Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle

Book cover of Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time

Book description

Rarely has a scholar attained such popular acclaim merely by doing what he does best and enjoys most. But such is Stephen Jay Gould's command of paleontology and evolutionary theory, and his gift for brilliant explication, that he has brought dust and dead bones to life, and developed an immense…

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Geological time

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Why read it?

1 author picked Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Rannfrid Thelle

Author

This fascinating book by the evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould taught me so much about what good non-fiction writing looks like.

Although it is strictly a science book, Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle is history, philosophy, and storytelling at its best. It illustrates how complex metaphors work in our conceptualization about the past, time as following a repeating cycle and time as linear, forward moving.

Using the concepts of arrow and cycle, Gould explores the discovery of “deep time” a few hundred years ago. The almost unfathomable age of the earth and the universe was a shock and had monumental consequences…

From Rannfrid's list on history about how we know the past.