The Ordering of Time: From the Ancient Computus to the Modern Computer

Borst, Arno

ISBN 10: 0226066592 / ISBN 13: 9780226066592

Published by University of Chicago Press, 1994

About this Item

From former professor's library with owner's name on flyleaf. Shows wear, but spine is tight. Some foxing on edges.

Seller Inventory # JTR-21-0125-6

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Ordering of Time: From the Ancient Computus to the Modern Computer
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226066592
• ISBN 13: 9780226066592
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Very Good
• Weight: 9 ounces
• Seller catalogs:
  • Philosophy

About this title

Synopsis

This book is a concise history of the use and interpretation of time, written by one of the foremost medievalists in Europe today.

Arno Borst examines the various ways that time has been calculated by numbers and measured by instruments over several centuries, from the computus—an ancient method of determining times and dates—to the present-day computer. In a wide-ranging discussion, he analyzes the classical Greek concepts of divine, natural, and human time; the universal time of ancient Rome; the Easter cycle of the Middle Ages; the development of the mechanical clock in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; early modern chronology; and twentieth-century data processing.

Borst argues that although many centuries and countless different instruments—sundials, horologia, abaci, astrolabes, calendars, and calculating machines—separate the medieval computus from the modern computer, each generation has had to answer the same question: how can we make the best use of our available time to improve our lives? The computer, he suggests, is merely a new instrument employed for an ancient purpose.

Lively and accessible, The Ordering of Time will be welcomed by students and researchers in social and cultural history, the history of science and mathematics, as well as anyone interested in the history of time and numbers.

About the Author

Arno Borst is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Konstanz in Germany. Borst's previous books include Medieval Worlds (Polity, 1992).