as guides seems like a clever start!
According to the book, the hebrew language has
no exact present tense?? The infinitely brief, the
very essense of the present, is not to be found - it
can be neither fixed, nor measured. It is therefore
completely justifiable, grammaticale speaking,
to leave out the present?
Yet, obviously, it is from the present we look at the
past and towards the future.
Stephen Jay Gould is always a pleasure to listen to -
and the right one to put time into perspective.
For a palaeontologist, like Gould, 7000 years
(timespand of human culture) is really no more than
the twinkling of an eye. So all we know is really in
the present - which hardly exist!
From this position we look out into concepts like
the eternity - which we obviously really can't grasp.
And into ourselfes were e.g. DNA was discovered as recently
as 1953. Mystery upon mystery.
So, we struggle to discover instances of regularity and
to fit them together with the help of stories. We throw
in a little religion "were religions do not
ask questions, they answer them". Still we are far
removed from any real "understanding".
And that is what these conversations are about.
With Umberto Eco and Stephen Jay Gould - it is
of course an ok read. But only an appetizer.
-Simon
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