The Measure of Times Past: Pre-Newtonian Chronologies and the Rhetoric of Relative Time

by Donald J. Wilcox

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In this extraordinary work, Donald J. Wilcox seeks to discover an approach to narrative and history consistent with the discontinuous, relative time of the twentieth century. He shows how our B.C./A.D. system, intimately connected to Newtonian concepts of continuous, objective, and absolute time, has affected our conception and experience of the past. He demonstrates absolute time's centrality to modern historical methodologies and the problems it has created in the selection and interpretation of facts. Inspired by contemporary fiction and Einsteinian concepts of relativity, he concludes his analysis with a comparison of our system with earlier, pre-Newtonian time schemes to create a radical new critique of historical objectivity.
  • ISBN10 0226897222
  • ISBN13 9780226897226
  • Publish Date 15 November 1989 (first published 1 September 1987)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint University of Chicago Press