I hope you are not serious. If the shadow (hand) is on two, it’s two o’clock. If it’s on three, it’s three o’clock. If it’s exactly between those two ticks it’s half past two. There isn’t even anything to learn (at least when they were invented). That’s exactly how the hour hand on a clock works.
(Note: Today it would be a bit more complicated if you want wall-clock-time because the sun dial always tells local solar time and if you want the time in your time zone you would have to adjust for DST and use the equation of time for some smaller corrections)
You don’t know how to read one - you’ve forgotten to calibrate it.
If you don’t do that before use, it’s measurements are meaningless. Correcting for DST and dates and other minor aspects of how time is handled in the modern era is important (blech screw DST), but this issue was present even in the roman era and is why sundials have movable faces. Premodern observatories (eg. stonehenge or the observatories at pisac) have references to correct the measurements for things like change in solar position and the progression towards the equinox for the same reason.
I don’t think we should get rid of analog clocks, I just wanted to point out that your example here isn’t a very good one to use.
What is progression towards the equinoxes? You mean precession of the equinoxes? That takes millennia and is very much negligible when reading sun dials on a day to day basis, or even year to year basis.
The orbital motions of the objects in our solar system is pretty messy and you are right that there goes more into designing accurate sun dials than just a stick in the ground, but I’d still argue that that’s not part of “reading a sun dial” - which was the question I answered.
No, I mean the progression towards the equinoxes - historically the equinoxes were a common way to demark calendar dates, and as a result they’re a useful reference point. Not universal, of course, but still frequently used enough to be useful when discussing this topic.
I get you’re arguing because, well, this is the internet and I contradicted you. That’s how it works, our egos are too tied up in our comments alone and it’s too easy to read any tone into a comment that we’d like. We get defensive, our wounded egos make things heated. So in that spirit, let me be explicit that I’m not trying to be rude to you when I say this: You’re oversimplifying the metaphor to make your point.
For example: I’ve been sitting around for a full day, but the damn clock says only twelve minutes have gone by.
You adjust a sundial in the morning every day, and then can read it from there (assuming it hasn’t been jostled) - but you still have to be aware of the rules and conventions of the system, and work within it’s boundaries. If we arbitrarily dismiss critical parts of it’s operation, there will be no meaning in anything we have to say. The territory of things like “clocks don’t measure time, they measure circles and everything we derive from them is thence wild and baseless speculation”; literally true and I can defend that position until we both die of carefully-measured old age, but reduced to the point that it’s completely meaningless.
You can’t just make stuff up and then say “it’s just a description”. It looks like you just remembered precession of the equinoxes wrong and doubled down once somebody called you out on it?
If it’s a description of something, what does “progression of the equinoxes” describe? Astronomically it’s complete gibberish, so I’m not sure what it’s describing.
Update: regarding your edit
“The progression of time towards the equinoxes”
This sentence makes no sense. How can time itself progress towards equinoxes, which are points in time?
The significance of the equinox in premodern calendar systems is pretty well established - stonehenge is an easy example of how it was taken into consideration, and was used to mark out significant dates.
How can time itself progress towards equinoxes, which are points in time?
I think you might be overthinking what I said. To answer your question: One day comes after another day. Eventually, on one of those days the arrangement of celestial bodies we call the equinox will happen. From wikipedia:
An equinox is equivalently defined as the time when the plane of Earth’s equator passes through the geometric center of the Sun’s disk.
We’ll reach that arrangement again as time progresses. The progression of time, will bring us towards the point in which that arrangement occurs. If you would prefer, “progression towards the equinoxes” is a slightly less florid way of expressing the same concept.
(edit: posted prematurely, thanks cat. Finished my sentence, reworded something to sound less confrontational as that was not my intention)
But calling the fact that time passed and we will reach another equinox at some point is like saying that “progression of time towards 5:43 pm” is a thing just because time always tends towards 5:43 and once we pass it, we use the next 5:43 as a target.
I develop calendar systems in my spare time and you should take a look at the leap year rule of SAC13, it takes the precession of the equinoxes into account.
The things you just said are just words thrown together - and again - just because you can’t admit that you heard precession of the equinoxes in the past and misremembered it.
I hope you are not serious. If the shadow (hand) is on two, it’s two o’clock. If it’s on three, it’s three o’clock. If it’s exactly between those two ticks it’s half past two. There isn’t even anything to learn (at least when they were invented). That’s exactly how the hour hand on a clock works.
(Note: Today it would be a bit more complicated if you want wall-clock-time because the sun dial always tells local solar time and if you want the time in your time zone you would have to adjust for DST and use the equation of time for some smaller corrections)
You don’t know how to read one - you’ve forgotten to calibrate it.
If you don’t do that before use, it’s measurements are meaningless. Correcting for DST and dates and other minor aspects of how time is handled in the modern era is important (blech screw DST), but this issue was present even in the roman era and is why sundials have movable faces. Premodern observatories (eg. stonehenge or the observatories at pisac) have references to correct the measurements for things like change in solar position and the progression towards the equinox for the same reason.
I don’t think we should get rid of analog clocks, I just wanted to point out that your example here isn’t a very good one to use.
What is progression towards the equinoxes? You mean precession of the equinoxes? That takes millennia and is very much negligible when reading sun dials on a day to day basis, or even year to year basis.
The orbital motions of the objects in our solar system is pretty messy and you are right that there goes more into designing accurate sun dials than just a stick in the ground, but I’d still argue that that’s not part of “reading a sun dial” - which was the question I answered.
No, I mean the progression towards the equinoxes - historically the equinoxes were a common way to demark calendar dates, and as a result they’re a useful reference point. Not universal, of course, but still frequently used enough to be useful when discussing this topic.
I get you’re arguing because, well, this is the internet and I contradicted you. That’s how it works, our egos are too tied up in our comments alone and it’s too easy to read any tone into a comment that we’d like. We get defensive, our wounded egos make things heated. So in that spirit, let me be explicit that I’m not trying to be rude to you when I say this: You’re oversimplifying the metaphor to make your point.
For example: I’ve been sitting around for a full day, but the damn clock says only twelve minutes have gone by.
You adjust a sundial in the morning every day, and then can read it from there (assuming it hasn’t been jostled) - but you still have to be aware of the rules and conventions of the system, and work within it’s boundaries. If we arbitrarily dismiss critical parts of it’s operation, there will be no meaning in anything we have to say. The territory of things like “clocks don’t measure time, they measure circles and everything we derive from them is thence wild and baseless speculation”; literally true and I can defend that position until we both die of carefully-measured old age, but reduced to the point that it’s completely meaningless.
Do you have a link or something that explains “progression towards the equinoxes”. I never heard of that and can’t find anything about it.
You understand that it’s just a description, right? “The progression of time towards the equinoxes”. It’s not a formal term.
You can’t just make stuff up and then say “it’s just a description”. It looks like you just remembered precession of the equinoxes wrong and doubled down once somebody called you out on it?
If it’s a description of something, what does “progression of the equinoxes” describe? Astronomically it’s complete gibberish, so I’m not sure what it’s describing.
Update: regarding your edit
This sentence makes no sense. How can time itself progress towards equinoxes, which are points in time?
The significance of the equinox in premodern calendar systems is pretty well established - stonehenge is an easy example of how it was taken into consideration, and was used to mark out significant dates.
I think you might be overthinking what I said. To answer your question: One day comes after another day. Eventually, on one of those days the arrangement of celestial bodies we call the equinox will happen. From wikipedia:
We’ll reach that arrangement again as time progresses. The progression of time, will bring us towards the point in which that arrangement occurs. If you would prefer, “progression towards the equinoxes” is a slightly less florid way of expressing the same concept.
(edit: posted prematurely, thanks cat. Finished my sentence, reworded something to sound less confrontational as that was not my intention)
But calling the fact that time passed and we will reach another equinox at some point is like saying that “progression of time towards 5:43 pm” is a thing just because time always tends towards 5:43 and once we pass it, we use the next 5:43 as a target.
I develop calendar systems in my spare time and you should take a look at the leap year rule of SAC13, it takes the precession of the equinoxes into account.
The things you just said are just words thrown together - and again - just because you can’t admit that you heard precession of the equinoxes in the past and misremembered it.