Concept and Expression of Time: Cultural Variations and Impact on Knowledge Organization

The concept of 'time' is ubiquitous and as ancient as man. Methods of its measurement range from those based on natural phenomena to the oscillation of an atom. In physics, time is one of the fundamentals that include space, energy, gravitation, weight, and mass. Whether time is cyclic or linear, or both, is another issue. The concept and measures of time are affected by culture, human needs, occupation, and the value assigned to time in different contexts. There are communities that do not appear to have any concept of time, and there are those who specify it very minutely, as in the spiritual offerings practiced by some Hindu communities. In the fine arts and performing arts, the measurement of time may appear different, yet there are unities and correspondences among them. This book elaborates on these ideas, beginning with the socio-cultural evolution of information and the functions of time in societal activities and life courses, the impact of socio-cultural differences on the management and measure of time, special aspects of the differences, the measure of time in the humanistic fields (e.g. the arts), time in information science, time ontology, as well as issues relating to time in various knowledge organization tools (subject classification schemes, thesauri for information retrieval, taxonomies, etc.).