cover image Winston Churchill's Afternoon Nap: A Wide-Awake Inquiry Into the Human Nature of Time

Winston Churchill's Afternoon Nap: A Wide-Awake Inquiry Into the Human Nature of Time

Jeremy Campbell. Simon & Schuster, $18.45 (432pp) ISBN 978-0-671-47547-5

Readers intrigued by the pioneering technology involved in the attempt to create AI (Artificial Intelligence) machines should find Campbell's inquiry both challenging and indispensable. Here the Washington correspondent for the London Times presents what is surely among the most detailed and provocative analyses of the profoundly subjective biological nature of the human time-sense. He explores the latest findings about ""biological clocks''the factor that made Churchill nap after lunchand goes on to cover a range of ideas about ``time'' from ancient cultures to current prophets of AI and ``human consciousness'' like Marvin Minsky, Endel Tulving and their peers, along with philosophers from Plato and Augustine to Sartre and the existentialists. Campbell's insights into music and speech are perceptive as they relate to the human sense, and it should be noted that he has added a new coinage, lifetime, to Einstein's spacetime. (February)