Astute readers who are still following this series have no doubt noticed that our ‘week(ish)’ has reached its 10th day. Since examining underlying assumptions is a crucial component of critical thinking, we have decided to challenge our readers’ concept of what a week is.
Of course, seven days is the current conventional designation for the length of a week, but there is no physical basis for this unit, unlike the day (Earth’s rotation), or year (Earth’s revolution around the Sun). Indeed, ancient civilizations had a variety of week-lengths: The Egyptians used 10 days, the Etruscans eight, while the Babylonians decided on seven weekdays that they named for the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn (names that much of the world still uses today). Though it is an inconvenient fact that the timing of the day, lunar month, and year cannot be described with round numbers or simple mathematical relationships, the seven-day week at least had the advantage of (almost) being a quarter of the 27.3-day lunar cycle.
A more recent suggestion was the French Republican Calendar, established in 1793. The intention was to replace the religious names and connotations of the Gregorian calendar with a secular, scientific, and rational system. This calendar had 30-day months, divided into three weeks with ten days: primidi, duodi, tridi, quartidi, quintidi, sextidi, septidi, octidi, nonidi, décadi. This calendar was abandoned by Napoleon in 1806. Most of the world has adopted the metric system of measurement (which also came out of the French Revolution), but there has been no appetite for implementing a similar reform to our calendar standards.
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Discussion:
Why do we (still) have the seven-day week? Is it worth the effort to try to get rid of it?
As an octogenarian with decreasing tolerance for innovation, a preternatural preference for caution, and a commitment to the principle of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” I urge us to ask Neil Postman’s basic question regarding reform: “what, precisely, is the problem for which this change presents a solution?”
Until I hear a persuasive answer, may I urge us to focus on any of the multiplicity of problems evident in the ambient dread of the imminence of what French sociologist, Edgar Morin (b. 1921 and still with us) famously calls the “polycrisis.”
Not only is this not the secular hill I would choose to die on, but I don’t really think it’s worth much time or energy to debate. (Full disclosure: I still think in terms of miles and pounds and feel none the worse for doing so.)
7 days, with 1 or 2 days of rest, seem to reflect the needs of the human body and mind. I’d like to see consideration of a 10-hour day, each hour = 100 minutes, each minute = 100 seconds.
Many critical thinkers find that a so-called “yes or no” question really has 5 possible answers: Yes, No, Maybe, That Depends, and WFC (Who Cares?). I’m retired, so every day is Saturday to me. And being agnostic, no day is the Lord’s Day. I think that the answer to this question of number of days in a week (or even if we need something called a week) is #5 above, namely, Who Cares!
The reason that a week comprises seven days is that the word hebdomad is really boss!