Conversations About The End Of Time

Where does our fascination with the apocalypse come from? Is time cyclical or linear? Can society survive without ideology? Can the parallel-universe theory really help solve the great mysteries of science? Why did war become an industrialised phenomenon in the twentieth century? How do different religions understand what is meant by the end of time? Can children be philosophers? In a series of unusually thought-provoking conversations, Umberto Eco, Stephen Jay Gould, Jean Delumeau and Jean-Claude Carriere examine our preoccupations at the end of this millennium, cast back to the fears and hopes of previous generations, and considers the challenges to come. Mixing the humorous with the profound, they tackle a vast range of fundamental questions which have long taxed the minds not only of our greatest thinkers, but of most of the rest of us too. Fascinating, challenging and unnerving - no less than you would expect from such a distinguished group - Conversations about the End of Time takes place in the great tradition of human enquiry.