Questioning The Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide To A Precisely Arbitrary Countdown (1999) - Plot & Excerpts
A brief Gould book about the millenium. In structure, similar to other compilations of his previously published articles. Gould's focus is on the millenium itself--not the psychology or sociology of our reactions to the millenium, but specfic calendrical, astronomical, and historical questions about the millenium. What are we talking about when we refer to 'the millennium'? How has the meaning of 'the millenium' evolved over time--how did the designation for a future, thousand-year reign of christ before a final battle with satan evolve to refer to the passage of a secular period of 1,000 years in current human history? When does a new millenium begin--on 00 or 01 and why is this even a question? Why, exactly, are calendars so complex anyways?The book is interesting and explained a lot of stuff that I had wondered about--for example, why the biblical name for a future, thousand-year reign of christ prior to a final battle between good and evil also came to be used to describe a period of 1,000 non-christ years and why, nevertheless, there was still some sort of apocalyptic association with the passage of this 1,000 year period despite the complete and utter absence of you know who.In general, I am a fan of Gould's writing for the non-scientist audience. At his best, he has a clear, and even light, tone that can easily negotiate through difficult and dense terrain. Usually he doesn't simply focus on the natural world itself, but puts our understanding of the natural world in a historical and cutural context. However, with this book I also noticed a couple of weaknesses with his writing that I had not noticed before. The first was that Gould sometimes takes much longer to explain things than is necessary. His default is discursive--sometimes this is excellent, for example when the digression adds layers of meaning and dimension to an explanation. Sometimes it just feels gratuitous--instead of getting to the point, he will ramble, maybe entranced by his own voice. It could also simply be an attempt to try to build a little tension or anticipation into something that can't really sustain it. In either case, this weakness may be more the outcome of little or no editing--whenever i noticed this i kept thinking, "you know a bit of judicious editing and rewriting could easily have fixed this." The other thing i noted is that, while gould often has a clear and light tone, he isn't such a funny guy. This would not be a problem at all, except there were a couple of points where i thought he was going for laughs but didn't quite make it. Again, a bit of editing and reworking could have fixed it, it could be that both of these criticisms have more to do with editorial practices than anything else.With those criticisms out of the way, I will say that I found the book to be profoundly moving and heartrending in a completely unexpected and unanticipated way. Without any spoilers (maybe everyone else saw this coming, but i didn't) , i'll just say i thought he pulled off something very difficult--the very end of the book made me go back and reread and reconsider some passages in a new light.
For what this was, which is a book interested in science and in history and in academic study and thought, it is very, very good. I've never read, though I've heard much of, Stephen Jay Gould, and I must say that I'm rather impressed. I'll admit, firstly, that the nature of the dialogue is one generally suited to academics, and one which many outside of that realm would find either hard to understand or irksome, perhaps both, but I can forgive Gould for this for how insightful the book is. Unlike many academics turned writer, Gould doesn't rely on previous knowledge at some post-graduate level to understand his point. It is academic in nature, but only in a linguistic, prose-based sense. He does not assume that his readers have degrees, and for that, I can forgive him his somewhat analytical and dry approach.I also forgive him for so casually slipping his own personality into sections of the book, which made it a bit more human, and a bit more lovely, especially the ending.At the heart of it, it was an academic approach to the study of where our obsession with the millennium (with two n's) came from and why it still persists, but it was also a truly fascinating look at human beings. At the heart of so many questions is simply human will and desire. Our desire to place importance on dates is both fascinating and disturbing. The most interesting issues raised by this book were mostly to do with human nature and our need to time and catalogue, despite the universes insistence on not really giving a damn.It helps a person to look at a the world a little more relaxed, and to realize that the millennium, and so many other dates, are merely numbers we made up, and they don't really have any significance in the grand scheme of things, which is sort of wonderful.
What do You think about Questioning The Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide To A Precisely Arbitrary Countdown (1999)?
I am torn by this book. On the one hand, I've heard tons of great things about Gould that lead me to believe I would like his stuff. Unsurprisingly, the content was great and inline with my philosophy of rational discourse. There are good historical tidbits in here and the style is light and relatively easy going for the layman.On the other hand, a lot of the writing seemed self-aggrandizing. I am in no way averse to big words, but Gould seemed to use them when more simple terms would have been more sufficient and 'flowy' within the context of a sentence. He also has a habit of inserting a LOT of parenthetical asides. While some may have been of interest, the vast majority did nothing other than slow down the reading and get in the way. I will try other Gould books in the hope that this one--bought because it was supercheap online--was not fully representative of his material. I wonder if the topic was a bit of a lark, and if the result was him dashing off this book quickly in time to beat the year 2000.
—Mike Vasich
