Relationship between humans and time

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Let's consider some research information from several sources, which you can draw on for this interesting assignment. I also provided two examples to consider that demonstrates how time measurement changes behavior.

RESPONSE:

1. To help ME prepare for a 3 to 4 page analysis of the relationship between humans and time, please help me with the following: Include a description of the historical development of the human ability to conceptualize and measure time. Also, examine why humans have a need to measure time, and describe how the ability to measure time has changed human behavior. Give specific examples of how time measurement has changed human behavior.

The historical development of the human ability to conceptualize and measure time has a long history. According to Crosby, the western Europeans of the late thirteenth century were by no means the first or foremost virtuosi of measurement. Goldstone (1991), in a review article reported the following:

? The ancient Greeks, notably Eratosthenes (276-194 bc), made measurements of the size of the Earth and distances in the solar system.
? The Greeks were obsessed with arithmetic and geometry (Plato made them the true basis of reality);
? they developed algebra (Diophantus, c. 250 ad, developed symbolic notation and solved equations for unknowns) and immersed themselves in the study of uniform shapes (circles, ellipses, and regular polyhedrons).
? The Greeks also knew of the relations of musical harmonies to arithmetic ratios, and found in that relationship a proof of the preternatural power of numbers.
? Of course, they made little practical use of these measurements outside of architecture, but then neither did the late medieval or Renaissance scholars who revived their work.
? The Arabs of the tenth century ad could also boast notable arithmeticians and astronomers, such as Abu 'Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (965-c. 1041 ad), whose theory of light as straight emanations and elaborations of Euclid's geometry influenced Johannes Kepler and René Descartes.
? And of course, it was the Arabs who transmitted (and perhaps developed?) the system of notation we know today as Arabic numerals.
? The Chinese developed massive mechanical clocks some years before Europeans did, and their abacus remained a superior means of calculating sums for many centuries compared to Europe's counting boards (Goldstone, 1991) http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/105.2/ah000501.html

Humans had different needs and fascinations about measurement of time (and space) and it changed human behavior in terms of merchant trading and mentality, moving towards a desire for wealth and gold. Going back to the late middle Ages, Crosby (1989, 1998) plots the development of measurement and time. (cited in Goldstone, 1991). For example, in his review article, Goldstone (1991) reported the following:

? In, circa 1300, western Europeans developed an obsessive fascination with subjecting their world to uniform measurement, dividing everything into greater or fewer uniform units; that this uniform division of time and space, of music, and of visual representation (whereby the space on maps and paintings was laid out by rules of perspective) was unique to the late medieval and early modern West; and that this pattern laid the basis for the West's later domination of the world.

? But where the Europeans do seem different from other civilizations is their willingness to subject everything they cared about to the discipline of measurement.

? Other civilizations knew of clocks, but they did not regulate time in their cities or temples by the movement of rachet and escapement.

? Other civilizations made maps and accurately charted the movements of the heavens, but they did not strive to reduce everything to uniform grids or uniform motions.

? Other societies conducted detailed surveys of their lands and conducted business through weights and measures and monetary prices, but they did not model the universe as a mechanism or clockworks.

? Why did western Europeans replace a vague, religious hierarchy-based view of natural reality with a view based on uniformly divided time and space, over the course of the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries? That the change did occur seems undeniable, and, according to Goldstone (2000): "Crosby documents it brilliantly, ranging over Europe's efforts to measure time, space, musical rhythms and scales, and representational space. But Crosby stumbles a bit in explaining why this change occurred, and even more in attributing to it something besides a revival of past knowledge and importation of Arab and Eastern insights" (Goldstone, 2000).

In fact, Crosby (1989) attributes much of the West's fascination with numbers and uniformity to something that is completely unwestern in its provenance, according to Goldstone ...