PETIN M.I.
PETIN - METON calendar
Contents - http://Petin1Mikhail.narod.ru/index.htm
A little of history
In 1834 the Italian priest Marco Mastrofini (1763 - 1845) offered to create the World and "eternal" calendar and has shown, that its invariance can be achieved only by application of so-called special days , i.e. such which would not be days of week or month. Marco Mastrofini offered to establish a calendar year in 364 days, i.e. in 52 full seven-day weeks, and to place 365-th day of a year at the end of December of each year, considering it "special" or "out of week".
It was offered to enter one more special day in a leap year and to place it in the middle of a year, between the last day of June and the first day of July, or behind the first special day.
In 1888 French astronomer Gustav Armelin has developed a calendar, in which the calendar year of 364 days was divided into 12 months with four equal quarters with 91 days in each one. As number 91 is multiple to number 7, it turned out that each quarter had 13 weeks and each quarter began with the same day of week. The 365-th day of a year was considered out of week, it was before the first of January and it was called the New Year Day.
The Armelin`s project has received the first premium of the French astronomical society, but as the World calendar was not accepted.
Since the first years of the twentieth century there were a lot of new projects of the world calendar.
In 1923 the International calendar reform committee was created at League of Nations in Geneva. During its existence the committee has considered and published a huge quantity of projects which have been received from different countries of the world from national committees on reform of a calendar, scientific organizations and private persons.
In 1937 the committee has initiated two projects of calendars for discussion in League of Nations - the French one with 12-months and the Swiss one with 13-months having 28 days in each month. The Swiss project was rejected, but the French one was approved by 70 countries (even earlier in 1922 the project of such calendar was approved by the International astronomical union). However the resistance of the church and the beginning of the second world war have prevented the realization of calendar reform.
In 1953 the calendar reform problem was discussed again in the UNO under the initiative of the Indian delegation which has offered to ratify for the whole of the world a new, uniform and constant calendar, astronomically coordinated with the movement of the Earth around the Sun which would be more correct, scientifically reasonable and favourable, as compared with the Gregorian calendar.
In 1954 the project of a new 12-month's calendar was approved by the 18-th session of Economic and Social Council of the UNO and was recommended for consideration at the General Assembly of the UNO. In it the calendar year was divided into 4 quarters with 91 days in each quarter. It was offered to name the out of calendar day (the day before the 1st of January) as Peace and Friendship of the peoples Day, while the out of calendar day of a leap-year (between June 30 and July 1) a Leap day.
The great difficulties in achievement of general approval by all countries of the given calendar project however were found out (1956). They are explained by the influence of church in a number of states. The Governments of the USA, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Indonesia and some other countries have refused to accept the project of a new calendar, explaining the decision by religious reasons.
It is necessary to note, that the project of the given reform was directed on elimination of lacks of only solar Gregorian calendar. It was offered to improve only its internal structure.
In this connection it is expedient to touch some questions of structure of a solar calendar.
The supporters of that or other variant of the solar calendar structure pay little attention to the essence, the reasons of durability and historical prospect of such time units as month and week.
It has been two thousand years since the time of Julian solar calendar creation (46 BCE), when the month has ceased to be connected with a revolution of the Moon. By turning from an astronomical-calendar into a simple one, the month has successfully passed this long test and was kept as the necessary time unit convenient for fixation the seasonal phenomena in nature and the appropriate economic and household measures in society.
Being the twelfth part of a solar year, the month has turned from a lunar measure of time into solar, has become a solar seasonal month. The month as a time unit is also used and in those spheres of life and activity of people, which are not connected or a little connected to the seasonal phenomena. For example, in industry the monthly operative planning, account and reporting, calculation of the cost price, drawing up of intermediate balances and so on is conducted. Many financial and calculating operations, including those with salary, various time-tables, monthly periodicity of the majority of issued magazines - all this and much another confirms expediency and necessity of such time unit as the month.
The week as well as the month has also arisen on the basis of the astronomical phenomenon. Besides the week has passed through thousands of years as the norm of work and rest: six days to work, the seventh one - to have a rest. The church perception of a week in Jewish, Islamic, Christian and other religions has only fixed this norm.
In the Julian calendar the seven-day week was introduced by Roman Emperor Constantine in the 4th century CE, who had probably modeled the week on the Christian sabbatical cycle (see web-site:
http://www.personal.ecu.edu/mccartyr/constantine.html ).
The modern scientific and technical revolution has resulted in rapid increase of labour productivity in the national economy, which led to transition to two days off per week. However, this change has not resulted in reduction of a seven-day week. The week duration has preserved for the future.
For the sake of justice it is necessary to tell, that theoretically it is more correct to add to the church 7-day week the 8-th weekday (additional "sacred" day of rest) - Lunaday (on month dates 15 and 30). In this case the same date of each month will fall for the same weekday and will coincide with the same phase of the Moon.
For example, date 1 of each month will coincide with a weekday - Monday and a Moons phase - New Moon, date 15 of each month will coincide with a weekday - Lunaday and Moons phase - Full Moon etc. (see http://Petin29Mikhail.narod.ru/index.htm).
As was already mentioned above, the calendars (tear-off, desktop, wall, mechanical and electronic blocks etc.) are the devices, which would display (it would like with high accuracy):
- - the sequences of natural cycles of time (terrestrial day, lunar month, solar year),
millennia ago accepted by mankind for units of measurements of big time
intervals and marked by days, months, years;
- - the industrial church-scientific cycles of time the weeks (work rest), being
by ¼ part of the natural lunar cycle, i.e.:
I week = 7 days, i.e. 7= = 7 days instead of natural 7,4 days,
II week = 8 days, i.e. 7+8= = 15 days instead of natural 14,8 days,
III week = 7 days, i.e. 7+8+7= = 22 days instead of natural 22,1 days,
IV week = 7(8) days, i.e. 7+8+7+7(8)=29(30) days instead of natural 29,5 days.
Unfortunately, serious mistakes was made by the former
calendar reformers:
1. In the 4th century CE Emperor Constantine applied erroneously the calendar with the industrial church-anti-scientific week, i.e.:
I week = 7 days, i.e. 7= 7 days instead of natural 7,4 days,
II week = 7 days, i.e. 7+7= 14 days instead of natural 14,8 days,
III week = 7 days, i.e. 7+7+7= 21 days instead of natural 22,1 days,
IV week = 7 days, i.e. 7+7+7+7 = 28 days instead of natural 29,5 days.
2. The Pope Gregory corrected and kept solar calendar (Gregorian), but he didn't add the 2-nd calendar (lunar-solar Meton calendar with industrial church-scientific week).
The calendar reform would be directed mainly on elimination the given mistakes instead of useless reproduction in quantity of second-quality calendars with 7-days week.
The periods - month and week - have historically arisen owing to the observation over the changes of the Moon phases and its position about the Earth. The Moon within a year, in comparison with the Sun more often (approximately in 12 times) changes its position concerning the Earth. The Moon like the Sun influences an electromagnetic field of the Earth, edd and flow phenomena, weather, growth of plants, biorhythms of the vegetative and animal world, medical health and religious way of life of the people etc.
However, in solar calendars the opportunity to determine simply the position of the Moon (phases of the Moon), proceeding from numbers of month or days of week, is absent. It is an essential defect, which makes solar calendars less perspective for daily application, especially as the Global Calendar.
Obviously, the principles of the further improvement of a calendar should consist not only in elimination of solar calendar defects, but also in preservation the astronomical-calendar meaning of such components of calendar structure, as the terrestrial day, lunar month and week, solar year.
The project of the new Global Calendar created on the basis of the mentioned above principles by further improvement of internal structure of a lunar-solar calendar is given below.
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Contents - http://Petin1Mikhail.narod.ru/index.htm