The Search for Origins as Detective Story: Detecting Datelines and the Mystery of Origins

This chapter compares two modes of investigating temporal origins: a scientific detection of dates of origin, associated with the chronometric revolution across a number of fields, and a speculative investigation into the mystery of origins in a more absolute sense, where the physical and metaphysical shade into one another. The former mode operates according to a linear, causal temporal model, while the latter initiates an iterative, recursive series of investigations from present through the origin and back again. A range of examples from science, theology, philosophy and literature are discussed. Detecting datelines is a mode of looking into the past that seeks to pin down a point of origin, or ascribe a temporal co-ordinate to an event or object. This mode of investigation may be conceived as a form of detective story. The chapter concludes by discussing a particularly rich attempt to express the mystery of origins. Keywords:chronometric revolution; detecting datelines; mystery of origins; temporal origins