Re: Programming a calendar system

On Fri, Apr 30, 2004 at 10:36:20AM +0100, Michael Poxon wrote:
> I can't see how a week could be based on the number of planets visible,
> since this is constantly changing.
Not number of planets visible, number of visible planets.  Total,
that you can ever see over the course of a year.   And with the naked
eye, of course, since this was long before telescopes.

Also, it's "planet" in its original sense - from the Greek word for
"wanderer", it means "celestial object that moves", and the Sun and Moon
were included in the list.

The other five planets that you can see without aid are Mercury, Venus,
Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.  Thus, we have Sun's day, Moon's day,
Woden's day (after the Norse "equivalent" of Mercury), Thor's day
(after the Norse "equivalent" of Jupiter), Freya's day (after the
Norse "equivalent" of Venus), and Saturn's Day.

I never said that there was any *natural* correspondence between the
number of planets and the number of days in the week.  It's completely
arbitrary.  Just that in the case of our 7-day week it happens to go
back to a tradition of putting the days (actually, originally the hours)
into a cycle according to which the gods (i.e. planets) took turns
watching over us.  The Babylonians first made this connection.  The Jews
picked it up from them during their time in exile and incorporated it
into their Creation story and Sabbath tradition.  (Those who insist that
everything in the Bible be taken literally will dispute this, of course,
and say that the seven-day week was ordained by God as one of the ten
commandments based on how long it took Him to create the universe.
That's fine, too - it's still arbitrary; it's just God making the
arbitrary choice.  But you might expect that He would do something
similar on your conplanet, so take that into account if that's your
belief.)

-Mark

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