Penelope J. Corfield
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300115581
- eISBN:
- 9780300137941
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300115581.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This book explores the relationship between time and history and shows how an appreciation of long-term time helps to make sense of the past. The book is devoted to a wide-ranging analysis of the way ...
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This book explores the relationship between time and history and shows how an appreciation of long-term time helps to make sense of the past. The book is devoted to a wide-ranging analysis of the way different societies have conceived and interpreted time, and it develops a theory of the threefold roles of continuity, gradual change, and revolution which together form a “braided” history. Linking the interpretative chapters are intriguing brief expositions on time travel, time cycles, time lines, and time pieces, showing the different ways in which human history has been located in time. In its global approach the book is part of the new shift toward “big history,” in which traditional period divisions are challenged in favor of looking at the entire past of the world from start to end. The approach is thematic. The result is a view of world history in which outcomes are shown to be explicable, once they happen, but not necessarily predictable before they do.Less
This book explores the relationship between time and history and shows how an appreciation of long-term time helps to make sense of the past. The book is devoted to a wide-ranging analysis of the way different societies have conceived and interpreted time, and it develops a theory of the threefold roles of continuity, gradual change, and revolution which together form a “braided” history. Linking the interpretative chapters are intriguing brief expositions on time travel, time cycles, time lines, and time pieces, showing the different ways in which human history has been located in time. In its global approach the book is part of the new shift toward “big history,” in which traditional period divisions are challenged in favor of looking at the entire past of the world from start to end. The approach is thematic. The result is a view of world history in which outcomes are shown to be explicable, once they happen, but not necessarily predictable before they do.
The Fortunes of Francis Barber
Kabbalah
No Freedom without Regulation
The Art of Peacemaking
Holy Resilience
Breaking Democracy’s Spell
The Buddha in the Machine
Robert the Bruce
The Soviet Theater
