The linear time model in history

Abstract

Chronology has been called the backbone of history and it is true that the linear time model in the shape of a chronology is an indispensable tool always at hand in the historian's workshop. It furnishes him or her with the four parameters of sequence, duration, setting and frequency, all necessary and most useful in the deployment of the historian's material. The chronological concept of time also underlines the irreversibility of time, which is part of the historian's creed and an assumption that governs his or her ideas of causality. The influences emanating from the physical time-scale are, in fact, far-reaching and some of them may easily deceive the scholar in his interpretation of the Past. Among these are the magic of figures, the concept of continuity as well as the idea of universality and the determinist view of the Past, and, furthermore, the ideas of contemporaneity, globalization and the uniqueness of phenomena. This paper maintains that the Universe of the Past is inexhaustible and heterogeneous. It cannot be measured by a common chronological standard. Periods based on chronology alone are empty vessels in which many times and many ages roll back and forth in contrast to periods with an individuality of their own (such as the Renaissance or the Enlightenment). After all, periodization is a process involving a combination of the two dimensions of setting and sequence, this means an intriguing operation imbued with puzzles, which the historian has in common with the social scientist.