KronoScope 

Abstract: Bishop Asser’s biography of King Alfred describes him as creating a candle “clock” to know the time on cloudy days and at night. This candle “clock” has often been seen as an early example of uniform timekeeping and equinoctial hours, and consequently in conflict with the seasonally variable canonical hours. The approach taken here challenges this interpretation. It views King Alfred’s candles as complementary to rather than in conflict with sidereal timekeeping, clepsydrae, cockcrow, and canonical hours. This leads to an interpretation of the candles as a means of interweaving of liturgical and secular timekeeping. It is argued, moreover, that pluralism in ways of reckoning time is a feature of Anglo-Saxon time consciousness; Alfred should not be viewed as an horological innovator, but as a monarch whose interests in time reflect those of his society.

Abstract: This paper addresses the persistent problem concerning the integration of physical (external) with psychological (internal) expressions of time. While the history of cosmological science demonstrates the fallacy of the conception of the physically privileged observational point in the Universe, I argue that it is just such a privileged position which characterizes the unitary nature of individual human consciousness. A rational, but flawed implication of this latter observation is that there is a unique spatiotemporal point within the brain at which reality is experienced. This flaw can be exposed through reference to the sensory simultaneity problem. Evidence indicates that since no such unique neural location exists, the brain finesses the issue of absolute timing at a sensory level by simply avoiding the problem of time-tagging such events altogether. While this finesse solves the simultaneity conundrum at a sensory level, I argue that the need for personal temporal continuity and the ability to outpace exogenous time by the projection of possible futures are solved elsewhere in the brain. A brief account of these latter properties is also presented.

Abstract: Over the weeks of social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, people typically reported that time had passed comparably quickly Although time might have passed slowly during moments of anxiety and boredom for some, many felt a speeding up of the passing days and weeks Here I attempt to explain the experience of time during the pandemic with cognitive models of time perception as related to the present moment (prospective time) and in hindsight (retrospective time) Retrospective judgments of time intervals rely on memory traces The more contextual changes experienced during a given time interval, the longer duration is judged when looking back over past time intervals More routine activities, as experienced by many during the pandemic, even when under time pressure, lead to fewer memorable events stored in autobiographical memory This creates the impression that time has passed considerably more quickly © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020

Abstract: We examine the narrative structure of The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. We place the novel in the context of the alternate history genre of speculative fiction. Noting its complex plot with multiple timelines, we apply the theoretical ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin and Umberto Eco and show how its chronotope, or relationship between space and time, resembles that of a multicursal labyrinth. We connect this analysis with ideas in quantum physics, particularly the Many Worlds Interpretation, and show how it explains the ambiguity of the novel’s ending, and the failure of the characters to reach their goals. In particular, the characters’ search for truth is thwarted by the existence of multiple truths in a maze of competing realities.