Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown

by Stephen Jay Gould

In Questioning the Millennium, best-selling author Stephen Jay Gould applies his wit and erudition to one of today's most pressing subjects: the significance of the millennium.
In 1950 at age eight, prompted by an issue of Life magazine marking the century's midpoint, Stephen Jay Gould started thinking about the approaching turn of the millennium. In this beautiful inquiry into time and its milestones, he shares his interest and insights with his readers. Refreshingly reasoned and absorbing, the book asks and answers the three major questions that define the approaching calendrical event. First, what exactly is this concept of a millennium and how has its meaning shifted? How did the name for a future thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ on earth get transferred to the passage of a secular period of a thousand years in current human history? When does the new millennium really begin: January 1, 2000, or January 1, 2001? (Although seemingly trivial, the debate over this issue tells an intriguing story about the cultural history of the twentieth century.) Finally, why must our calendars be so complex, leading to our search for arbitrary regularity, including a fascination with millennia?
As always, Gould brings into his essays a wide range of compelling historical and scientific fact, including a brief history of millennial fevers, calendrical traditions, and idiosyncrasies from around the world; the story of a sixth-century monk whose errors in chronology plague us even today; and the heroism of a young autistic man who has developed the extraordinary ability to calculate dates deep into the past and the future.
Ranging over a wide terrain of phenomena —from the arbitrary regularities of human calendars to the unpredictability of nature, from the vagaries of pop culture to the birth of Christ — Stephen Jay Gould holds up the mirror to our millennial passions to reveal our foibles, absurdities, and uniqueness — in other words, our humanity.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, History, Religion, Philosophy, Popular Science, Christianity

190 pages, Hardcover

First published September 16, 1997

About the author

Stephen Jay Gould was a prominent American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation. Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Most of Gould's empirical research was on land snails. Gould helped develop the theory of punctuated equilibrium, in which evolutionary stability is marked by instances of rapid change. He contributed to evolutionary developmental biology. In evolutionary theory, he opposed strict selectionism, sociobiology as applied to humans, and evolutionary psychology. He campaigned against creationism and proposed that science and religion should be considered two compatible, complementary fields, or "magisteria," whose authority does not overlap.

Many of Gould's essays were reprinted in collected volumes, such as Ever Since Darwin and The Panda's Thumb, while his popular treatises included books such as The Mismeasure of Man, Wonderful Life and Full House.
-Wikipedia

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know, it's an excellent book. I gave it three stars instead of four or five merely because I find the subject only so interesting--especially a good twevle years past 2000.

Gould, however, is a brilliant writer. Not quite as funny or sardonic as Bill Bryson but far (far) more learned.

The ending is surprisingly--breathtakingly--touching. Gould is a incisive and snarky (while lucid and instructive) and maintains a tone of bemused detachment--right up until the book's last paragraph, in which he hits the reader with a surprise when one could never imagine that a surprise in such a book is even possible. And it's touching and brought tears to my eyes.

He was a giant (if dimunitive) man among men.

[Mehmet]

"Fin de siècle" döneminde yazılmış bir kitap olarak "Binyılı Sorgulamak" aslında isminin çağrıştırdığı şekilde bir tür tarihle hesaplaşma değil.
Orjinal adıyla değerlendirildiğinde, aslında "Milenyum" algısını sorgulamak.
1990'lı yılların sonunda sürekli tartışılan bir konuydu Milenyum. Microsoft firması bu isme özel bir windows bile çıkarmıştı: "Windows Me". İşte yazar kitabında, kafalardaki bu "milenyum" algısını sorguluyor.
Bunu sorgularken, lineer tarih düşüncesinin kökenlerini, kıyamet anlayışını, başka takvimlerin mantığını, birbiriyle karşılaşmamış toplumlarda nasıl lineer düşüncenin meydana geldiğini anlatıyor.
Kitap aslında yaşanan olaylar veya tarih bağlamında değil; bir ölçüm enstrümanı olarak "zaman" kavramımızın zihinlerimizdeki karşılığı üzerinde duruyor.
"İlk on yılda kaç yıl vardı?"
"Sıfırıncı yıl sayılıyorsa, ilk yüzyılda 101 yıl mı vardı?"
Gibi bazı soruların yüzyıllarca nasıl tartışıldığını, bu tartışmaların bilimsel camiada ne gibi kırılmalara neden olduğunu da anlatıyor.
Kitapta son bölüm ise zaman algısı ve ölçümü bizden biraz daha farklı olan idiotik savanlara yani otistik dehalara değiniyor. Bu bölüm kitapta pek olmamış gibi.
Kitabın büyük deha Carl Sagan'a armağan edildiğini de eklemeden geçmeyelim.
Bugün hala lineer düşüncenin sonucu olan kitaplar yazılıyor ediliyor. Biliyorsunuz: Tarihin Sonu mu?
Yorumumu, kitaptan bir alıntıyla tamamlayım:
"İnsanlar öncelikle hikaye anlatan yaratıklardır. Dünyayı bir hikayeler kümesi olarak düzenleriz. "

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've always enjoyed Gould, his writing about the life sciences and his book about intelligence all being very accessible, so, looking for a light bedtime book, I chose this, one of his shorter works. Although taking off with late-nineties concerns about the approaching millennium, his essay explores the attractions of apocalyptic millenarianism in the West and discusses the lack of correspondence between natural phenomena (lunar, terrestrial, solar cycles) and mathematical convenience--concerns both calendrical and religious. The whole ends with a moving piece about those savants, such as Gould's own son, who are capable of extremely complex calendrical calculations.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Louis Profeta · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have heard Gould on TV this book is written just the way speaks, non-ending thoughts, fast paced, so you many times will read and re-examine many times. He's a genius instructor from Harvard.The vocabulary is basic, the ideas jam packed. One reference he made about dichotomies I will carry with me forever, it's a whole new way of thinking about our world, good scary but true and very much fun to think about.He says man is accustomed to two thinking of large issues in the form of 2's but the real world is only about one. Not a good and evil,2, but only one, good. Man created evil to serve his needs, not reality. Heaven and earth, 2 issues so man could aspire for heaven.Life and death, truly in Nature things do not die because life is a cycle not a arrow going up.We should make our lives the very best we can or we do it again as we left.
I believe what Gould says, it makes me calm because I can understand so much more truth, mysteries are gone. You get to love the truth more too.

[Mike Vasich · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lively and fun. Somewhat dated now, having been written before the turn of the new century, but still timely in that the phenomena Gould explores - of assigning significance things arbitrarily chosen by humans that have no natural root, such as the date and year of the millennium (another example could be political borders), and the fondness so many of us seem to have for melodramatic and apocalyptic predictions - will probably always be with us, though the specific manifestations change. As usual, Gould wandered through all sorts of subjects in this book. He was a wonderfully widely informed man, and his death was a true loss to our culture.

[Kaethe · Rating 4 out of 5]

ha! In your face, people who think that the arbitrary numbers we use have some kind of special meaning.

[OSCAR · Rating 1 out of 5]

Es un buen revulsivo mental y religioso que deja muy mal parado a los milenaristas, cualquiera sea la fecha que propongan para el fin. Cuestiona la teleología de la Historia al impugnar el inicio del conteo para el final y muestra que para la naturaleza no parecen servir los milenios como conjuntos de mil años para definir o constreñir sus procesos. Para colmo nos hace ver que lejos de ser algo evidente, los calendarios son meros instrumentos para guiarse en el mundo y no oráculos infalibles para ubicar nuestra existencia en el Universo.

Esta crítica a un concepto caro en el cristianismo empero, me pareció algo insípida. A pesar de la ironía de varios de sus pasajes, el estado desenfadado de Jay Gould en este ensayo deja desconcertado al creyente e insatisfecho al racionalista. A mi parecer el título prometía más; considero que no es el libro idóneo para conocer el pensamiento y miras de su autor.

[Mark Reynolds · Rating 3 out of 5]

He describes much of the social history involved with when centuries and millennia start (at least A.D.), but that didn't interest me much. The third part of his book discussed the tricky calendrical reasons for all the confusion (mainly the facts that the length of the day, month, and year are not evenly divisible by each other). However, I didn't learn many new facts about these rhythms, and I was not impressed with his delivery or storytelling. Much of the time, it seemed to me, he was just being erudite for the sake of being erudite. He used big words just to use big words, not because he really needed to. I'll probably try another of his books, but if he writes in as needlessly complicated way as this book, I'll have to pass.

[Remo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Comenzando con el (por entonces muy manido) tema de si el s.XXI empezó en 2000 o en 2001 (problema reducido: ¿en qué año empezó la segunda década de nuestra era? ¿En el año 10 o en el año 11? Este se puede resolver contando con los dedos), el autor, que se complica un poco la vida, recorre la historia de los calendarios y de unos cuantos profetas que vez tras vez pronosticaron que hoy usted o estaría leyendo esto, estimado lector.
El libro no es obviamente lo mejor de SJG, que tiene obras maestras de la divulgación, pero se deja leer.

[Anson Cassel Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

The common theme of the four informal, and often witty, essays that compose this slender book is calendrics. Although Gould believes his own intelligence is simply the product of random congeries of neurons and that history is a “senseless jumble of events without meaning or guidance”(31), his humanity has a tendency to overwhelm his humanism. One can almost see him wink: “Nothing I’ve written here has any importance in the grand scheme of things—because there is no grand scheme of things. But isn’t it fun anyway?”

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clearly read this too late. It was written with timeliness for the millennium.

It essentially sets out three slightly related topics:

(1) the millennium panic and the origin and history of such panics;
(2) whether the new millennium starts in 2000 or 2001; and
(3) the faults with various calendars and the skill of day-date calculation

Entertaining, but far too long at 179 pages for the content covered

[Lora Shouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

At least it was short. Pretty interesting too. This was more of a philosophical essay than anything else, with overtones of history, especially church history, and some science and mathematics. The author discusses things like why do we even have the millennium concept, how we measure time, the inconvenient mismatches between man-made systems of keeping time and the various time cycles of the sun, moon, and earth, and some of the methods of trying to adjust for these differences.

[Sarah Frick · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few interesting passages, but could have been organized better and have the many, very irrelevant tangents edited out.

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Short and to the point, but not easy to follow - a very technical study.

[Reen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read. It taught me something I did not know. Stephen Gould. Thanks

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quirky romp through the vagaries of the human mind trying to deal with the noncoincident cycles of sun and moon.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of many Gould's I have read, I still remember this one, clarifying all that Y2K stuff in typical erudite Gould fashion. Always fascinating.

[Davy Bennett]

Sounds smart but isn't. Donate.

Takes too much faith to believe in his fantasies.

[Terra · Rating 3 out of 5]

scritto in previsione del mille e non più mille. il gould meno interessante che abbia mai letto.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A FASCINATING BOOK ABOUT THE MILLENNIUM, OUR CALENDAR, AND RELATED ISSUES

Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) wrote in the Preface to this 1997 book, "I began to think about this book during the first week of January 1950. I was eight years old, and a good part of my life revolved around the simple pleasures of weekly rituals... The weekly arrival of Life magazine... for 1950 hit me with a force that I still don't comprehend... The first issue for 1950 marked the halfway point of the twentieth century by evaluating what had happened and predicting what the second segment might bring.... For some reason, as I scanned this issue, my main thought went forward to the year 2000... I would then be fifty-eight years old, while two living grandparents testified to the high probability that I would witness this far more interesting event. I have been buoyed by this lively idea ever since---that I would enjoy the rare privilege of experiencing a transition that... would rivet the attention of nearly all nations... When I should have died of cancer in the mid-1980s, but recovered instead, I listed only two items as ... the reasons for cherishing life in our times: ... I simply had to see my children grow up, [and] that it would be perverse to come this close to the millennium and then blow it.'"

He observes, "We seem so driven to division by two, even in clearly inappropriate circumstances, that I must agree with several schools of thought (most notably Claude Lévi-Strauss and the French structuralists) in viewing dichotomization more as an inherent mechanism of the brain's operation than as a valid perception of external reality." (Pg. 30)

He observes, "The human brain is the most complex computing device ever evolved in the history of our planet. I do not doubt that conventional Darwinian reasons of adaptive advantage underlie its unparalleled size and intricacy. Nonetheless, many of our brain's most distinctive attributes... cannot be viewed as direct products of natural selection but must arise as incidental side consequences of the original reasons for such an increase in size." (Pg. 33)

He notes, "Almost any possible numerical basis has been advocated for determining the length of a worldly cycle and the subsequent initiation of the millennium. Many adepts favored a division by two, as the birth of Jesus initiated a second age... until the ... dawn of the Second Coming... Joachim [of Fiore] divided earthly history info a cycle of three 'dispositions' representing ages of the father, son, and holy spirit. Many other thinkers preferred a fourfold cycle... Still others advocated a fivefold division... Saint Augustine preferred a Great Week of seven historical phases... Obviously, with such diversity in the bases of judgment, intervals of a thousand years could enjoy no inherently favored status. Thus, the millennium has been predicted and expected at almost any time, depending on the system in favor... the year 1000 or 2000, and intervals of 1000 in general, could claim no special preference." (Pg. 69)

He says, "the issue of whether a so-called 'panic terror' swept Christian Europe in the year 1000 has provoked a major debate among professional historians for quite some time." (Pg. 83) He adds, "Medieval historian Richard Landes... convinced me that sufficient evidence now exists to support at least a modest claim for substantial millennial stirring, especially in peasant and populist strata of society... I had not even been persuaded that a year 1000 existed in the consciousness of most people at the time... But Landes and others have shown that the famous chronologies of the Venerable Bede... had been copied extensively and widely distributed to almost canonical use among ecclesiastical timekeepers throughout Europe... Through his works, the advent of the year 1000---and its millennial implications---had probably diffused to all social classes." (Pg. 85-86)

He says of the calculations of Archbishop James Ussher, "Ussher's large folio volume represents an immense labor of calculation and scholarship (requiring knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew). You can't simply spend a rainy afternoon counting the begats in the Bible, for gaps and ambiguities abound, and the record is incomplete in any case---for the chronology of the Old Testament ends with the books of Ezra and Nehemiah in the fifth century B.C., and the New Testament doesn't pick up again until the time of Jesus. Thus, one has to move laterally from the biblical record into the historical documents of other societies... then forward to Roman history, and back again to the New Testament." (Pg. 94-95)

Besides being a highly creative evolutionary theorist, Gould was also a brilliant writer and an engaged "public intellectual." His presence is sorely missed on the scientific and literary scene.

[Nicholas Armstrong · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems somewhat fitting that I finished this book on December 12, 2012 (12/12/12). I enjoy Dr Gould's book because of the combination of fact and wit. This one is no exception. What is a millennium? Why is measuring one so difficult? When is the end of the next one (writing from 1996)? These are fun questions to think about because there are no really correct answers. Strong arguments can be made for both dominant sides. I like to think that a new millennium starts every day, they just don't have auspicious dates like January 1, 2000. Just because there is no 100% correct answer does not mean we cannot subscribe to a particular belief and it is always best to be able to explain one's position with a little knowledge of the debate. So read on, even if the last major millennium is 11 or 12 years ago.

[Janusz · Rating 2 out of 5]

well, i hadn't previously known that there were two century rules for leap years! this was a light snack and put a few interesting details together.
other than that, i was by turns annoyed (at any suggestion that a 'year zero' would serve any purpose other than trivial aesthetics), vaguely disappointed (some apparent stabs at wit just didn't zing) and unimpressed. but i only grabbed it for a taste, anyway; it's shorter than any other book of his i've seen. not in a rush to put others at the top of the list, though.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a lot of things from this book about how years are counted, from the reasons why it's not totally clear when each new millennium begins, to the shortcuts that you could use to figure out what day of the week you were born. It was fun to read a book that was written during that time when everyone was looking forward to the millennium b/c I remember what a big deal it seemed like. I also liked all the images of hell that are strewn throughout this book. There's so much going on in there- you could look at them for a long time

[Rae · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read only 11 years, 4 months and 13 days too late!

Actually, I've only owned this book for a year having bought it almost exactly one year ago. I really enjoyed all the history, math, and science Gould brought into the book. And now I know all kinds of random facts - such as the fact there was no year 0. (Zero, as a concept, had not yet been introduced to the west so the poor guy trying to figure out years went directly from 1BC to 1AD.)

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1767831...

A brief and reflective book by Gould, on the coming millennium as seen from 1997. He makes the entirely fair point that the year 2000 is a rather arbitrary human construct in the first place, and quotes approvingly his autistic son's ruling on whether or not the new century begins in 2000 or 2001: "In 2000, of course. The first decade had only nine years." Nothing much new for me but gould as ever tells it well.

[J. Alfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up at a yard sale or something because I'm interested in theological questions. What I got was, instead, sociological, psychological, and historical looks at how people have viewed the theological questions in which I am interested. Very fun book; a great example of what I consider the most winning kind of humanism. There are a lot of shrug-and-smile lines about "what it means to be human" and things like that. Charming!

[James Dixson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short book on the history of the idea of the millenium and other "doomsday"/"day of judgement" mythologies.

What is interesting about this book (particularly reading before 2000) was how much of christian ritual had its origins in doomsday prediction and preparation and how frequent the theme reappears in christian tradition.