It's About Time

ITS ABOUT TIME…
2014 WINTER SOLSTICE BLOG


“The solar year – the time required for earth to complete an obit around the sun – is 365 days, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds.” Boorstin, Daniel, The Discoverers, p.9


Time is a concept which has been studied and written and thought about by scientists (Einstein), philosophers, poets, novelists, preachers, comedians, athletes and most human beings. If you Google “Quotes about time” you will find an astonishing array of quotations, many serious, but also many humorous. We all have used clichés about time, such as, “Time flies when you are having fun.” Or, “Time heals all wounds (or its paraphrase, “time wounds all heels.”). We all experience time or the consciousness of time in different ways and in ways that change at different stages of our lives. Time seems much different to me now as an 80 something year old than it did forty years ago.
So, here are some of my thoughts regarding time.
First, without the ability of the human mind to observe, remember, and record repetitive events in the natural world, time would not exist. Without the recorder (humans) there would be no past, present, or future. Only the forever now.
The most obvious repetitive event in the natural world is the rising and setting sun by which we define a “day”. Different cultures have defined the beginning and ending of “day” in various ways. Some have said that the new day begins at sunset. Others have said the new day begins at sunrise. We moderns say that the new day begins at midnight. Likewise, what is a week? Seven days? Hasn’t always been that way. The same for “month” and “year”. Some cultures use a lunar (moon) calendar and define a “year” as 13 months of 28 days each. Again, inaccuracies of astronomical measurement cause some problems. For Muslims, the time of Ramadan moves through the seasons. Christians use a lunar event to designate the day on which Easter will be celebrated. The Christian Church has determined that Easter will be on “…the first Sunday after the full moon which happens upon or next after the 21st day of March; and if the full moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday after.”
TIME is defined by the dictionary as the period between two events. The two events can be anything; a birthday, an anniversary, the beginning and end of a semester or a football game. It may be the period between when the gun goes off and one crosses the finish line. (Roger Bannister ran the mile under four minutes in 1954 for the first time in history. His time was 4.59.4).
An operational definition is: time is that which is measured by a clock (or sundial, hour glass, , watch, etc.) or some repetitive event. The Egyptians measured their “year” by the flooding of the Nile River. They had a calendar of 365 ¼ days. This calendar was adopted by Rome as the Julian Calendar, but it was inaccurate by 11 minutes a year. Pope Gregory ordained a new calendar in 1582 which corrected the Julian calendar by eliminating 10 days and built in a continuing correction by omitting leap day from years ending in hundreds, unless they were divisible by 400. This produced the modern calendar we still use today. When the only instruments available to measure time were the sundial (not very useful at night) or an hour glass, time was experienced as flowing. With the development of the mechanical clock, time was experienced in discrete units. At first only hours, then minutes and seconds as clocks became more sophisticated.
Like all human achievements, the history of the evolution of instruments to measure time – clocks/watches – is a fascinating history (see Boorstin). We have gone from the clock to sound a bell four times a day for prayers to instruments that are able to measure thousandths and even millionths of seconds.
I have several clocks in my house, but the two I favor are the replica of the Medieval clock my wife and son gave me for Christmas about forty years ago. It is powered by a rock weight and only has an hour hand. Now that I am retired I find this clock useful since I have no need for minutes and seconds.

MEDIEVAL CLOCK


The other clock I like is my atomic clock whose time is set by a radio transmitter from the atomic clock in Colorado. It is always accurate to the second. Even though I am retired and have no great need for such accuracy, I do like having the precise time.

ATOMIC CLOCK
Two afterthoughts re time:
In ten days 1990 will be 25 years ago.
Next year’s freshman college class was born in 1997.
Two suggestions for reading more about time and invention:
Read the story of measuring longitude and the Harrison clocks. See Longitude by Dava Sobel
Read about how the invention of the “escapement” enabled modern clocks and changed the world. See Boorstin, p. 38.