Time Archives - Penelope J Corfield

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

2 June 2025/in Monthly Blog, Time/by Penelope J. Corfield

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??

1 May 2025/in Monthly Blog, Time/by Penelope J. Corfield

‘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??

3 April 2025/in Monthly Blog, Time/by Penelope J. Corfield

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??

5 March 2025/in Monthly Blog, Time/by Penelope J. Corfield

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??

3 February 2025/in Monthly Blog, Time/by Penelope J. Corfield

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 80^th 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 (1^st 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

2 January 2025/in Monthly Blog, Time/by Penelope J. Corfield

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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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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MONTHLY BLOG 167, HICKORY DICKORY DOCK!

1 November 2024/in Monthly Blog, Time/by Penelope J. Corfield

Hickory Dickory Dock/
The Mouse Ran Up the Clock
@https://www.indiaparenting.com/hickory-dickory-dock.html (2024)

While last month’s Conference in Norwich was evoked by the genially-smiling ‘Man in the Moon’, this month another meeting in Antwerp set me chanting ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’. The words are absurdly simple. The mouse ran up the clock! The clock struck the hour! And then the mouse ran down again!

But this basic rhyme records the perennial human fascination with telling the Time; and it illustrates, specifically, how adults sought to familiarise young children with the steady rhythms of a ticking clock. (The earliest recorded version of this rhyme dates from 1744, in a great era of British clock-building).¹

And amusingly, today’s globally popular social media platform for sharing short videos (invented in China in 2016) is named … Tik Tok.²

Getting to grips with Time is the underlying theme of the Antwerp Conference to which I will be contributing. Specifically, it focuses upon the history of forecasting the future. Here there is endless scope.³ Optimists see unfolding glories. Pessimists, by contrast, forecast the inevitability of total gloom and doom. (It’s not so exciting to prophesy simply ‘More of the same’).

However, while full details of the future remain unknown, the scope is constantly being restricted by serious scientific calculations. Thus the expected lifespan of our local Sun (the focal source of all life on Planet Earth) is now put at some 5 billion years. Then it will run out of hydrogen, and turn into a ‘red giant’, getting steadily larger and cooler.⁴

Alternatively, when will the Milky Way (in which our solar system is located) collide with the Andromeda Galaxy, within the regular processes of slow cosmic transformation? No need to wait so long for some highly spectacular local excitement. This predicted collision will occur in approximately 4.5 billion years from now. Stars will be thrown into new and unpredictable orbits.⁵ Any humans still around to experience this cosmic collision will have to hold onto every seat-belt in sight.

Of course, soothsayers and prophets are not required to accept these cool, scientific calculations, either in whole or in part. They are free to predict the end of the world anytime – sooner or later. They often build their cases upon their readings of scriptural texts.⁶ And Doomsday cults not infrequently spring up around those prophets who thunder out their apocalyptic warnings with emphatic relish.⁷

The terrain for future predictions is, however, getting crowded. Secular reports of scientific explorations of Near and Deep Space now jostle with more rapturous and/or more terrifying formulations. And, while many of these predictions are projected safely far into the future, some are more immediate. Scientists today, for example, calculate that the regularly orbiting Halley’s Comet will return into view from Planet Earth in late spring/early summer 2061.⁸ Let all those of us, who currently can, wait and (literally) see …

Plenty of big themes therefore to keep the Prophecies Conference busy in Antwerp in mid-November 2024. It’s not hard to predict a lively and intellectually stimulating event. And, since the due-date is sufficiently near, the participants will be able to confirm Yes/No by late November. The clock is ticking, though currently I see no mouse in attendance …

ENDNOTES:

¹ I. and P. Opie (eds), The Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes (1997 edn.), pp. 185-6. See also for context, J. McKenna, Watch, Clock and Dial-Makers of Birmingham, 1547-1900 (1988); and Anon., A Complete History of English Clock and Watch Makers (2011).

² For a full and not uncritical account see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok (viewed 20 Oct. 2024).

³ For approaches to studying Time, see PJC, Time and the Shape of History (2007); and PJC, Time-Space: We Are All in It Together (forthcoming 2024/2025).

⁴ See P. McHurrin in https://askanearthspacescientist.asu.edu/top-question/sun-dying (viewed 20 Oct. 2024).

⁵ Consult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda%E2%80%93Milky_Way_collision (viewed 20 Oct. 2024).

⁶ See many examples in R. Abanes, End Time Visions (1998); and E. Weber, Apocalypses (1999).

⁷ R.L. Snow, Deadly Cults: The Crimes of True Believers (2003).

⁸ P. Lancaster-Brown, Halley and his Comet (1985); P. Moore and J. Mason, The Return of Halley’s Comet (1984); and, contextually, A.A. Siddiqi, Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration (2018).

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

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

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

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

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

MONTHLY BLOG 169, GREAT CLOCKS OF THE WORLD

MONTHLY BLOG 167, HICKORY DICKORY DOCK!

Penelope J. Corfield

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