"new" 1,640,000,000

"old" 264,000,000

"preowned" 1,090,000

"pre-owned" 4,570,000

"used" 505,000,000

"newer" 14,300,000

"older" 65,200,000

"newest" 37,800,000

"oldest" 24,900,000

"new music" 6,490,000

"old music" 196,000

"used music" 3,890,000

"new car" 11,400,000

"old car" 857,000

"used car" 6,490,000

"new computer" 4,470,000

"old computer" 600,000

"used computer" 682,000

"modern" 89,500,000

"traditional" 73,700,000

"innovative" 32,300,000

"old-fashioned" 3,620,000

The following words related to time have no true antonyms. Results paradoxically suggest an overwhelming interest in "today," but less interest in "the present" per se than in "the past" or, especially, "the future." However, it would appear that in the short term, there is more immediate interest in what happened yesterday than in what will happen tomorrow.

"today" 285,000,000

"yesterday" 36,700,000

"tomorrow" 34,700,000

"the present" 24,700,000

"the past" 34,900,000

"the future" 35,000,000

       ²Ken Gewertz, "Master of Twentieth Century Music Visits Harvard: Pierre Boulez Wows Overflow Crowd," Harvard University Gazette, 13 May 2003.

       ³K. Robert Schwarz, "In Contemporary Music a House Still Divided," New York Times, 3 August 1997, late ed.: sec. 2 , 24 , col. 1. Article available online at the following URL:

       ⁴Andrew Carvin and Joshua Cody, "Pierre Boulez," Paris New Music Review, 14 November 1993.

       ⁵"Modernism," Merriam-Webster Online, 2005 ed.

       ⁶Quoted in Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Quotation and Originality," The Portable Emerson, ed. and with an introduction by Mark Van Doren (New York: The Viking Press, 1965), 285–86.

       ⁷"Music," Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 1992 ed.

       ⁸"Thermodynamics, First and Second Laws of," Dictionary of Scientific Literacy, 1992 ed.

       ⁹Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. (New York: Knopf, 2004) 132.

     ¹⁰Quoted in Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature, with a foreword by Alvin Toffler (New York: Bantam Books, 1984) 294.

     ¹¹Greene 134.

     ¹²Emerson 300.

     ¹³Greene 139.

     ¹⁴Greene 145.

     ¹⁵Gustave Reese, Music in the Middle Ages, With an Introduction on the Music of Ancient Times (New York: Norton, 1968) 351. I have been unable to determine the precise origin of Machaut's text. In the notes describing this rondeau accompanying the LP anthology The Art of Courtly Love (Seraphim SIC-6092), David Munrow attributes the words to "a popular medieval aphorism." However, there is at least some suggestion that the core idea they express can be traced to Islamic or Judeo-Christian sources.

"Then God revealed to Him: "My end is in My beginning and My beginning is in My end."

"Then Allah revealed to Him: "My end is in My beginning and My beginning is in My end."

T. S. Eliot used a variant of this idea to frame his text in "East Coker" (Four Quartets):"In my beginning is my end. . . . In my end is my beginning."

The closely related expression, "The beginning is in the end and the end is in the beginning," is informally attributed to the Kabbalah on numerous web sites, but I have been unable to identify the primary source(s).

A similar concept is evoked in the New Testament (Rev. 1, 21, and 22), but in a distinctly different form: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty."

A useful source for Machaut's rondeau and other texts is the following:

     ¹⁶Raymond B. Blakney, Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation.  (New York:  Harper and Brothers, 1941) 212.

     ¹⁷"Cycle," Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 1992 ed.

     ¹⁸Paul Halpern. Time Journeys: A Search for Cosmic Destiny and Meaning. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990) 4.

     ¹⁹Jeremy Rifkin. Time Wars: The Primary Conflict in Human History. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989) 148.

     ²⁰Halpern, 5–6.

     ²¹Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption, trans. H. H. Joachim (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1922), Internet Sacred Texts Archive, John B. Hare, 27 July 2004.

     ²²"Ecclesiastes, Book of," Oxford Companion to the Bible, 1993.

     ²³Rifkin 148, 150.

     ²⁴Saint Augustine, The Confessions, trans. Edward Bouverie Pusey (Franklin Center, Pennsylvania: The Franklin Library, 1982) 239.

     ²⁵Daniel Boorstin, The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself (New York: Random House, 1983) 36.

     ²⁶Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968) sec. 55, 36.

     ²⁷Greene 405, 411–12.

     ²⁸Greene 160.

     ²⁹Greene 317, 322, 519.

     ³⁰Greene 168, 317, 410.

     ³¹Prigogine 15, 294–95. For further information about Prigogine, the following URL is recommended:

     ³²Prigogine 16, 298.

     ³³Prigogine 214, 292, 206.

     ³⁴Prigogine 308.

     ³⁵Prigogine 312.

     ³⁶Jean Bricmont, "Science of Chaos or Chaos in Science?" Physicalia Magazine 17 (1995) 3-4: 159–208. This article is available online at the following URLs:

     ³⁷Greene, 350, 351, 374, 423, 474.

     ³⁸Greene 474.

     ³⁹Greene 490–91.

     ⁴⁰"Quantum Approaches to Consciousness," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2004 ed.

     ⁴¹Hartmann Römer, "Weak Quantum Theory and the Emergence of Time," Mind and Matter 2.2 (2004)

     ⁴²Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. and ed. by James Strachey, (New York: Discus Books, 1972) 84.

     ⁴³Howard Gardner, Creating Intelligences: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 200.

     ⁴⁴Freud 651–52.

     ⁴⁵Erich Hertzmann, "Mozart's Creative Process," The Creative World of Mozart, ed. Paul Henry Lang (New York: W. W. Norton: 1963) 29.

     ⁴⁶Quoted in Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics (Oxford, New York, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989) 422–23.

     ⁴⁷Quoted in Harald Atmanspacher and Wolfgang Fach, "Acategoriality as Mental Instability," (Freiburg: Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, n.d.) 21–22.

     ⁴⁸Greene 136–39, 348.

     ⁴⁹Patrice Bailhache, "La musique traduite en mathématiques," Problèmes de traduction au XVIIIe siècle, Colloque du Centre François Viète, Nantes, 17 January 1997.

     ⁵⁰Bailhache.

     ⁵¹Greene 347, 428. In addition to strings, the theory also describes structures known as branes, that is, objects with p spatial dimensions, where p can be any whole number less than ten.

     ⁵²Greene 357.

     ⁵³Greene 428.

     ⁵⁴Greene 371.

     ⁵⁵Greene 322.

     ⁵⁶Tom Siegfried, Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time (Washington, D. C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2002) 252, 254.

     ⁵⁷Greene 529; Siegfried 254.

     ⁵⁸David Bohm, Thought as a System (London and New York: Routledge, 1992) 235.

     ⁵⁹Greene 206, 456–7.

     ⁶⁰Greene, 459–460; Paul Davies, How to Build a Time Machine (New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001).

     ⁶¹Stanislav Grof and Hal Zina Bennett, The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992) 18.

     ⁶²Grof 139.

     ⁶³Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, 3d ed. expanded (Boston: Shambhala, 1991) 186.

     ⁶⁴Quoted in David Darling, Soul Search: A Scientist Explores the Afterlife (New York: Villard Books, 1995) 133–34.