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

In this slender volume, Stephen Jay Gould addresses three questions about the millennium with his typical combination of erudition, warmth and whimsy: As a calendrical event, what is the concept of a millennium and how has its meaning shifted over time? How did the projection of Christ's 1,000-year reign become a secular measure? And when exactly will the millennium begin--January 1, 2000 or January 2, 2001? "Our urge to know is so great, but our common errors cut so deep. You just gotta love us," he states disarmingly in the preface. "And you gotta view misguided millennial passion as a primary example of our uniqueness and our absurdity--in other words, of our humanity." Gould's own curiosity about time and calendars was triggered by a 1950 issue of Life magazine, which cut the century in half with its evaluation of what had happened and its prediction of things to come, propelling his third-grade mind to the year 2000. In Questioning the Millennium, Gould promises to make no predictions (other than "an orgy of millennial books"); court no millennial epiphanies; and put forth no theories on the collective angst that typically accompanies a century's end. Instead, he answers the millennial questions which, for him, represent the intersection of undeniable reality (natural fact) and human interpretation. Gould's questions and learned answers, weaving many historical and scientific facts, are a loving inquiry into the human need for order in a vast and teeming universe.

"The approach of the millenium elicits all those responses in Stephen Jay Gould which make him today's finest spokesman for the joys of science. The rationalist in him is horrified yet fascinated by the tradition of "Apocalypse soon" prophecies...What is clear from this splendid book - crisp, clever and chirpy as ever - is that Stephen Jay Gould will go down as one of the real turns of the century." (Roy Porter Independent)

"Questioning the Millenium tackles our eternal fascination with round-numbered years from a whole range of historical, philosophical and scientific viewpoints...If you are going to buy one millennial stocking filler, but this one." (David Jessel Scotland on Sunday)

"Gould not only enriches the texture of his writing with each successive phase...He would not be the great science writer that he is if he were not also a great humanist." (Marek Kohn New Statesman)

"Gould's personal interest is as exuberant and authentic as ever, and one good reason for it is offered by an epilogue which both fascinates and touches, and is best left as a surprise." (Michael Viney Irish Times)