The Human Illusion of Time

The invention of the calendar followed one more practical reason. That was the idea of unification of relations between days. The notion of a day has no controversy. Still, a relationship between days has such controversy in notions as "yesterday" and "tomorrow." Unlike the idea of "today," notions of "yesterday" and "tomorrow" have relative meaning because they point ever to the relationship between days. Hence, the present day is never referred to as "today." Still, the following question arises as soon as we describe a notion of "today." What is tomorrow? It seems like a hallucination because "tomorrow" becomes "today" daily. They should ask, "Are we living in a yesterday's tomorrow or in tomorrow's yesterday???!!!"

The calendar has an answer to such questions, and many other questions become answerable by means of the calendar application. We can easily imagine the following situation in Ancient Greece. A young athlete from Athens goes to his teacher and asks him the straightforward question: "What day is today?" The old-aged man with a long beard made his response to the younger one. "Today is the fifth day of the Ianuarios." The young athlete was satisfied with that answer because he knew today was the fifth day of the Ianuarios (the month's name in Ancient Greece). Hence, yesterday was the fourth day of the Ianuarios, and tomorrow will be the sixth day of the Ianuarios.

Using that way, each day with an appropriate number in the calendar possessed a unique relation to any other day. In that case, only the number of current days becomes significant because knowledge of that number and the current month's name allows people to calculate the number of days for or after any other date. Calculation of the current day number, as well as an examination of the location of the celestial bodies responsible for the calendar, became the responsibility of the calendar keepers. Usually, in ancient societies, only high priests could calculate days for the calendar. They were also responsible for declaring the right day for any celebration of each god and days for launching significant community activities (harvesting, for example). In other words,

Hence, any human activity to maintain a calendar needs an artificial calculation process. The easily observable events of the nearest celestial bodies (the Sun and the Moon) provide information for such calculations. They used the easiest method of calculation to maintain a calendar—summarizing natural numbers. As a result, a calendar never uses any fractional number, even today (despite the fractional relationship of a day and a year, for example).

On the one hand, that happened because mathematics of ancient times could not deal with fractional numbers. On the other hand, human society could not understand the fractional relation between the duration of celestial processes. For example, a statement about the year's duration in a fractional number of days looks strange to any ancient society (as well as to a modern society). That led to fractional days and contradicted the whole mathematics of natural numbers. Hence, a calendar was created as a calculation system based on natural numbers, and celestial events were used as starting points for any calculation circle. Those calculations included the duration of three basic circles of days, months, and years.

That strategy was successful because numbers gave way to making a mark on each day and subsequently separated references from any given day to any other day. Thus, the date was invented as a unique description of any given day related to the nearest celestial event and subsequent calculation of some extra duration. That duration appears to summarize the most noticeable circle of visible revolution of the Sun around the Earth.

I mention here the Ancient point of view on celestial mechanics. According to that point of view, the Sun makes a revolution around the Earth.

As with any other physical process, the process of revolution has some duration. Summarizing that duration allows comparing the calculation result (that was duration itself, of course) with the duration of any other event in the Heavens. Each key event that had a place in the Heavens stops the circle of the old calculation and starts the new circle of calculation immediately. For example, the event of a New Moon appearance triggered a new circle of day calculation that belongs to a new month (new moon circle). That system of observations and calculations gave way to the notion of date as a unique combination of numbers linked to each day. Therefore, humankind possessed a way to describe countless numbers of upcoming days comparatively quickly and conveniently.

Each day in a year is uniquely identified as a combination of a day number in a month and the name of a month. Everything went well until the end of the year. A celestial event that triggers a new circle of day calculation (usually summer solstice) puts the definition of a new year under question. In the case of the Moon, its phase changes continuously for each month and is visible to any observer. The New Moon naturally separates the behavior of that celestial body from wane to wax. Still, such a thing does not happen within a year. As soon as it was discovered, the following questions were raised immediately. What does happen a year after the summer solstice? Does it wane as the Moon waxes again or disappear? Does a New Year carry any unique property distinguishing it from the Old Year? What is that property? Celestial observation in Ancient times could not answer such a fundamental question.

However, they found odd solutions that were able to answer all questions about upcoming celestial years. They also spread calculations for years. In that case, years became calculable. As each day has its unique number in the calculation of a month, each year possesses its unique number and becomes calculable (distinguishable) from any other year. The physical observation could not reach such separation and was replaced by a logical extension of known calculation methods.

Hence, the notion of date was established as the unique combination of numbers. Several days show the duration between the appearance of the new Moon and the beginning of any given day. The name (number) of the month shows the duration in moon circles that have passed between the last summer solstice and the last appearance of the New Moon. Still, the number or year ever shows only the abstract number they used to distinguish one year from another. It can be explained easily. There is no possible way (even today) to conduct any physical experiment showing the current year's number. Therefore,