Category: 03-Timekeeping

In the 6 minute time keeping lecture, I was surprised that Einstein’s theory of relatively was proven experimentally only a decade ago. Books much older speak of it with such conviction, yet it was not observed yet.

The other fact that surprised me was how arbitrary the number of the days in the month was. Some Roman Caesar thought odd numbers were lucky and made each other month 29 or 31 days? The concept of weeks fit oddly in the 30ish day monthly calendar. These constructs that I didn’t pay attention to shape my life yet were chosen (to a degree) arbitrarily.

Reading and watching these resources really got me thinking. We know time to be a known fact, one that is – quoting Drucker – “uni-directional” and always continuous with no breaks. But to humans, the concept of time doesn’t follow that of science but is purely subjective and relative. And yet, we humans always strive to find the accuracy or the truth behind everything, such as the creation of the atomic clock – which I found really interesting about the science behind it all just to justify the accuracy of time. I wonder how it’d be if we were to relive ancient times when timekeeping wasn’t a known fact or a part of science, and just appreciate mother nature a little bit more with its natural timekeeping resources.

One thing that struck me is that the temporal relations(i.e. time relations/time period) can be represented and analyzed by graphs by using interval logic and each relation has its inverse, which also can be represented by the same graph. However, analyzing temporal relations has to be made under the assumption that there exists only one straight linear timeline, without any parallel or branching out timelines (at least in the version James Allen and George Ferguson conducted).

A repeating theme from the sources is that time is dependent on experience, and the division of time shapes the world by structuring our experience of it. I never thought deep about time and its relation with experience, which is a highly subjective, intangible concept. This is super intriguing.

I really enjoyed the readings and videos for this week, I actually ended up watching most of Dr. Donna Caroll’s video and the part that really struck with me of her video was her description of the disruptive nature of Roman time-keeping and how time developed this system of arbitrary months, in part due to cultural pressures. I think this video specifically (though Johanna Drucker and lepw76 go into this as well) made me consider the relationship between ‘accuracy’ and culture . As humans we often have this drive to aspire for accuracy (through patterns we observe, especially in the case of yearly calendars) while imposing a vision of what we believe reality is (in terms of mythos, counting systems, creation), and how this enhances or builds into the narratives we make.