Happy
New Year, everybody. At least, according to the French Revolutionary calendar
that was adopted in France right after the Revolution. It was used from 1793
until 1805. Read more here.
One purpose of the calendar was to produce a scientifically-based calendar
system.
Part
of the scientific basis is that it was modeled after nature, after the seasons
and the phenomena associated with them, rather than arbitrary months invented
by human governments. For example, March used to be the first month, but Roman
emperors added January and February, apparently for purposes of tax revenue.
Because the Romans stuck two months onto the beginning of the year, the names
of the months now make no sense. “September” means seventh, “October” means
eighth, “November” means ninth, and “December” means tenth. But the French
Revolutionary Calendar begins very close to the Autumnal Equinox, which was
actually yesterday. The seasons, and the movements of the Earth relative to the
sun, dictate this calendar.
The
French Revolutionary Calendar is also based on the moon. Each of the twelve
months has thirty days, consistent with the phases of the moon. Twelve months
therefore have 360 days; the remaining five days were special days added to the
end of the year. Today is the first day of Vendémiaire, that is, the month of
grape harvest.
The
traditional religious calendar had feast days of the saints. The French
Revolution swept religion aside and established non-theistic science as its
basis. This is one of the reasons I like it so much: it takes its framework
from nature, rather than foisting a religious framework upon nature. Their
calendar named each day after (in most cases) plants, although many were named
after animals or farm implements. For example, today is raisin, or grape. I guess the revolutionaries had their priorities
straight, didn’t they: naming the first month after the grape harvest, and the
first day after the grape.
The
Revolutionary Calendar was just one way of rethinking the world. The scientists
of the French Revolution also produced the metric system, which is not only
still used but has been expanded. The metric system is based on nature. For
example, they said the meter was one-ten-millionth the distance from the
equator to the North Pole. (They were pretty close.) It was also based on
powers of ten. Instead of 16 ounces in a pound and 2000 pounds in a ton, or
5280 feet in a mile, there were 10 millimeters in a centimeter, 100 centimeters
in a meter, and 1000 meters in a kilometer. And it is based on water, also. A
milliliter is one cubic centimeter (cc). A milliliter of water weighs one gram.
A calorie is the amount of heat that can raise the temperature of 1 cc of water
1 degree Celsius. How nicely it all fits together. No wonder scientists have used
the metric system for a long time. And every major country other than the
United States uses the metric system. As scientists continue to explore the
very large and very distant and very small and very brief, they have expanded
the metric system to 24 orders of magnitude both ways from the base. There are
a million million million million yoctoseconds in a second, and a million
million million million meters in a yottameter. The French revolutionaries did
not imagine this possibility. Now the metric system has spread around the
world, while the Revolutionary Calendar has been largely forgotten.
The
Revolutionary Calendar is certainly not the only one based on nature. The
Jewish calendar begins with the Month of Nisan in spring.
The
reason I like to observe the Revolutionary Calendar, in addition to the regular
calendar, is that it helps to fit my thinking into the cycles of nature. It
helps me realize that we are part of nature, rather than being masters over it.
Just as we cannot force the sea to not rise (see my earlier blog entry), we
cannot force January 1 to be the first day of the year in anything other than
an artificial sense. We have to start thinking of ourselves as part of the mesh
of nature, of evolution, of ecology.
So
happy 1 Vendémiaire, everybody!
