A Tenth of a Second: A History by Jimena Canales

A Tenth of a Second: A History Reviews

• 
  Floris

  This is a book about modernity. Or rather, it is about studying modernity through the emergence of “microtime” (time at intervals of a fraction of a second), and the technologies which helped measure it. Focused predominantly on nineteenth-century France, Canales explores how debates centred around the concept of a tenth of a second emerged and developed in various scientific and technological areas, including experimental psychology, physics, astronomy, photography. Throughout the book, she maintains that each of these debates can be related to fundamental understandings of the boundaries in modern life (19), and therefore reach far beyond their disciplinary niches. In drawing these debates together Canales covers an impressive array of disciplines, and deftly incorporates them in a discussion about the meaning and importance of measurement in science. Her main takeaway, therefore, is this: ‘Despite the fact that measurement is perhaps the most original feature of modernity, we have neglected to understand just how it works. By looking at its history through the perspective of the tenth of a second it no longer appears as a result of a linear, progressive development of instruments and techniques’ (220).
• 
  Edward

  This is a truly stunning book. Canales is an exceptional communicator and her ability to synthesize ideas across continents and centuries is unrivaled. Starting with the concept of the "personal equation" which in astronomy was the allowance made for reaction time when viewing an astronomical event (about a tenth of a second) Canales ventures far and wide at the implications wrought as laboratories started to rely on machines to provide greater accuracy in measurement. She also comes to some striking conclusions regarding the objectivity of measurement, the fallacies of Positivism and the need for reexamination of why we trust numbers above observation. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
• 
  Michael

  A tenth of a second took longer than a tenth of a second to read, though each letter or word in some cases might have taken that long to perceive. For a revised dissertation (I think), she has definitely looked at (and mentioned) every French text from the latter half of the 19th century with regards to observation or, most interestingly, the "personal equation." While 20th century science has tried to rid itself entirely of personality or a range of ways of perceiving things, it hasn't always been this way.
  
  The two things that made this book most interesting to me were the discussion of implications for modernity (which were not developed enough) and the relationship of Bergson to Einstein on time and relativity. Canales claims at the beginning of this book that she has two main concerns: one practical that relates the scientific and the technological, such as the speed of thought or a cinematographic instant. The second concern was broadly philosophical: "references to this short period of time were part of a general inquiry into time, temporal development, and sensory experience. By extending these investigations, we can begin to use the tenth of a second as a way to rethink much longer historical periods." (2) As I was pulled into this book, the photographs of Eadward Muybridge (on the cover) in which "the illusion of movement appears smoothly" pointed to the simplicity of how an illusion (or a reality), or even death itself, psychologically, physiologically, or physically, can be reduced to reaction times. For instance, Léon Lalanne told a story about a Swedish king being hit by a mortal blow while moving his hand toward his sword shaft (Lalanne's "Note sur la durée de la sensation tactile"). The lag time between stimulus and response not only challenged Cartesian mind-body dualism, but also the relationship of politics to science (as in the Hobbes vs. Boyle discussion of the existence of a vacuum). During the industrial revolution, the "relevant problem for philosophy of science was no longer principally based on long-standing questions of objectivity (or matters of fact) and subjectivity (or matters of concern) ... instead ... scientists and philosophers confronted the problem of observations that varied among and within individuals" (9). Here the temporality of cognition itself (a post-Kantian problem, she calls it) becomes modeled on a camera in place of a mirror. Errors were committed in astronomy, metrology and physics due to the split second variations among perceivers. In place of Cartesian or Lockean static forms of perception (which should sound like an "image" theory), Canales begins to read modernity through Bergson as having "a type of observation that worked through time--more cinematographic than photographic...the body could be modeled as an instrument." (10) But bodies vary, and even nerve endings challenge our very perceptions. Psychology and sociology of science butted heads with physics and with astronomy, even the arts, since the entire notion of measurement (for example, the speed of nervous transmissions, nerve lengths, and the speed of thought) was in question. What is modern progress and how do we measure such a thing? "Instead of studying the tenth of a second in modernity, my aim is to understand the tenth of a second as modernity," she writes (14). That is the theme of her book. (more to come on my blog)
• 
  Margaret Sankey

  From the history of science, tracing the effect the sudden ability to measure in tenths of a second had on neurology and physiology, physics and astronomy, photography and cinematography and eventually relativity.
• 
  Zb1113

  Dry, academic, and interesting take on the debate and philosophical/scientific/psychical implications of the "tenth of a second" from the mid 19th into the early 20th century.