Download Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown AudioBook Free
Within this new edition of Questioning the Millennium, best-selling author Stephen Jay Gould applies his wit and erudition to 1 of today's most pressing subjects: the significance of the millennium.
In 1950 at age eight, prompted by a concern of Life magazine marking the century's midpoint, Stephen Jay Gould started thinking about the approaching turn of the millennium. Within this beautiful inquiry into time and its own milestones, he shares his interest and insights with his readers. Refreshingly reasoned and absorbing, the book asks and answers the three major questions that define the approaching calendrical event. First, precisely what is this concept of a millennium and how has its meaning shifted? How did the name for another thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ on earth get transferred to the passing of a secular amount of one thousand years in current history? When does the new millennium really begin: January 1, 2000, or January 1, 2001? (Although seemingly trivial, the debate over this issue tells an intriguing story about the cultural history of the twentieth century.) And just why must our calendars be so complex, resulting in our seek out arbitrary regularity, including a fascination with millennia? This revised edition starts with a new and extensive preface on a key subject not treated in the initial version.
As always, Gould brings into his essays an array of compelling historical and scientific fact, including a brief overview of millennial fevers, calendrical traditions, and idiosyncrasies from around the world; the storyplot of a sixth-century monk whose errors in chronology plague us even today; and the heroism of a young autistic man who is rolling out the extraordinary ability to calculate dates deep into the past and the future.
Ranging over a wide terrain of phenomena--from the arbitrary regularities of human calendars to the unpredictability of nature, from the vagaries of pop culture to the birth of Christ--Stephen Jay Gould holds up the mirror to your millennial passions to reveal our foibles, absurdities, and uniqueness--in other words, our humanity.
