Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown by Stephen Jay Gould

The Millennium. Feared by some, eagerly awaited by others. There were those who believed that humanity would descend into chaos on the first day of the Millennium, when the computer clocks, whose calendars were calculated in double digits only, went from 99 to 00. Well, okay, only IBM clones- Macintoshes back then were good until 2048.

But what do we mean, really, when we speak of the millennium? Does it begin on a 0 year or a year ending in 1? If it begins in a year ending in 0 (or 000), does that mean there was a year 0 at the start of the first millennium CE (Common Era)? And how can we be sure we are really at a year ending in zero or one, anyway, when all calendars are man-made?

Not everyone has this sort of obsession with Millennia. The Chinese use a completely different calendar- our year 2000 was their year 4697. So, what exactly does it mean when we talk about a Millennium, and why are people so obsessed with them? Well, first of all, realize that humans are obsessed with imposing order upon what we see of the world. Because Chaos and disorder and randomness are too much for us to fathom, we impose order on the world. One of those means of order is numbers. The west is indelibly wedded to decimal numbers, whereas the Americas were all about veigisimal numbers- and the decimal system is based on 10's our number of fingers, while Vegisimal numbers are based on 20's- the fingers plus the toes.

Gould explains why numbers became so important to humans, as well as the way we divide things, in twos for dichotomy, fives, sevens, nines, and why some numbers become so important that they also become sacred. Yes, humans like nice round numbers (anything that ends in one or more zeroes), but why do we assign an additional meaning of Apocalypse to the Millennium?

Gould goes over this in detail, but doesn't slog on and on about it. It's a fairly small, short book that nonetheless packs a lot of interesting stuff into its 293 pages. Anybody really interested in the Millennium, Millennial panics, and where and when the real millennium will start, occur and whether we can even be sure of our dates is sure to find something to love in this book. It covers everything from Pop Culture to the birth of Jesus, and how Millennial assumptions and our fascination with zeros and round number endings have shaped both our religious and societal assumptions.

I'll read just about anything I'm intrigued by, and this book intrigued me a lot. It was filled with fascinating stuff, and I'm still absorbing it all. But I do recommend it, and not just for people who are fascinated with numbers. History buffs and people who are interested in human nature will find lots to enjoy here as well.