...see what's become of me...
Ok, so I just read that the ancient Egyptians reckoned time basically the same as we do today in the West: a civil calendar of 12 months of 30 days and 5 extra days that repeated; and days were divided into 24 hours, 12 of day and 12 of night (from Embodied Lives by Meskell and Joyce, 2003). So I wonder why the 24 hours? According to this source, the Egyptians did not divide the hour up into minutes or other kinds of segments. But why 24? Am I being obtuse here? Is there a reasonable explanation for 24 hours? Why does an hour, as a measurable segment of time, last as long as it does? Why should there be 24 of these time-segments in a day? It just seems oddly complex to me. If I were inventing it all, and had to tell somebody to wait for me for such-and-such an amount of time, or meet me tomorrow at such-and-such a point in the day, I think I would come up with something with a base 10. It would be easier to count and it would be more organic. I mean, WHY 24!?!?!?!?!
While I'm on the subject, could somebody PLEASE tell me why there are 360 degrees in a circle? Is there a reason for that? 360 seems like an arbitrary number to me. Is it just set up that way because if a circle has 360 degrees then all the math that we've created to describe it works? Would trigonometry work if circles had, say 100 degrees...or 1000 degrees...or 10 degrees? Is it really just that way to make the math work? Is it really just a self-fulfilling prophecy that enables skyscrapers and fingernail polish and the internet? (Not that I am ungrateful for the automatic clothes washer, mind you).
I am pretty sure that I will add more about the time thing as I learn it. And I might update this picture. I couldn't figure out what to put for time and the sphynx and pyramids seemed appropriate.
3 comments:
Seems like they got the convention from the Babylonians. So happens that 360 is divisible by a great number of integers, so it makes the math easier. The second comes from the clepsydra water-clocks in the temples that were standardized so that 1 second = interval between drops. 12 can be divided by 6, 4, 3 and 2, and each interval represented a period between sacrifices and rituals at the temple.
Ask and ye shall receive...
Enrique was quickest to give an answer, but I also had an answer from another source who apparently wanted to remain anonymous as he didn't actually post this but emailed it. I thought I'd share.
My other informant pointed me to the book "A History of Pi" by Petr Beckmann, that talks about the discovery of a Babylonian tablet with some math on it. I shall quote from page 22 of this book:
"The Babylonians knew, of course, that the perimenter of a hexagon is exactly equal to six times the radius of the circumscribed circle, in fact that was evidently the reason why they chose to divide the circle into 360 degrees (and we are still burdened with that figure to this day)."
you misspelled perimeter :(
FREDERICK!, please :)
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