From what I can see the consensus is still 4 to 6 BC if we assume some major points from the gospels line up with historical Jesus, I don’t see a ton of good evidence that he was born right around the time our calendar switches to 1AD–which again, there is no biblical sourcing for that year transition, that was done by a monk like 500 years later, whose ability to exactly pinpoint an event five centuries prior would be inherently flawed at best.
Unless at some point we learn the exact time of the Big Bang, there is no way to choose a way to number the years of history except by some method that most people in the world will consider to be arbitrary. As it stands, most of the people in the world know that the way that the years are to be referred to (when talking to most other people in the world) is according to a date which is at one point (hundreds of years ago) was thought to be the year the Jesus was born. It’s probably not the year he was born, as has been pointed out, but four to six years later. Most people who have any reason to use a date that will be clear to people outside the own society know that this is the generally accepted way to date years. They have been told that it’s O.K. to use another dating method within their own society, but using it outside that society will simply confuse most people in the world. The dating system now generally accepted is arbitrary, but then a lot of things are arbitrary.
Nitpick: Actually March 18th would have been 14 days before the kalends of April. Romans did their day counting backwards and used inclusive counting at that. There were three points they counted backwards from: kalends, ides and nones. Kalends was the beginning of the month, ides was the 15th for March, May, July and October and the 13th for the other months*, nones was 9 days before that. Well, actually 8 days by the way we count today. Romans counted inclusively, so they counted the day counting from as well as the day counted to. Which is why Mar 18 is 14 days before the kalends and not 13.
*I’m somewhat confused about the ides. Originally Roman months had either 29 or 31 days, so the ides would be 17 days before the kalends. But somewhere along the way they added a day to all the 29-day months, so you’d think the ides would have moved forward to the 14th. But I’ve always read that it was on the 13th of those months.†
†I don’t even want to think about how they handled February.
The whole question of “which calendar is better/makes more sense/is more natural” highlights that every counting system has an origin value and temporal counting systems typically use some event as an origin – an “epoch”.
But in general, the event selection is arbitrary, or at least not universal.
At least computer technology acknowledges this arbitraryness. Unix and its descendent operating systems ultimately keep time as a monotonically increasing number of seconds after a selected epoch instant. That epoch event? Not an event at all. It’s just a convenient “zero date and time” within the lifespan of Unix. Quoting Wikipedia, “The Unix epoch is 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970 (an arbitrary date).”
Lesson: there is no objective reason to claim one calendar system or epoch choice is superior to any other.
ETA: I noticed this argument is similar to the “metric/not-metric” argument. In spite of any factual arguments in favor of one alternative or the other, superiority ultimately boils down to personal preference, usually related to which alternative the arguer is most familiar with and has internalized the best.
I think the main point of those who argue the inferiority of the Roman republican calendar is that it doesn’t even have an epoch. While you certainly have a point that the choice of epoch is arbitrary, and superiority is therefore a matter of personal preference of thge arguer, there is a point to be made that having an epoch - any epoch - is objectively superior to not having one. For instance, the Roman consular dating system without an epoch struggles expressing dates in the past, before the establishment of the consulate. Likewise, it struggles expressing a date in the future, for which you don’t know yet who the consuls will be in the year you’re talking about.
Perhaps this is not such a major issue; apparently the Romans didn’t find them to be major issues, lest they would have developed another calendar. But I do see the point that having an epoch from which to count years forwards and backwards avoids problems which eponymous calendars have.
Of course it has an epoch. It has several – every consulate is an epoch.
Perhaps the core fault is that it has too many epochs, and depends on the users of the calendar to remember a sequence of political events separated by just a few years. I doubt the consular calendar system had much value to the plebians, if their awareness or interest in politics was at all similar to the majority of modern humans. Most of the historical writings we see that use Republican dating were written by or for the elite, for whom the cursus honorum was expected to be their entire life’s purpose.
Being an epoch would imply that it serves as a starting point to count years forwards and backwards. I’m not aware that the Romans ever used the consulate in that manner. For instance, by tradition, the first consuls were Brutus and Collatinus, elected in 509 BC after the expulsion of the last king Tarquinius Superbus. I doubt any Roman would ever date an event that took place in, say, 500 BC as “nine years before Brutus and Collatinus were consuls”. I admit that I can’t prove no Latin source exists which uses this logic, but I’d be very surprised to see one; I think it would be much more likely that for this purpose, the regnal year of Tarquinius Superbus would be used. Similarly, I doubt that a Roman writing in the year 63 BC (when Cicero and Hybrida were consuls) and hypothetising about an event that might or might not take place in 53 BC would speak of “ten years after Cicero and Hybrida were [or rather future perfect, “will have been”?] consuls”.
This is peripheral to the present debate, but I’d still like to point out that except for the early republic, it’s misleading to equate Patricians = elite and Plebeians = everyone else. Being Patrician or Plebeian was simply a matter of the family you happened to be born into. In the early time of the republic, political power was concentrated in the hands of the Patricians, but the “Conflict of the Orders” fought not soon thereafter changed that. The distinction between Patricians and Plebeians was nominally maintained, but Plebeians became admitted to the highest offices, and there were very influential and wealthy Plebeians just as there were poor and politically unimportant Patricians.
Regnal epochs don’t work that way. Japanese don’t say “3 years before Hesei”, it’s “Showa 61”.
As long as there are no inter-regnal periods, counting backwards from an epoch is an unnecessary feature. And in an inter-regnal period, you can still use more complicated language expressing a year in that period relative to an established epoch (like the last prior consulate).
Yes, this makes open-ended calendar math much harder. Apparently, this wasn’t a requirement.
Good amplification. I meant “plebian” both in the formal Roman class sense, but (more importantly) in the “Josephus Sixpackus” sense, regardless of the family’s class origin.
And even if a history is written by a plebian of any economic or political status, you can bet they would strive to respect the forms and conventions of good writing of the time, including dating.
Does this take into account leap seconds? Or is each day assumed to me 60x60x24 seconds long?
Seconds since epoch. You would have to know all the leap-seconds between epoch and “now” to convert a UNIX time to, say, Gregorian calendar UTC time.
Do clocks run differently on ISS? ISS computers sync to a time server on the ground, anyway, but eventually UNIX time will have to be defined in reference to a particular reference frame (if it isn’t already).
Yes, but the difference is measured in nanoseconds. That’s significant for GPS and similar systems, but not for much else.
I believe, since you mention minute adjustments to guidance and time/space location, that the Tomahawk and similar guided missiles, let alone ICBMs in space, adjust even the location data of their GPS guidance to account for the varying magnetic influences of the surfaces they travel over. The DOD geomagnetic survey data is a significant part of its mapping divisions.
Some of the differences between metric and American units do come down to just arbitrary decisions comparable to the choice of epoch for times. But there are other differences that are much more important. Most notably:
1: Metric units are standard. Anyone anywhere in the world who refers to a meter or a kilogram means the same thing. By contrast, the “customary” system has statute miles, surveyors’ miles, and nautical miles; Troy and Avoidupois pounds and ounces, as well as fluid ounces; short and long tons; Queen Anne and Imperial gallons; force-pounds (and the corresponding mass-slugs) and mass-pounds (and the corresponding force-poundals); and so on. Often, it’ll be clear from context which is meant, but not always. And it used to be even worse: Before most of the world converted to the metric system, there were over a dozen different units called “inch”.
2: Metric units are coherent. This means that any compound unit is derived by simply multiplying together the appropriate base units, to the appropriate powers, with no numerical conversions. If, for instance, I exert a force of 1 newton at a speed of 1 m/s, then I’m using a power of 1 watt. By contrast, if I exert a force of 1 pound at a speed of 1 ft/s, then I’m using a power of 1/550 horsepower.
The fact that most people in the world use metric is a point of history, not anything fundamental to the system. And the fact that units of different magnitudes are related by simple powers of 10 is convenient, but ultimately unnecessary. But being standard is absolutely essential to a system of units, and being coherent is very important.
Even when there are clear practical advantages to one choice over another, this fact is still true: the system that works best is the one the chooser is most familiar with.
Objective superiority can be irrelevant in the face of strongly held personal preference, driven by experience and internalized understanding.
Is this why nobody else seems willing to acknowledge my objective superiority?
:
Said subjectively. You and Descartes in a bar I’d like to see.
Or the hell with that and go this way:
“Subject-Object Duality and States of Consciousness: A Quantum Mechanical Approach”
Pradhan, Rajat Kumar, NeuroQuantology, 2010, VIII:3, pp. 262‐278.
link to .pdf
That may be true for some, but I wouldn’t make a blanket statement. I am much more familiar with the Imperial system and didn’t hear about the metric system until high school. But having traveled around the world I can say unequivocally that the metric system is superior, even though I’m not nearly as familiar with it. I got some real-world experience with the metric system in college, but living in the US I almost never had the opportunity to use it. So familiarity doesn’t always trump objective superiority.
Speculative research papers are one thing, but it’s quite impressive that there’s an entire journal named for something for which there is no evidence whatsoever.
This is an old one: