this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2024
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Aren't all forms of measurement (in this case it's a measurement of time) completely arbitrary?
The measurement of earth orbiting for one revolution around the sun (a unit of time we refer to as a year) isn't arbitrary. It's clearly defined. You've either made one complete revolution or not. It's just that the original starting point for the first measurement was arbitrary because you'd have to start somewhere.
Many forms of measurement are based on absolutes, like temperature, measured from absolute zero, or time, measured against the cesium standard (atomic clock). You'd have to break physics in order to be able to define them as arbitrary.
But divisions of time are arbitrary, no? 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day, 30(ish) days in a month, 12 months in a year. There were other ways to divide all that up. There's reasons they were divided that way, but the fact that we have to add a day every 4 years just because it's not perfect says a lot haha
If there were reasons that it was divided that way, as you said, then that would make it non-arbitrary, as it was based on a system of logic. Define arbitrary, I guess.
Perhaps it would appear to be arbitrary though to those who aren't aware of those reasons/logic, like the astronomical objects in the cartoon 🤷♂️😀