Noon and mid-night are gone forever...
- Category: Other
- Posted On: 12/20/2004
- Views: 4,434
Here's my brain rambling about measurements of time...
I am going to remove the use of "in the A.M." as a replacement for "in the morning" from my vocabulary from now on. I finally looked up the fact that A.M. stands for "ante meridiem", or "before noon", and that P.M. stands for "post meridiem", or "after noon". I guess this is why people specify "noon" when referring to the mid-point of the day.
Of course, when someone is introduced to the concept of A.M. and P.M. to tell time, the first intelligent question is "So, what do you use for noon and midnight?" I suppose the answer would be that these 2 terms simply refer to the turn of the clock and refer to nothing in terms of A.M. and P.M. You see, when referring to "11:00 A.M." you know that the number before and the number after are also "A.M." numbers, but at noon A.M. must stop and P.M. must begin. So, noon simply exists between the two. So, A.M. must stop just before P.M. stops. But, how do you stop time long enough to name it? No matter what, time is always ticking by at some decimal level...
When does a new time interval begin is the underlying question. When you are counting, you use an interval. For example, 1-2-3-4-5, we are using whole numbers. Or, when counting 1.1-1.2-1.3, we are rounding to the nearest 10th.
So, when we count time what is the interval? Months, days, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds, microseconds? At what time do you stop counting decimal increments and round up to the next number? So, at what point do we stop counting A.M. and start counting P.M.? Do we change the reference when the milliseconds equal a new second and we go from "11:59.999 A.M." to "12:00.000", thus making it "12:000.000 P.M."? I mean what if we used microseconds? Technically you can't ever reference a point in time, because by the time you have a reference time has passed. So, you could calculate how long the reference would take to make and factor it in to the final reference, but how can you prove it? You can't measure it! You have to simply accept a certain level of measurement as "certain" and proceed. So, I think I will reference the change of of the meridiem as the point in time when the microseconds stop counting 11 A.M. and begin counting 12 P.M.
Hmm... gotta get back to work, but this will require additional research and philosophy... The question I am left with is at what point do you count to the next number and when you get there at what point are you at the beginning of the number? When counting from 1 to 2, at what point am I at 1? When I say 1? But, I am moving toward 2, so am I past 1? My relationship with philosophy is a "love/hate relationship".
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The definition of "ante meridiem"
- Category: Other
- Posted On: 12/20/2004
- Views: 4,434