Page 52 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

time, conceptions of 1829

What is time? Who can explain this easily and briefly?...
Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to
an inquirer, I do not know. • SAINT AUGUSTINE (354–430)

and the interplay between the practical ability to measure Finally, we may also identify a third kind of time, com-
time with clocks and the abstract concept of time itself mon to many indigenous peoples including those of Aus-
will be a central theme. tralia, North America, and the Arctic. These cultures are
often seen as timeless, sometimes on simplistic linguistic
Cultural Understandings grounds.Yet their time may be strictly more intricate than
of Time clock time, incorporating a detailed understanding of nat-
There are as many conceptions of time as there have been ural cycles but adding social, spatial, spiritual, and even
human cultures, but it is common to identify two kinds eternal dimensions.
of time. First, there is linear time, a steady progression
from the distant past to the far future. For some, this view The Value of Time
is based on Christianity, in which time has a both a Early agrarian and seafaring communities were based on
beginning at Creation and an end at Christ’s second com- a daily and yearly round of chores governed by the land
ing; for others, it is based on science, assuming a steady or the sea.There was little need for external or absolute
evolution both of knowledge and of life itself. Second, time, only for a knowledge of the appropriate succession
there is cyclical time, where the recurring motions of a of tasks and of the cues to match this sequence to natu-
clock or the stars do not merely mark off constant inter- ral rhythms: sowing and harvesting or the ebb and flow
vals, but indicate a repetition of human experience and of the tides.The duration of an interval was likewise reck-
history. A division between linear and cyclical is never- oned not in hours, minutes, and seconds but by com-
theless overly simplistic, just as it would be to identify the parison with common experience: for example, the time
linear with the West and the cyclical with the East.There taken for food to cook or to say a prayer, or even a “piss-
is instead a continuum of emphasis, so that for example ing while—a somewhat arbitrary measurement” (Thomp-
early Chinese writings identify both ji, the linear succes- son 1991, 356).
sion from ancestors to descendants, and li, repetitive It is often assumed that public time consciousness
cycles of death and rebirth in the natural world. began with the medieval “hours” of European monastic
Both linear and cyclical time can be seen in any cal- communities. This daily cycle of liturgical offices was
endar, which reveals not merely the calculations by which announced by the ringing of bells, and may have been an
a society numbers days and years but also something of important influence in the development of the mechani-
how that society understands time itself. For example, the cal clock. But hours originated with the Egyptians, who
development of the Gregorian calendar is a fascinating first divided night and day into twelve parts each. The
thread through history, in which priorities, arguments, monks only inherited this convention by way of the
and human decisions are revealed in every detail: the Greeks and the Romans, both of which used sundials
names of the months, the date of Easter, and the contor- and clepsydrae (water clocks) to order their society. Even
tions needed to keep synchrony with the orbit of the the modern complaint against the tyranny of the clock is
Earth.The Mayan calendar intricately interlocks a multi- not new: “The gods confound the man who first found
tude of cycles, including the 365-day haab (the seasonal out how to distinguish hours. Confound him, too, who
year) and the 260-day tzolkin (itself composed of over- in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack my days so
lapping cycles of 13 and 20 days), and lists auspicious wretchedly into small portions!” (Titus Maccius Plautus,
and ill-fated days for a recurring round of secular and c. 254–184 BCE).
sacred tasks. Indian calendars compose an escalating There were three key factors in the escalation of time
hierarchy of scales in which a single day in the life of pressure through Western-led industrialization. The first
Brahma, the creator god, is equal to almost nine million was the development of labor as a commodity, which
human years. ascribed a new value to every hour of work for both