We get that.
'Now' is not the word we are defining. The word we are defining is 'time'.
6.3 Definitions of Time
L’Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert defines the word tems5
: Succession of
phenomena in the universe, or time mode marked by certain periods and measures,
mainly by the motion and apparent revolution of the sun (Ch. 10, 4). This is
followed by comments which show the importance of the issue, but with nothing
more about time.
Having made definitions of time units, it is important to ask what separates two
arbitrary states of the Earth/Sun configuration, or two positions of a clock hand, or
what corresponds to an arbitrary number of cesium cycles: what is the corre-
sponding concept?
Our predecessors started using generic terms which transcend the units, with the
words time, duration, to last, etc. The difficulties caused by translations (supra Ch.
5) are worsened because, before Herodotus, the writings of the logographers
(storytellers perpetuating traditions) had no historicity, in spite of rare and some-
what approximate geographical and historical references, of the kind found in
Homer and Biblical literature. In addition, the scholiasts, those who comment these
texts, adapt the little history they know, projecting their creeds, their desires, and
their fears.
Here is an example in a translation of the Vulgata Venice (1551): Et fuerût cuncti
dies Adam quoad vixit, nongenti anni et triginta anni (Genesis, V, 5), which is
translated to: All the time that Adam lived was therefore nine hundred and thirty
years [1], instead of: And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty
years. The translator has commited an anachronism, in so far as neither the oral
tradition nor the storytellers of the day knew the concept of time. The exaggerated
age attributed to Adam and other protagonists might be explained by what Plutarch
wrote about the year: It only has three months among certain barbarians […].
Among Egyptians, the year had one month at first, and later it had four months (Ch.
3, 17: Life of Numa, 18, 6 & 7).
In the Odyssey, Homer writes: When the time came with the course of years (Ch.
3, 4: Song I).
The Queen Hatshepsut (1504-1483 BC): So that my name is durable and per-
petual. Hatshepsut’s high priest: I went towards my place of infinite duration.
Amenophis I (Amon is satisfied) (1558-1530 BC): Amon whose monuments are
long-lasting (Ch. 5, 14: Ch. II).
In Tell el-Amarna, on the tomb of Aï, who was the second husband of Nefertiti
(the beautiful one has come), there appears a poignant anthem to the Sun composed
by the Pharaoh Akhenaten, instigator of the first monotheism: You are time itself,
you last with it. In you, we all live eternally thanks to your splendour (Ch. 5, 25:
Ch. II).
I saw the customs of my time, wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the preface to La
Nouvelle Héloïse published in 1761: Rousseau used time instead of epoch.
Time can be conceptualized and defined using the same approach as for the
definition of units: first with the configuration Earth/Sun, then with a conventional
clock, and with a cesium clock, and finally in relation to the physical state of any
system.
FROM
