Dædalus coming up in Dædalus: Dædalus on secularism Nikki Keddie, Martin E. Marty, James Carroll, Henry Munson, & religion Azzam Tamimi, M. Hakan Yavuz, T. N. Madan, Akeel Bilgrami, Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Vali Nasr, John L. Esposito, Jose Casanova, Heba Raouf Ezzat, Spring 2003 Jean Bethke Elshtain, William Galston, Christopher Hitchens, and others Spring 2003: on time on science Alan Lightman, Gerald Holton, Susan Haack, David Pingree, on time D. Graham Burnett Mapping time 5 Peter Pesic, Peter Wolynes, and Robert Schimke David S. Landes Clocks & the wealth of nations 20 Michael Rosbash A biological clock 27 on learning Alison Gopnik, Howard Gardner, Jerome Bruner, Susan Carey, Thomas Gold The physics of past & future 37 Elizabeth Spelke, Patricia Churchland, Daniel Povinelli, Clark Peter L. Galison & Glymour, and Michael Tomasello D. Graham Burnett Einstein, Poincaré & modernity 41 Jennifer M. Groh & on happiness Martin E. P. Seligman, Richard A. Easterlin, Martha C. Nussbaum, Michael S. Gazzaniga How the brain keeps time 56 Anna Wierzbicka, Bernard Reginster, Robert H. Frank, Julia E. Danielle S. Allen How the Greeks kept time 62 Annas, Darrin M. McMahon, and Ed Diener Anthony Grafton Dating history 74 J. Hillis Miller Time in literature 86 on progress Joseph Stiglitz, John Gray, Charles Larmore, Randall Kennedy, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Jagdish Bhagwati, Richard A. Shweder, and Mary Douglas, Michael Thompson Is time running out? others & Marco Verweij The case of global warming 98 Richard Fenn Time’s up: the apocalyptic imagination 108 on human nature Steven Pinker, Bernard Williams, Lorraine Daston, Jerome Kagan, Vernon Smith, Joyce Appleby, Patrick Bateson, Thomas Sowell, poetry Susan Howe from Bed Hangings ii 113 Jonathan Haidt, Richard Wrangham, Donald Brown, and others ½ction Rick Moody Fish Story 118 plus poetry by Lucie Brock-Broido, Les Murray &c.; ½ction by Lee K. Abbott, Joanna Scott &c.; and notes by Nathan Glazer, Robert notes Bernard McGinn on mysticism & art 131 C. Post, Michael Traynor, Jennifer Hochschild, Perez Zagorin, Yi-Fu Tuan on human geography 134 Gerald Early, Daniel Schorr &c. U.S. $13/Canada $16 www.amacad.org D. Graham Burnett Mapping time: chronometry on top of theworld i\t dawn on the 9th of June, 1873, the had more than comfort on his mind: the ocean sturdy Victorian naturalist C. Wy belly of Bermuda, he believed, secreted a rare - a an ville Thomson swung his elegantly device kind of earth clock, bearded person down from the deck of hourglass for planetary time. the British research vessel Challenger, For it happened that more than fifty berthed in the Bermuda dockyards, and years earlier, the commanding officer of made his way aboard a diminutive steam the North American and West Indian a on sev pinnace for day trip the island. After station, Sir David Milne, had spent churning around toMount Langton to eral days inWalsingham indulging his sever pick up the governor, the shore party of petrological curiosity by carefully a an collectors and dignitaries (with 'native ing eleven-foot stalagmite from its as a on cave fisherman' in tow guide and photog moorings the floor, and arrang rapher along in the service of posterity) ing for it to be returned to the British - made for Harrington Sound, rowed Isles yet another strange fruit plucked en ashore, and hiked up to the Walsingham from the colonial periphery to be an Caves for afternoon of learned spe joyed in metropolitan institutions of lunking in the deep and winding lime philosophical cultivation. This calcare stone caverns. The cool reaches of this ous obelisk had thus found its way to a geological attraction would provide wel new, cool, dark cave across the Atlantic come - respite from the midday tropical the Museum of the University of Edin sun, to be sure, but Wyville Thomson burgh, where Thomson (the Regius Pro fessor of Natural History) would later ponder its bulk and consider the manner D. Graham Burnett is an assistant prof essor of and pace of its formation. Between 1819 ur history in theProgram inHistory of Science at and 1873 such ponderings had grown Princeton University. He writes on geography and gent, since the age of the earth had burst natural with an on the connec into one of the most contested history, emphasis questions tions between science and imperialism. He is the in science. Genesis, evolution, Darwin, even in author of aMasters of All They Surveyed" thermodynamics lay the balance. (2000) and "ATrial By Jury" (2001), and a co So it is perhaps less strange to learn that - editor of uTheHistory of Cartography" (19S7 ). in 1863, four years after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, the Wals Caves saw the visit of another ? 2003 by D. Graham Burnett ingham D dalus Spring 2003 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.228 on Wed, 21 Nov 2012 18:15:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions D. Graham a con pith-helmeted colonial administrator, permanent record of the present Sir Alexander Milne, dition of the of the 0^rnett who, acceding nep stump stalagmite, we time otistically to his father's post in the West and twice tried to photograph it," but a Indies, made pilgrimage to his stump the conditions foiled the photographer, as well, the better to follow in his foot and spoiled his exposures. steps, and to report on the passage of Thomson, however, would not be de time. There, on his elbows and knees, nied : "It then occurred to us that it pocket watch in hand, Milne junior might be possible to take another slice timed the soft splats falling from the from the column, showing the amount cave on a as an ceiling of the and landing five of reparation during half century, separate points where the stalagmite had accessory and complement to the Edin once been. One drip fell at the rate of burgh specimen." Hammers and chisels five drops a minute, he reported, another again went to work inWalsingham, with between three and four, the rest slower the aim of producing yet another crate new still. He identified two knoblets that for the Edinburgh Museum ;another come over had into being the interven crate, containing yet another piece in the a ing forty-four years, along with little jigsaw puzzle of time.1 - mineral slick to one side a total of five cubic inches of matter. Itwas Alexander com JLhere is something strangely Milne's brother back in David, Scotland, pelling, I think, about this crate. Grant who did the and decided that at none math, ed, itwould solve of the pressing this rate their father's three-and-a-half chronoscientific questions of the day. It ton like six prize represented something would not help sort out if Lord Kelvin's hundred thousand years of subterranean much reduced timescale for the forma accumulation. tion of the earth (grounded in his phy To this same came was site, then, Wyville sics of cooling bodies) right, and it Thomson and his the de party following would not settle heated disputes among and also drew their watches in cade, they geologists and paleontologists about the the lantern "The two were cave light: drops dating of remains. In fact, it is not still Thomson "but even falling," reported, clear (to me, anyway) that this more one apparently somewhat slowly, crate ever made its way to the museum not three times in a the quite minute, in Edinburgh ; itmay have, but itmay other twice." The three other con on drips also have wound up forgotten the tinued to feed their little slick deposit, docks in Bermuda, or in the office of the the "could not determine though party superintendent of the shipyard, Captain that the bulk of the new accumulation Aplin, who arranged for the stonecutting was was perceptibly greater than when it tools and the men to wield them. measured Sir Alexander Milne." If by But this slice of lost stalagmite merits this was ever to be of a geochronometer moment's thought nevertheless. For what Thomson needed was a real use, here was specimen chosen for what it some more definite record of the current might tell about the timeline of the plan form and of the Out magnitude lumps. et's history, the sequential ages of geo came the was photographer's equipment, logical time ;chosen because it the and the blue-white brilliance of burning made the i can magnesium Walsingham The story of the Walsingham stalagmite Caves, than a Bermuda be found in C. Thomson, the briefly, brighter ' Wyville Voyage of : noon. But Thomson "We 'Challenger, Volume I: The Atlantic (London despaired: - were very anxious to carry away with us Macmillan and Co., 1877), 322 328. 6 D dalus Spring 2003 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.228 on Wed, 21 Nov 2012 18:15:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions frozen stuff of a chthonic water clock strains to every social form ? Mapping trample time a a dripping in smooth quartz bowl of And what to make, then, of physicist middle earth. And yet, this small artifact like Thomas Gold, who reminds us that of the relentless passage of timeline time without the particular configurations of was something quite different too, since, astrophysics, it is not clear that time to a a keystone-like, it served close set of would exist at all? Or of biologist like looping arches that spanned space and Michael Rosbash, who points out that if : our time falling into place, it promised to several of deep biochemical path were close the gaps between geological time ways slightly different, it is not and human time, between 1819 and 1873, clear we would miss it? between Milne p?re and Milne fils, be Do these pieces fit? The reader must tween now turn and then, Edinburgh and them in the mind to find reflecting Bermuda, here and there, metropolis facets, to hold them together, to measure and colony.