How do you justify that? "Were it not for .."
"Were it not for public acceptance of a single yardstick of time, social life would be unbearably chaotic"
How it is possible to say "were it not"!!?
Why does it not say "it was not"?
What was the original sentence before INVERSION?
what is the meaning of that?
please help me to analyse that. thanks

Question

Answer

I can also add that "If ... were ..." has a meaning of "God forbid that it should be". It seems horrible for the speaker. In this sentence, this horror is conveyed in the second part "social life would be unbearably chaotic"

Answer

For hypothetical situations, you need to write "were" instead of "was".
Example: If I were you, I would do it.
The meaning is exactly the same. The inversion doesn't change anything to that rule.
"Were it not for ..." = "If it were not for..."

Answer

Before the inversion, it was like this: If it were not for public acceptance...
which means: If the public didn't accept a single yardstick of time...