Fig.1 Arthur’s Stone (Herefordshire), constructed c. 3,000 BCE Photo © Tony Belton 2016

MONTHLY BLOG 178, THINKING THROUGH TIME AT ARTHUR’S STONE IN HEREFORDSHIRE

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Fig.1 Arthur’s Stone (Herefordshire), constructed c. 3,000 BCE Photo © Tony Belton 2016

Fig.1 Arthur’s Stone (Herefordshire),
constructed c. 3,000 BCE
Photo © Tony Belton 2016

Great rings of giant standing stones, dating from primeval times – such as England’s Stonehenge and Brittany’s Carnac Stones – are wonderful prompts to sweeping thoughts about the length of Time and History.1  Yet small ancient monuments can be just as striking in their own way. On a very pleasant visit to Herefordshire in summer 2016, my partner and I decided, on the spur of the moment, to follow a signpost to view a historic burial tomb, named Arthur’s Stone. It proved to be wonderfully thought-provoking.

Arthur’s Stone (today guarded by English Heritage)2  is set high on a ridge between the Wye and Golden Valleys. The site is magnificent. The Stone burial chamber, which was constructed in c. 3,000 BCE, is somewhat dilapidated but that through-Time quality adds to its authenticity. Its impact is dignified without being grandiose. Interested visitors attend in small numbers rather than in great crowds. Yet the simplicity and venerability of the monument, and the tranquillity of its location, together give the Stone great resonance.

In the first place, it is evidence of serious intent on the part of those who placed the Stone high on the ridge. It may have been installed as an astronomical observation point – a function which is claimed (and debated) in the case of many ancient stone monuments. Certainly, none of these sites were constructed out of the blue. They indicate the existence of societies capable of planning, organising and implementing big communal projects. And they were ingenious makers and users of flint tools. Hence it’s not surprising that in the vicinity of Arthur’s Stone, there’s evidence of prior human labour in the form of numerous even older flint flakes and arrow-heads.

Whether this particular monument was built as a tomb, or instead as some form of storage chamber, is unknown. There are other similar monuments in the region, which are known as the ‘Severn-Cotswold’ group of chambered tombs. And there would have been regular communication links between these sites. Thus, while research has yet to reveal the precise functions of all these carefully-positioned great stones, it is clear that they had a significant role for those who manoeuvred them into their special sites. From the start, they had meaning.

A further intriguing train of thought is prompted by the attempts of later generations to ‘domesticate’ these historical markers by associating them with famous personages.3  So at some stage, long before the thirteenth century CE, this monument, like many other historic stones and relics, became associated in popular legend with the feats of King Arthur. Stories abounded. One reported that he had won a battle there. Another story recounted that he’d met a giant there and triumphantly slain him. Either way, Arthur’s Stone was being given a place in the epic history of the legendary British king. And the name has stuck.

Thereafter, the site has seen some real documented drama as well. In the fifteenth century, a knight was killed there in a fatal duel. And in September 1645 the embattled King Charles I dined at the Stone with his Royalist troops. Perhaps he intended the occasion as a symbolic gesture, although it did not confer upon him sufficient pseudo-Arthurian lustre to defeat Cromwell and the Roundheads. Charles I’s fleeting visit thus did not enter local folklore.

Then at some stage (the precise date is unknown), the site became a focal point for locally popular festivities at midsummer. Villagers in the nearby settlements of Dorstone and Bredwardine gathered in the sloping field in front of Arthur’s Stone, where they engaged in uninhibited drinking, dancing and ‘high jinks’  – away from the inquisitorial eye of the local clergy and magistrates. It was obviously fun, because the popular tradition continued well into Victorian times.

As a sober counter-balance, too, the local Baptists began in the nineteenth century to organise an ecumenical religious service there in high summer. Implicitly, they were saluting the Stone’s sacral reputation, whilst simultaneously purging its more recent pagan associations.

On my own visit there, I met by complete chance a charming senior citizen who lived locally.4   She told me of her personal memories, as a child before World War II, when she joined her school-fellows to sing hymns at the services held there each midsummer. It was a stirring occasion for them all.

The special nature of the place was (and is) undoubted. Throughout its five thousand years of existence, Arthur’s Stone has had multiple meanings and uses for the witnessing generations who both live nearby and visit from afar. Its story is protean. Whether the site is used for astronomy, royal burial, knightly duelling, open-air royal dining, unorthodox popular festivities, community religious services, or (today) for tourist visiting, Arthur’s Stone cannot be locked away into a wrongly named ‘pre-history’.

It does not spring from a long-gone era whose name implies that it pre-dates ‘real’ History.5  On the contrary. Arthur’s Stone has always been fully within History, which continues to unfold steadily, as long as Time itself does likewise. The great cosmic story is one that welds together both deep continuities and recurrent change. Local monuments do the same. In other words, Arthur’s Stone silently signals Time’s diachronic power to persist and to update simultaneously. And long may it continue to do so!

ENDNOTES:

1 For more on Time & History, see P.J. Corfield, Time-Space: We Are All in it Together (London, 2025).

2 See https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/arthurs-stone.

3 For further information, see also A. Watkins, ‘Arthur’s Stone’, Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club (1928), pp. 149-51; L.V. Grinsell, Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain (1976); and J. Sant, Stone Spotting in Herefordshire (2000);

4 With reiterated thanks and warm appreciation to Ionwen E. Williams (née Davies).

5 For a further critique of the concept of ‘Prehistory’, see PJC, ‘Primevalism: Saluting a Renamed Prehistory’, in A. Baysal, E.L. Baysal and S. Souvatzi (eds), Problematising Time and History in Pre-History (2019), pp. 265-82.

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MONTHLY BLOG 177, SONGS ABOUT TIME

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Representation of Hickory-Dickory-Dock
@Studycat 2025

While there are very few good jokes about Great Time, there are songs a-plenty.1 Songs unfold in Time. They mark Time. They muse over its characteristics. My favourite is ‘Time, Time, Time is on my side/ Yes it is!’ as sung by Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. It’s very cheering and reassuring, especially when the hours and minutes seem to be rushing by with headlong speed. Where has my life gone? But I shouldn’t worry. After all, Time is on my side … and I’m trying to enjoy every moment.

But, just as a reminder that songs may have multiple messages, there are always pessimistic versions. A twentieth-century song explains that Time is against Me. And in the seventeenth-century, Andrew Marvell expressed the same point rather more majestically: ‘And at my back, I always hear,/ Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near …’ Those words come from his poem To his Coy Mistress,2 urging her not to waste her time – or his – but to yield to his amorous advances. Who would not succumb, when so eloquently wooed?

Temporal themes in songs range across the entire gamut of human emotions. There is affectionate nostalgia. So Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle (1972) mused: ‘If I could save time in a bottle/ The first thing that I’d like to do/ Is to save every day/ Til eternity passes away/ Just to spend them with you’. There’s also jolly celebration, as in Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes’ I’ve had the Time of My Life (1987): ‘Now I’ve had the time of my life/ No, I never felt like this before/ Yes, I swear it’s the truth/ And I owe it all to you’.

And then there’s happy anticipation, as fervently caught in the pulsing rhythms of Buddy Holly’s Everyday (1957):

Every day, it’s a-gettin’ closer
Goin’ faster than a roller coaster
Love like yours
Will surely come my way.

Time and love – or lack of the same – are absolutely standard themes. Yet, at the same time, there’s also impersonal temporality, that marches on, regardless of human wishes or desires. So The Times They Are A-changin, warns a classic by Bob Dylan (1964). Humans all become in time nothing but Dust in the Wind, agrees Kansas (1977), evoking the sonorous words from Ecclesiastes, 3:20 in The Bible: ‘All are from the dust; and to dust all return’.

Furthermore, numerous songs incorporate the relentlessness of time, with the key words: ‘The clock keeps ticking’. So Dale Marsh (2005) reflects that: ‘This old Earth keeps spinnin’;/ Another day has begun;/ The seasons keep on changin’;/ One more circle round the sun;/ And life goes on’/ And the clock keeps tickin’.

All of which cornucopia of music is underpinned by songs learned in childhood, which are devised to help youngsters learn to ‘tell’ the time. ‘Tick, tock, tick, tock, merrily sings the clock’, runs one, soothingly. Another called The Clock explains helpfully that ‘There’s a neat little clock/ In the schoolroom its stands/ And it points to the time,/ With its two little hands’.  .

Above all, too, there’s the much-loved classic Hickory-Dickory-Dock (first recorded in print, 1744). It reports solemnly that: ‘The mouse ran up the clock;/ The clock struck one;/ The mouse ran down’. And then it proceeds, verse by verse, with many variant wordings, through all the remaining hours on the dial, from two to twelve. It provides a very cheery way for kids to lean not just to count consecutively but also to appreciate that the clock operates with a twelve-hour sequence, as humans measure out time in hours and minutes, counted rhythmically: Tick, tock!

By the way, how children today will learn to tell the time from looking at digital timepieces is a new challenge. But it’s highly likely that traditionally entertaining and instructive songs like ‘Hickory-Dickory-Dock’ will survive in the repertoire.

One last thought: very few of these songs, whether aimed at adults or at kids, venture into the philosophy of time. The group Chicago in 1969 once sang to pose the question (written for them by Robert Lamm): Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is? The song then enquired: ‘Does anyone really care?’ before adding, accurately enough: ‘We’ve all got time enough to die.’ It therefore concluded, with some bravado: ‘I don’t care (about time), Oh no, no’. But that response evaded the big question – actually: ‘What is Time?’

Well, not many philosophers or scientists can answer that succinctly,3 let alone song-lyricists. But the versatile entertainer Billy Porter does offer one haunting song under that title (1997). And it ends with a positive appeal for us all to share joy and love: ‘For all we know/ All we have/ Is time’. Tick tock! Where’s that mouse?

ENDNOTES:

1 For further song references, see P.J. Corfield, Time-Space: We Are All in it Together (London, 2025), p. 245 – Index ‘Songs about Time’.

2 See A. Marvell (1621-78), The Complete Poems, ed. E.S. Donno (1972).

3 For introductions to a complex theme, see G.J. Whitrow, What is Time? (1972); and T. Wyller, What is Time? An Enquiry (2020).

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MONTHLY BLOG 176, CAN WE FIND A GREAT STATUE TO A FEMALE GOD OF TIME?

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Fig.176.1
British Museum statue of Kali,
Hindu goddess of Time & Destruction:
see https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/feminine-power-welcoming-new-goddess-kali-icon
(viewed 28/7/25)

Thinking about Time is as endless and as fascinating a process as is unfolding Time itself.1 And it is a real challenge to depict such a universal cosmic power, Often Temporality is depicted in male form, as in the case of Old Father Time.2 He can be kindly or menacing or both. And he appears on countless weather-vanes, heralding either good weather or bad. Yet it would be good also to have some female input into images of majestic Temporality. So let’s see if we can find a statue to female god of Time.

It turns out that there are various goddesses in a variety of globally different cultures, who are associated with aspects of Time.  Much the most famous and the most dreaded is Kali (also Kalika) in traditional Hinduism.3 She is associated with Time and also with Death and Destruction. She is a dominant force. Hence statues to this deity often portray her with one foot majestically placed upon a prone figure who lies inertly before her. He represents the supreme god, Lord Shiva – and, according to some variants of the story, Kali kills him in her destructive fury – but then realises what she has done and breathes life back into him again. And she calms down, halting her frenzy.

Kali is usually presented as young, lithe, active, full of energy. She has four (sometimes more) arms. Her great power can be benign; and in some versions of Hinduism Kali is worshipped as the Divine Mother. Yet at the same time, her energy and fire can destroy. If enraged or opposed, Kali has no inhibitions about unleashing her powers. Yet the implication is that she is targeting evil forces, rather than simply destroying things for the sake of destruction. Kali is therefore not an evil figure in herself, though she can be a vengeful and terrifying one.

There are very many variants to the forms of Kali-worship, some stressing her benevolent powers, others stressing her darker side. That is shown in the second image shown here (see Fig. 176.2). Kali is still distinctly female, lither and active. But she also carries a scythe; is adorned with skulls; holds in one hand a severed head; and protrudes her tongue, in reference to the legendary account of how she defeated a malevolent male demon. His nefarious powers were such that he raised a fresh crop of demons every time his blood dropped onto the ground. Kali counter-attacked by herself lapping up every drop of his spilt blood. It was a clever but also frightening manoeuvre, signalling her unstinting resolve allied with ultimate power.

Fig. 176.2 Cast bronze statue of the Goddess Kali, the Destroyer of Evil Forces & Divine Protector –
Made by the Veronese Design Company (2019):
see https://veronesedesigns.com/.

Well, all thoroughly fascinating and thought-provoking. But is the dynamic power of Kali quite the same as the cosmic universality of Time? Of course, it can be claimed, quite truthfully that Time both creates and destroys. Yet Time unfolds daily, whilst always remaining the same. It thus constitutes not only each and every fleeting moment but, simultaneously, the very long term, verging on eternity.

All that is supremely hard to express visually. It’s too huge, too complicated, too strange, too …. unique! So, just as there are very few good jokes about Time,4 so there are very few successful statuesque images – whether male or female. Indeed, why should a statue of Time have any specific gender identity? Time is male, female, and, equally, sexless.

So my final answer, when people ask if they can see Time for themselves, is to say that we all can – and very easily too. Just look at the cosmos – whether close at hand, or in the far distant galaxies. All of these are the handiwork of Time, which is linked integrally with Time-Space. All humans too, down to the last wrinkle and grey hairs … After all (to repeat my own summary statement) Time is the dynamo; Space (and all within it) its physical manifestation.

ENDNOTES:

1 For further thoughts on the nature of Time, see P.J. Corfield, Time-Space: We Are All in it Together (London, 2025), esp. pp. 93-162.

2 BLOG/175 (July 2025) in PJC 2025 Time-series: www.penelopejcorfield.com/monthly-blogs/175.

3 See variously S. Harshananda, Hindu Gods and Goddesses (1981); A. Mookeriee, Kali: The Feminine Force (1988); F.W. Bunce (ed.), A Dictionary of Buddhist and Hindu Iconography (1997); and S. Mohanty, The Book of Kali (2009).

4 BLOG/171 (March 2025) in PJC 2025 Time-series:www.penelopejcorfield.com/monthly-blogs/171.

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MONTHLY BLOG 175, TIME IN ART: IS THERE ANY ALTERNATIVE TO ‘OLD FATHER TIME’?

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Fig.171.1 ‘Old Father Time’
weathercock

‘Old Father Time’ appears on many weathercocks, as in Fig.1. He is venerable, stooped, and bearded. He carries an hour-glass to track the minutes in its trickling sands, as he walks the long, long, endless line of Time. He also shoulders a scythe, because eventually he brings death to all living creatures.

Sometimes, at midnight festivities on New Year’s Eve, a variant symbolism is used. A venerable old man leaves the room, and a tiny baby is handed in. The change-over symbolises the end of one twelve-month span – and the start of the next. But ‘New Baby Time’ has not won any great cultural resonance, because its youth – like Time itself – is fleeting. Some images of this change-over show the old man as glum, because he is departing (theoretically) for good, whilst the baby is shown as chortling gleefully. But Time, of course, is steadily ageing the baby, day by day. And a year later, the baby will be replaced by a newer, younger model at the following New Year’s Eve.

Generally, the required look for all forms of venerable temporality is stern, if not outright morose. By the way, the former Wychwood Brewery in Witney (Oxfordshire) used to brew a beer named ‘Old Father Time’. Its bottle displayed the head/shoulders of a bushy-bearded elderly man, looking piercingly intent and cradling close to him a young child.2 He is not quite smiling. But he looks benign enough (and I hope that the beer was great).

After all, there is no reason why ‘Old Father Time’ should not smile occasionally, as he trudges through the millennia of cosmic existence. A not-quite-identical figure appeared in classical Chinese cosmology. He represented not Time itself but the power of survival through time. He was the god Shou-lao, whose name means ‘Old Longevity’.

As Fig 2 shows, he is seen as a rubicund and imposing male figure.3 He has a high-domed forehead; he is dressed in flowing robes; he smiles cheerily; and he holds in one hand a peach, which symbolises Long Life (or even, according to some translations, Immortality) and, in the other, a gourd containing the so-called Elixir of Life. Interestingly, Shou-lao was/is not a god who was worshipped in temples. He was/is a household divinity – and, not surprisingly, a popular one.

175.2 Chinese god Shou-lao ‘Old Longevity’,
in eighteenth-century figurinefrom the Qing dynasty
© Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, 2025

Classical Greek mythology also had an eminent and antique male embodiment of Time. He was Chronos. He appears as tall, winged, imposing, sombre – and sometimes but not invariably carrying a scythe. But there was a youthful option as well. He was Kairos, a mythical god – not just of the fleeting moment, but of the ‘right’ or critical moment.4 That refers to the key moment when someone is poised between decision and action: This is it! Let’s go for it! So this god is depicted with four wings, two at his heels as well as on his shoulders. And he carries a pair of scales as he balances the pros and cons of a given course of action. Kairos is physically poised and ready! And his message: Strike while the iron is hot! Don’t miss your moment!

175.3 Image of Kairos, the god of action at the right or critical moment, in classical Greek mythology:
© (2025) stone bas-relief of Kairos following model by Lysippus, second century BCE, in Turin Museum of Greco-Roman Art.

Other than that, artworks depicting Time frequently resort to images of time-pieces, such as clocks or hour-glasses. Or to images of skulls – or, sometimes, to images of clocks and skulls together,

Characteristically, however, painters prefer less abstract and more immediate subject for their artistry. And their customers and patrons also prefer images that are more cheering than perpetual reminders of death and the passing of Time. These big themes have triggered a huge mythology;5 but such themes seem to be best expressed in stories rather than in visual images.

I personally do very much enjoy the image of Kairos. And the potent reminder that there is a right (as well as a wrong) moment for action. Nonetheless, I must admit that I also yearn to see a female embodiment of Time. Not as a fighting Amazon: too bellicose. Not as a matronly Earth-Mother: too cosy and predictable. But as something much more creative and unusual and worthy of the great cosmic power of Time … Any suggestions, anyone?

ENDNOTES:

1 Another BLOG in my 2025 Time series, to mark publication of PJC, Time-Space: We Are All in it Together (Austin Macauley: London, 2025).

2 https://untappd.com/b/wychwood-brewery-old-father-time/1971408 (viewed 30 June 2025).

3 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/47916 (viewed 30 June 2025).

4 See B.M.P.T. Baert, ‘Kairos: The Right Moment or Occasion’, (2020), posted in website of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study, https://www.ias.edu/ideas/baert-kairos (viewed 30 June 2025).

5 See e.g. L.D. Deutsch, Mythologies of Time and Timelessness (2019); S. Nandakumar, Myths of Time (2022).

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MONTHLY BLOG 174, HOW DOES INCREASING KNOWLEDGE ABOUT FUTURE TIMES IMPACT UPON THE ART OF PROPHECY?1

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How does Increasing Knowledge about Future Times impact upon The Art Of Prophecy?

Copyright © Pinterest 2025

Humans learn from the past – and, sometimes, they gain immediate and urgent knowledge in the present too. But they cannot learn directly from the future that has not yet unfolded. That reality has not, however, prevented people from trying hard to look ahead. They can forecast; they can predict; they can prophecy; they can forewarn; and, yes, they can also calculate.2

The future, after all, is far from completely unknowable in broad outline. Thus, as long as the current cosmos survives, it will contain deep continuities (the basic principles of science will continue to hold) as well as gradual changes (animal species will continue their slow evolution), alongside drastic upheavals (volcanoes will erupt; earthquakes shake the ground; tsunamis sweep across seas and land; avalanches crash downhill; violent hurricanes and tornadoes spread devastation).

More specifically, too, various scientific experts can make detailed predictions. For example, astronomers predict the return into view from Planet Earth of some (though not all) interplanetary comets. Thus Halley’s Comet, which humans could last see in 1986, is predicted to become visible again in mid-2061, given that its orbit brings it relatively close to Earth approximately every 75-77 years.3 And, as for forecasting near-at-hand solar and lunar eclipses, well, astronomers can do that without even breaking sweat.

Deep-Space scientists also track the approach of asteroids. With their help, Earthlings will, hopefully, get good notice before the advent of the next big strike and can take preventive action. In that way, they can avoid the fate of the dinosaurs, when an asteroid strike 66 million years ago hit the Yucatan Peninsula – immediately annihilating many dinosaurs and then fatally devastating their habitats.4

Demographers meanwhile can calculate changes in the mean expectation of life among humans – with detailed breakdowns for people living in different regions of the globe. They also confirm that, while in healthy, well-fed societies, very many people today are living into ripe old age, there is a biological limit. A number of people been validated as living past the age of 110 years; but only one to date has survived past the age of 120. (She was Jeanne Calment of France, who died at the age of 122 years and 164 days).5 Certainly impressive. However, at the same time, demographers agree that it is unlikely that human lifespans will rise at all significantly beyond that boundary – even with the latest technological aids. We are mortals, with a distinctly finite lifespan.

Added to those examples, there are other fields where good, reliable data from the past can help people to make informed predictions about the future. In economics, analysts can make predictions about what will be the likely impact of (say) tax cuts; or tariff wars. Similarly, doctors make informed assessments of the progress of a patient’s illness. Meteorologists study past weather patterns in order to issue daily weather forecasts. Some bold scientists predict how developing technology will impact upon people’s future lives one hundred years hence.6 And so forth.

These forecasts are not always right, down to the very last detail. Sometimes, indeed – though not very often – informed predictions can turn out to be completely wrong. Yet together all these assessments and calculations mean that the future is not completely unknown territory. People can make their own judgements on these forecasts, and plan accordingly.

Prophets therefore risk getting crowded out of the field. The men and women, who gaze intently into the future to make predictions, are not projecting their thoughts onto a blank canvas. Future times are studded with scientifically predicted events. A prophet’s audience today will not gape with wonder, as an equivalent audience might have done two thousand years ago – or even more so two million years ago. Prophecy today is at a discount.

Take future sporting events. People like to know or guess who will triumph. But today there’s no need to call upon the services of a prophet or soothsayer. There are racing tipsters galore; as well as countless sporting commentators who give informed advice.

Or take passing examinations. It would be nice to know the result in advance. But it’s not hard to realise that the best way to do well is to revise seriously, rather than to run round the corner to consult a prophet. (And for those examination candidates who don’t grasp that truth, there are plenty of earnest tutors to tell them – repeatedly).

And then there’s success in matters of the heart. It can be exciting to be told by an exotic lady, gazing into a crystal ball, that you are about to be courted by a tall, dark and handsome stranger. Yet it’s also well to recall that there are many permutations to courtship. The handsome stranger might be a passionate lover … or a deceitful love-rat … or a wily financial scammer with eyes for nothing but your money. Love by all means – but keep your wits about you!

So what about the really big deal: prophecies about the end of the world … or at least the end of Planet Earth? These have by no means disappeared.7 Currently one Christian theologian predicts the end of Planet Earth in 2026, as the result of a collision with a giant asteroid. However, another theologian, this time an Islamist, declares that the end will not come before 2129.8 But these days such announcements do not command mass attention.

By contrast, there was in the early 1840s an extensive (though not universal) panic about the imminent End among sundry Christian communities in Britain and the USA. It was triggered by a prophetic warning from the American William Miller, a charismatic Baptist preacher. He used not only sermons but also posters and newsletters to announce that Christ’s Second Coming was due between March 1843 and March 1844. Nothing then happened. So Miller switched the date to 22 October 1844. Such specificity had impact. Numerous families in the USA sold up their homes and businesses, retreating to the mountains and stocking up with food to survive the coming Apocalypse.

What followed, however, was termed ‘the Great Disappointment’. Christ did not re-appear. Most followers were disillusioned. Yet a small number of true believers founded the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which is now a flourishing international community. Its members consider that, even if one specific prediction was wrong, the core prophecy remains true – meaning that it is still vital to be spiritually prepared.9

Since then, no End-of-World prophecy has had anything like that impact. As already noted, such forecasts still continue. Yet today they remain culturally niche, not mainstream. Immediately, there is the climate crisis which threatens the life of humans (and of numerous other species) on Planet Earth, rather than the survival of the entire cosmos. That should be enough to concentrate attention in the here-and-now. As for the very long term, there’s still a lot of Time to unfold. Scientists calculate that locally our sun has at least 5 billion years to continue shining.10 So if End-Time prophets don’t want to disillusion their followers, they should choose a cosmic end-date in the suitably far distant future. Meanwhile, today’s Earthlings already have a big planet-sized problem to resolve together.

ENDNOTES:

1 Another BLOG in my 2025 series, to mark publication of PJC, Time-Space: We Are All in it Together (Austin Macauley: London, 2025).

2 With thanks to Martina Cali and all the lively and thoughtful participants at the Antwerp Conference on Time on 15 November 2024, and especially to the organiser Jeroen Puttevils.

3 P. Lancaster-Brown, Halley and his Comet (1985); D.K. Yeomans, Comets: A Chronological History, of Observation, Science, Myth and Folklore (1991).

4 See variously A. Milne, Fate of the Dinosaurs: New Perspectives in Evolution and Extinction (1991); D. Preston, ‘The Day the Dinosaurs Died’, in The New Yorker (2019): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died.

5 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people (viewed 24 May 2025).

6 M. Kaku. Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 (2011).

7 See e.g. S. Browne, The Other Side and Back: A Psychic’s Guide to Our World and Beyond (1999); idem, Prophecy: What the Future Holds for You (2004); and idem, End of Days: Predictions and Prophecies about the End of the World (2008).

8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events (viewed 25 May 2025).

9 E.R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800-1930 (1978); R.L. Numbers and J.M. Butler (eds), The Disappointed: Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century (1993); and D.L. Rowe, God’s Strange Work: William Miller and the End of the World (2008).

10 G. Gamow. The Birth and Death of the Sun (1940; revised 1952).

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MONTHLY BLOG 173, IS THERE A MESSAGE TO BE LEARNED FROM THE MANY SAYINGS ABOUT TIME??

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Copyright © Shutterstock 2025

‘Time and tide wait for no man’. ‘Time flies’. ‘Lost time is never found again’. ‘Time is of the essence’. ‘Every second counts’. ‘Do not put off to tomorrow what you can do today.’ ‘You may delay, but Time will not’ …

Wait a moment! Is there some message here? Sayings about Time abound; and they are mostly designed to make everyone aware that Time is fleeting by, moment by inexorable moment. Shakespeare (who else?) had a good phrase for it. Ever-speeding temporality is characterised as ‘cormorant, devouring Time’.

No use answering with rival dicta, such as ‘Time drags’; ‘Time crawls’; ‘Time lasts for ever’. Such alternative views don’t cut the mustard in Time-conscious urbanised societies, where clocks, watches and digital time-pieces abound and where life is closely timetabled.

Over very many generations, human have worked at measuring the passage of Time – and at communicating the result to the surrounding population. Clocks chime; church-bells ring; alarms go off noisily.

Many are the wise pronouncements that also confirm the immense value of fleeting temporality. ‘Time is the most valuable resource, given to everyone’. It is simultaneously a ‘grand Instructor’; the ‘greatest innovator’; the ‘greatest physician’. No surprise that it is also ‘precious’. Moreover, it can also act as an ‘avenger’ and a ‘reaper’. It has god-like powers.

Therefore there are numerous sayings that advise people to use their time well. ‘Take Time by the forelock’, runs one ancient adage. ‘Better three hours too soon than a minute too late’ (Shakespeare again). ‘Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have – and only you can determine how it will be spent.  Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you!’ Classically, too: ‘Time is money’. Manage it wisely. Indeed, ‘until we can manage Time, we can manage nothing else’. And some quotations are pessimistic. ‘Time is what we want most but use worst!’

So can we get a grip on this elusive, powerful and at times chameleon-like cosmic phenomenon? It’s a great challenge, renewed daily. And the outcome? Well, another saying gives the best answer:‘Only Time will tell’.

ENDNOTES:
1 Another BLOG in my 2025 series, to mark publication of  PJC, Time-Space: We Are All in it Together (Austin Macauley: London, 2025).

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MONTHLY BLOG 172, CAN YOU NAME FIVE STRIKING POEMS ABOUT TIME??

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172.1 Time’s Wingèd Chariot
© Phrase-finder 2025

In contrast to the dearth of good jokes about Time, there are very many great poems on that theme.1 Here, however, I’ve chosen just five.

Firstly, Andrew Marvell’s appeal to ‘To His Coy Mistress’ (published posthumously in 1681)2 is a magnificent example of the human awareness of life in ever-fleeting Time. The poet is keenly impatient to get his lover into bed with him; but she does not share his haste. So he reproaches her, gently enough but pointedly:

‘Had we but world enough and Time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime ….’

He explains that ideally he would take much longer to woo her – and to dwell in turn on all the beauties of her body and her heart. Yet he is vividly aware of the passing of Time. Or as he puts it, magnificently:

But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity. …’

Whether trying to win a race against the clock is the best appeal to get a coy lover into bed remains uncertain. The outcome, however, makes for a great poem, which has been multiply quoted and referenced. So Marvell did win a resonant through-Time fame, even though history does not record whether this poem actually melted the heart of his coy lover.

Another mighty poet of Time is William Shakespeare.3 His sonnets refer to temporality in tones ranging from acceptance to pulsating anger. In Sonnet 16, he urges the dedicatee to ‘Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time’. Elsewhere, too, he refers to the dark power of ‘Devouring Time’ (Sonnet 19) or the harsh blows inflicted by ‘Time’s injurious hand’ (Sonnet 63) or by Time’s ‘scythe and crooked knife’ (Sonnet 100). Yet at other moments, Shakespeare stresses instead the speedy passage of ‘swift-footed Time’ (also Sonnet 19) and the unpredictability of ‘Time’s fickle glass’ (Sonnet 126). All variants being undeniably evocative.

Yet my favourite is Sonnet 116. It’s rightly famous and much quoted, because it applauds the power of Love to outlast even mighty Time. It starts briskly: ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds/ Admit impediments’. And continues with a strong affirmation: ‘Love is not love/ Which alters when it Alteration finds’. No! Real human affection will triumph against all odds:

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come.

Love alters not within his brief hours and weeks

But bears it out, even to the edge of doom’.

And, musing on tensions between the swift passing of Time and the eternity of Time, here’s my third choice. It’s the Ode to a Nightingale (1819) by John Keats.4 The poet is sadly downcast by ‘the weariness, the fever and the fret’ of daily living. He sits outside on a dark summer night, thinking of death whilst listening to the song of the nightingale:

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Nonetheless, the poet’s thoughts turn also to the eternal powers of nature and of beauty. Some things can last through Time:

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

 In ancient days by emperor and clown …

Thinking seriously about Time can thus induce thoughts of death – and antidotes to death. The fourth work cited here is not a charming poem – and not intended as such. It’s entitled Howl (1956) and that’s what it does. Alan Ginsberg5 starts bleakly: ‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked/’ … and he continues in that vein as he recalls their collective lives in Time. The poem’s long, long sentences, set as blank verse, reek of self-loathing allied to despair about his entre peer group, known as the ‘Beat Generation’.

Only occasionally does a wry humour shine through. Consider Ginsberg’s verdict on his friends’ disdain for the passing of Time. They ‘threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade’.

But Ginsberg was sure that he and his peer group were seeking something greater than a chaotic lifestyle. Hence they ‘dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between two visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together …’. Ginsberg’s personal solution was to embrace Buddhism, though not all did so.

Time’s travails can obviously lead to multiple outcomes. But it’s impossible not to be involved with Time. My fifth and last choice – ‘quick now, here, now always!’ – is The Four Quartets (1943), an amalgamation of four poems by the twentieth-century’s great mystic poet of temporality, T.S. Eliot.6 His message is often enigmatic. He loves a paradox. So one opaque comment declares the outcome to be: ‘Never and always!’ (Verse 3 Little Giddings).

Above all, therefore, Time is not divided into separate segments, Eliot argues. The past and the present are not locked away in separate compartments. They live in humanity’s through-Time consciousness. Hence he muses that:

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Consciousness reaches beyond the immediate moment. Yet, simultaneously, consciousness only operates in the here-and-now. So here is another paradox: ‘Only through Time, Time is conquered’. And living within the inexorable power of Time is painful, not restful. After all, ‘… this thing is sure/ That Time is no healer’ ….

Eliot thus expresses a dogged acceptance of the painful limitations of human existence. It’s a tough message. But people must trudge onwards. Not everyone would put the stoic message in these terms. Yet there’s no doubt that Eliot’s philosophy makes for highly evocative poetry:

Time present and Time past

Are both perhaps present in Time future,

And Time future contained in Time past.

If all Time is eternally present All Time is unredeemable.

ENDNOTES:

1 See PJC BLOG/ 171 (March 2025) for the lack of great jokes about Time. And for wider context, see PJC, Time-Space: We Are All in It Together (London, 205).

2 Andrew Marvell (1621-78)’s most famous poem, which was published posthumously in 1681, may well have been written many years earlier. in the early 1650s: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_His_Coy_Mistress (viewed 17 March 2025).

3 For William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and temporality, see F. Turner, Shakespeare and the Nature of Time: Moral and Philosophical Themes in Some Plays and Poems (Oxford, 1971).

4 For John Keats (1795-1821), who did indeed die young, see variously R. Gittings, The Keats’ Inheritance (London, 1964);  S. Coote, John Keats: A Life (London, 1995); and J.E. Walsh, Darkling, I Listen: The Last Days and Death of John Keats (New York, 1999).

5 Alan Ginsberg (1926-97), Howl, written c. 1954-5 and first published in Howl and Other Poems (1956), after which the publisher was arrested and charged with obscenity. His subsequent acquittal greatly boosted sales: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howl_(poem) (viewed 18 March 2025). For context, see too B. Miles, Ginsberg: A Biography (New York & London, 1989).

6 For T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), see variously P. Ackroyd, T,S. Eliot: A Life (1984); L. Gordon, T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life (1998); and K.P. Kramer, Redeeming Time: T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets (Lanham, Md, 2007).

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MONTHLY BLOG 171, WHY ARE THERE NO GREAT JOKES ABOUT TIME??

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Well, why are there no great jokes about Time?1 There are quite a few jokes about clocks and watches. They are not particularly funny … but they are certainly worth a gentle smile … like the following:

What kind of bugs live in clocks? Answer: Ticks!

Or how about this one: What do you say when you wear your watch on an aeroplane? Answer: Time flies!

 Or how about this comedic question: What’s the problem with eating a clock? Response: Well, it’s very time-consuming!

All the same, those jokes are really about variants of time-keeping and time-measurement.2 They may produce a smile or groan, in mock tribute to a bad joke. None, however, are designed to make people laugh and simultaneously think about the nature of temporality itself.

Time is far too huge, abstract, all-powerful and unstoppable to be amenable to local and immediate joking.

It’s a bit like trying to laugh about God. (If depicted, both the ‘Holy Father’ and ‘Old Father Time’ are characteristically shown as venerable old men, with long white beards, who are far too august, wise, and all-powerful to be easily teased). Thus there are lots of jokes (some of them offensive) about rival religious groups and practices, as well as about various spiritual leaders. But there are not so many quips about divine power in the abstract. Still, here’s one mini-story which made me smile:

An atheist scientist confronted God, saying; ‘We have figured out how to make a man’. God replied: ‘Okay – let me see you do it’. The scientist bent down and scooped up some earth. ‘Oh no’, objected God: ‘You must first make your own dirt’. 

 Asking about jokes makes one think about the purpose of comedy and making other people laugh. It’s a very human form of interaction. That is, quite a number of other mammalian species make sounds that are indicative of mirth. They do that typically in play and (in some cases) when being tickled. Furthermore, there have also been cases of orangutans in zoos, who have laughed mightily at magic tricks, performed before them by humans. Highly encouraging to magicians!3

No other species, however, use language to communicate humour, in the way that humans do. True, our humour does not always succeed. There are cultural and other variants that affect the reception of jokes and other forms of comedy. Nonetheless, humans use humour to laugh at the unexpected, to highlight the incongruous, to satirise one another, and to generate bonding through shared laughter.4

So humans laugh together. But not much about Time, or – more accurately – not much about the Time-Space continuum which frames the cosmos. It thus frames all human life and all humour too. Yet it’s just too vast and universal to be locally funny. That said, here is a final sally to raise a smile: Why did the crocodile eat the clock? Answer: To kill Time! [And did it succeed? No chance!]

ENDNOTES:

1 Expanding further upon discussions in PJC, Time-Space: We Are All in It Together (London, 2025).

2 For further examples, see J. Nasser, It’s About Time: An (Almost) Complete List of Time Jokes (2013).

3 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter_in_animals (viewed 27 Feb. 2025)

4 See variously: J. Morreall (ed.), The Philosophy of Laughter and Humour (New York, 1986); T. Garfitt and others (eds), The Anatomy of Laughter (Abingdon, 2005); R.A. Martin, The Psychology of Humour: An Integrative Approach (Cambridge, Mass., 2006); and E. Weitz, The Cambridge Introduction to Comedy (Cambridge, 2009).

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MONTHLY BLOG 170, WHY THINK ABOUT TIME-SPACE, NOT SPACE-TIME??

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Fig.1 The stunning Century Clock (built 2000) in Tianjin, NW China,
showing the giant clock, with a standard clock face,
encircled by carved signs of the Zodiac,
plus below the working machinery, and, out-stretched,
two giant arms, one holding the Sun,
the other the Moon.

Why think about Time-Space, instead of Space-Time? This BLOG, the second in my 2025 Time series, presents my answer.1

The first significant point to note is that rethinking Space-Time as Time-Space does NOT entail refuting Einstein’s theory of relativity, formulated and elaborated in the years 1905-17.2 Einstein himself did not use the term ‘Space-Time’. But in September 1908 his close intellectual ally (and former tutor), the mathematician Hermann Minkowski, highlighted the implications in justly famous terms:3

Henceforth Space by itself, and Time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.

This striking declaration did not mean that there are no absolutes anywhere throughout the great cosmos. But the real absolute reality is nothing less than the integral union of Time and Space.

Following Minkowski, this reality then became known as the Space-Time continuum. And it is commonly abbreviated as Space-Time. Furthermore, given that Space is known to have three dimensions, it has encouraged the usage that specifies Time as ‘the fourth dimension’.4

Yet … a minority of philosophers, scientists, geographers and historians are unhappy with that version of the core terminology. They fully accept the union of Time and Space. But they consider that all-encompassing, uni-directional, and unfolding Time is a much mightier phenomenon than simply one dimension of Space, such as height, width or depth. Therefore they use the alternative formulation of ‘Time-Space’ as a more accurate rendering of the partnership.5

It gives priority to Time, which is the dynamic component within the continuum. And it leaves Space fully in the integral partnership – but not as the lead phenomenon. Instead, Space, with its three dimensions, is the splendid physical manifestation of Time.

Moreover, the mighty phenomenon of Time, which embraces the entire cosmos, has its own highly complex characteristics.6 It is not in any way simply a one-dimensional adjunct of Space.

In one way, Time-Space as a concept is hard to visualise. (In another way, it is not hard at all. Just look at the world around you: that’s Time-Space in integrated action).

However, illustrating the conceptual linkages is somewhat trickier. In that context, it’s good to look again at the stunning Century Clock (2000), located in the port city of Tianjin in NW China (see Fig.1, above). It was not built specifically to show the links between Time and Space. But, imaginatively, it does. The centrepiece is the gigantic clock, marking Time. Its mechanical works, including a large swinging pendulum, are visible below. And outstretched are two huge metalwork arms – one holding the Sun, the other the Moon. Thus Time appears as the dynamo, while its power in action holds together the unsleepingly ‘restless universe’.7

And, for those who like to think poetically, here are the evocative words of the seventeenth-century Welsh metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan:8

I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv’n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world
And all her train were hurl’d.

Beautiful! With more to follow in next month’s BLOG, on why all this matters …!

ENDNOTES:

1 For further discussion, see PJC, Time-Space: We Are All in It Together (published by Austin Macauley: London, forthcoming 21 Feb. 2025), pp. 98-102.

2 See A. Einstein (1879-1p55), Relativity: The Special and General Theory, transl. R.W. Lawson (New York, 2005). For context, see too R. Stannard, Relativity: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2008).

3 H. Minkowski (1864-1909), Address on ‘Space and Time’, given to 80th Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Physicians (21Sept. 1908), cited in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Minkowski (viewed 1 Feb. 2025)

4 There are numerous literary and cultural references to Time as the ‘fourth dimension’, such as N. Calder, Timescale: An Atlas of the Fourth Dimension (New York, 1983); R. Rucker, The Fourth Dimension: Towards a Geometry of Higher Reality (1st pub. 1984; republished with this title, Garden City, NY, 2014); and D. Roy, The Fourth Dimension: Enigma of Time (Irvine, Calif., 2021).

5 See e.g. N. Thrift and J. May (eds), Timespace: Geographies of Temporality (London 2001); T.R.. Schatzki, The Timespace of Human Activity: On Performance, Society and History as Indeterminate Teleology (Lanham, MD, 2010).

6 For more on this theme, see PJC, Time and the Shape of History (London, 2007); and summary in PJC, Time-Space, pp. 93-162.

7 M. Born, The Restless Universe (Glasgow & London, 1936); also N. Henbest and H. Couper, The Restless Universe (Frome & London, 1982).

8 H. Vaughan (1621-95), The World (1650), opening lines: in L.C. Martin (ed.), The Works of Henry Vaughan (Oxford, 1957)l and also available on-line: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45434/the-world (viewed 2 Feb. 2025).

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MONTHLY BLOG 169, GREAT CLOCKS OF THE WORLD

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Image of Water Clock from Classical Greece

Fig.1 Image of Water Clock from Classical Greece –
in which the passing of Time is measured by a regulated flow of water.

My theme for 2025 is Time – the universal subject.1 So to kick-start the year, here are seven great clocks of the world – my personal selection out of the myriad of possible candidates.2 These are all on public display (there are countless more in museums) – and drawn from all quarters of the globe.

The first is located in the Republic of Honduras, Central America. It adorns the Cathedral of Comayagua; it is also known as the Arab clock, since it was designed by Moorish clock-smiths in c.1100; and presented, later in the seventeenth century, by the King of Spain to the city of Comayagua in New Spain (present-day Honduras); and in 1711 relocated once more onto the newly completed-Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, where it remains. It is reportedly the world’s oldest continually functioning gear-clock. Its face [Fig.2] has a beautiful simplicity, whilst its gearing retains a wondrous complexity.

The Arab Clock (built c. 1100AD in Moorish Spain)

Fig.2 The Arab Clock (built c. 1100AD in Moorish Spain),
now adorning Comayagua Cathedral in Honduras – said to be the world’s oldest continually operating gear clock.

The second one comes from North America. It was designed by Thomas Jefferson and built in 1792 for his mansion on his plantation at Monticello, Virginia.3 Known as the Great Clock, it has two faces, the exterior one is visible to the wider world, while the elegant indoor face [see Fig.3] presides over the Great Hall. The clock is powered by the regular movement of two sets of cannonball weights, which descend below the clock into the cellar. These sinking weights drive the clock’s ticking – and the striking of a large time-keeping gong on the roof. Once a week, the weights have to be rewound with a special crank key, fitting into the winding mechanisms on the interior clock face: a task requiring a strong grip – and good balance to scale a special ladder.

The Elegant Interior Face of Thomas Jefferson’s Great Clock on his Virginia estate at Monticello

Fig.3 The Elegant Interior Face of Thomas Jefferson’s Great Clock on his Virginia estate at Monticello:
the central dial shows the hours and minutes, while the small whirling dial marks the passing seconds.
Also visible are the two slots for the weekly rewinding of the cannonball weights,
whose steady and slow descent regulates the clock’s time-keeping.

Circling around the world onto the massive Eurasian continent, the third great clock is to be found in Moscow. It’s a majestic beacon, devised to be seen from afar. Accordingly, the Kremlin Clock (also known as the Kremlin Chimes) is huge, its four faces displayed on the Spasskaya Tower within Moscow’s fortified Kremlin complex [see Fig.4]. Clocks were located there in the sixteenth century; and many updatings have followed. The current Kremlin Clock was designed in 1851; repaired in 1917-18, when a giant gold-plated lead pendulum was installed; restored again in 1932, when the Clock’s hands and numerals were gilded; and majorly restored again in 1974. Historically, the Clock was associated with regular chimes, though there have been periods when the bells were silent. Currently, the bells chime before the quarters and hours are struck – and play a tune, every three hours, on the hour. Compelling!

The majestic Kremlin Clock, also known as the Kremlin Chimes, adorns the imposingly decorated Spasskaya Tower

Fig.4 The majestic Kremlin Clock, also known as the Kremlin Chimes, adorns the imposingly decorated Spasskaya Tower (first built in 1491; restored 2015)on the east wall of the Kremlin complex, overlooking Red Square in central Moscow. Not only can the Clock be seen from afar but the 23 bells in the uppermost belfry serenade the city with specified tunes every three hours.

Swooping southwards and slightly westwards after that, the fourth great timepiece has its home in Cape Town. It’s also a beacon clock, located on the waterfront. The Clock Tower was built in 1882, and used initially as the Port Captain’s Office. The Victorian-Gothic edifice had a tidal gauge on the ground floor; and it also included a reading room, where ships’ captains could gather to catch up with the latest maritime news. The Clock itself was built in Edinburgh and installed high on the Waterfront Tower [see Fig.5], which had begun to lean ominously to one side – but has recently been righted. Scintillating!

Cape Town’s  Waterfront Clock Tower was constructed in 1882

Fig.5: Cape Town’s  Waterfront Clock Tower was constructed in 1882, when its clock, built in Edinburgh,
was first installed. The Victorian- Gothic edifice (adopted as a National Monument in 1978)
was treated to a thorough restoration in the 1990s, when the outer walls were repainted in the original bright red.

The next move, to find my fifth great clock, travels significantly north-eastwards, across the Indian Ocean, to Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, northern India. There stands the utterly imposing Husainabad Tower, which is India’s tallest clock tower [see Fig.6]. It was constructed in steel and stone in 1881, to a design by the visionary architect Richard Roskell Bayne 4 – his architectural style fusing both Victorian and Mughal features. The great Clock is regulated by a gigantic pendulum; it has a sweet chime; and its clock-face, with the usual numerals and hands pointing to the hours and minutes, also has a floral outer frame, which removes any severity from the timepiece. Enchanting!
The towering splendour of the Husainabad Clock Tower at Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

Fig.6 The towering splendour of the Husainabad Clock Tower
at Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India – the superb night-time illuminations
showcasing the Tower’s eclectic architectural styling and its floral-framed Clock.

Journeying ever eastwards (and slightly northwards), the search then brings us to the sixth great clock – this time in the Chinese city of Tianjin, on the coast south-east of Beijing. This is the Century Clock (built 2000). It is situated in the centre of a traffic roundabout near to the central station. This clock also represents fusion – between standard global Time – and traditional astronomical Time. Around the clock face, are the carved representations of twelve signs of the Zodiac. At the top is set Aries, as it brings good luck according to historic Chinese convention. The sculpture is visually stunning, with two massive metal-frame arms flung akimbo – one holding the Sun, the other the Moon – with the giant clock in the middle, and a huge swinging pendulum below [see Fig.7]. Its impact is equally stunning in daylight and when floodlit at night, Wham!

The stunning Century Clock (built 2000) in Tianjin, northwest China.

Fig.7 The stunning Century Clock (built 2000) in Tianjin, northwest China,
showing the giant clock, with a standard clock face, encircled by carved signs of the Zodiac,
plus below the working machinery, and, out-stretched, two giant arms,
one holding the Sun, the other the Moon.

And finally, returning westwards, across the extended continental landmass of Eurasia, the journey ends in Berlin, Germany. My final choice is my personal favourite. It is not strictly out-of-doors. But it is located in a public space – not in a museum. It’s the Clock of Flowing Time (1982),5 standing three floors high, within the open atrium at Berlin’s Europa Center [see Fig.8]. As its name implies, it is a water clock; and its mechanisms are regulated by the circulating flow of brightly-coloured water within its spheres and tubes. There is no standard clock-face. But onlookers can learn to gauge the time according to the number of spheres filled at any given moment. The whole system operates on a twelve-hour cycle, the spheres all emptying together at noon and midnight, before the sequence resumes once more. Non-Stop, Ever-Flowing Time! Poetic!

So many ways to tell the time.

So universal the quest … More next month!

The Clock of Flowing Time in Berlin’s Europa Center

Fig.8 The Clock of Flowing Time in Berlin’s Europa Center –
hard to explain, hard to photograph effectively
but intensely evocative of the non-stop flow of Time.

ENDNOTES:

1 P.J. Corfield, Time-Space: We Are All in It Together (forthcoming February 2025).

2 C. Jagger, The Great Clocks and Watches of the World (London, 1977; and later edns).

3 For Monticello, now a UNESCO-listed World Heritage site, see S.R. Stein, The World of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello (New York, 1993); and, for sober context, L. Stanton, ‘Those Who Labor for my Happiness’: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello (Charlottesville, VA., 2012).

4 R.R. Bayne (1836-1901), who was born in Warwickshire and died in British Columbia, had a prolific building career in India, designing not only workday railway stations but also numerous monumental buildings. A significant collection of his architectural designs and plans is held by the University of Victoria (B.C.) and this material may one day provide the basis for a good biography. See A Welch and others, ‘Building for the Raj: Richard Roskell Bayne’, RACAR, 34/2 (2009). pp. 74-86: https://www.racar-racar.com/uploads/5/7/7/4/57749791/_racar_34_2_06_welchseggerdecaro.pdf.

5 The clock was constructed to a design by the French physicist and artist, Bernard Gitton (b.1935), who has created numerous artistic and ingenious water-clocks. For context, see R. Lamb, ‘How Water-Powered Clocks Work’ (c.2009-10), in 2024 website: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/sustainable/water-powered-clock2.htm.

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