> >I am familiar with temporal hours for which the period of time between > >sunrise > >and sunset is divided into 12 hours. I have recently come across octaval > >hours > >for which the period of time between sunrise and sunset is divided into 8 > >hours. > > ... This eight hours were called > also "tides" in ancient Saxon language, and what I know is that that word > doesn't mean tide like today, but simply something like "space of > time".
There is obviously a close and practical relationship between time and tides. In German, "time" is "Zeit", and "tides" is "Gezeiten". As for dividing a period of time into eighths, that is a natural result of repeated halving. Like we divide inches into fractions, pounds and pints into ounces, the compass into points, or a dollar into bits (like "shave and a haircut..."). It was the astrology-loving Babylonians that liked to divide things into twelve parts or 5X12=60 parts, which gave us our system of measuring time and angles. On rainy days I ponder the question, whether it would have been better if evolution had given us 4 fingers, so we would count everything by halves, or 6 fingers, so we would always use base 12, which makes it easy to find the 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, or 1/6 part of anything. I'm sure 5 fingers was a bad choice since it led to this muddle of the bases 8, 10 and 12. Art -- To study, to finish, to publish. -- Benjamin Franklin Dr. Arthur Carlson Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Garching, Germany [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~awc/home.html
