Measurement and the thing being measured are not the same thing.
--- On Wed, 3/4/09, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Time as socially constructed
> To: "lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Date: Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 1:21 PM
> Up to the fourteenth century in Europe there were the same
> nunmber of
> nightime hours winter and summer. For example, the winter
> night would
> consist of 12 hours and the winter summer would consist of
> 12 hours. The
> length of each hour however would differ. During the
> winter, nightime
> hours were much longer, daytime hours were much shorter, in
> order to
> keep the total number of hours unchanged.
>
> The reason for this in medieval europe was that hours were
> measured by
> their content, not their content by the hours. Time was
> determined by
> action, rather than being an 'objective' fact
> independent of the
> activities which filled it. Even when the mechanical clock
> was invented
> hours continued to be changeable, measured by their content
> rather than
> being a measure of their content.
>
> (The content was primarily the content of the Church day.)
>
> Then in anumber of cities in western europe workshops
> appeare staffed by
> wage workers, and in a few of these wages began to be paid
> by the hour.
> The mechaical clock was used to measure these hours. But
> the older
> variable hours continued to be used in monasteries,
> churches, and in
> general in rural areas. Mechanical clocks arrivbed in China
> but there
> were used merely as curiosities, for in China, as in
> ancient Greece and
> Rome and everyplace else time;, time was not a measure of
> its content
> but rather time was measured by its content.
>
> In other words, time is not an obbective entity but is a
> social product.
>
> I'll explore some other day some of the implications of
> this fact.
>
> Carrol
>
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